39 f Singing The Fishing
Creating little masterpieces on the edges of folk music, Shetland’s Inge Thomson is in a school of one. Sarah Coxson hears the story behind.
I
nge Thomson weaves a special kind of magic. It’s hard not to be awed by her seamless musical multi-tasking; fashioning great swells of sound and space with loops, gadget- formed clicks and whirrs, nimble-fingered accordeon motifs, jagged rhythms and her bird-bone voice, floating into the ether. She delights in sound-play. Known to many as one third of Karine Polwart’s trio, she has a substantial body of her own work well worth investigating. Her latest pro- ject, Da Fishing Hands, is a poignant explo- ration of her native island life and the impact of environmental change.
I was privileged to catch the Celtic Con- nections performance of this project – a starkly relevant piece created by Inge and her cousin, the poet / singer / songwriter Lise Sinclair. The album, released this month (and recorded in an amazing four hours!) features tuned-in collaborators Sarah Hayes, Steven Polwart, Graeme Smillie, engineer Ben Seal and Fraser Fifield (with whom Inge also works as a duo).
The sum of its parts is immersive, inti- mate and intense. It breathes humanity and sounds fashioned by wind, rock and sea. And it is – uniquely so. Hailing from the British Isles’ most remote inhabited island, Fair Isle, the rugged land and seascapes and its community run through Thomson’s veins.
“I grew up with these amazing noises around and about. It informs everything. My father’s a lighthouse keeper and some- times we’d take our sleeping bags up the light. Back in the days when it was still a paraffin light, you’d have all the smells and engine noises and clanks and clicks and whirrs. Waking up as the first light in the morning caught the magnifying glasses, you’d be looking up at all these little magi- cal flying spectrums. What I’m looking for when I’m using my little electronic gadgets is to find those kinds of curious, magical moments.”
Inge’s musical education, as with many Shetlanders, was organic, learning to play the piano accordeon, as had her father before her. “Growing up in Shetland, which has such a strong fiddling tradition, every other house has a fiddle player in it. It’s a mainstream, normal thing to do, like being in the hockey or the football team. All my family played music and it’s common to play at parties or just go and spontaneously have a tune. No-one organises it. It isn’t purist; it’s all folk music.”
Photo: Archie MacFarlane
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