root salad f24 Quinie
A.k.a. Josie Vallely – an idiosyncratic take on Scottish traditional song, says Alasdair Roberts
tion, as heard on her recent, second cas- sette release Buckie Prins. Her work com- bines an interest in unaccompanied song with an open-ended, exploratory collabo- rative approach borne out of her ground- ing in Glasgow’s fertile underground/ experimental music scene.
Q
Although Josie, now in her late twen- ties, has been making music for many years, it’s only more recently that she has begun exploring the deep roots of Scots tradition; a turning point was a chance encounter with the voice of the late Sheila Stewart on the radio. “It was one year after she died” (on 9th December 2014). “I had never heard it before – and it blew my tiny mind!” Until then she had been used to “very English versions of Scottish songs” sung by her con- temporaries. “I had a group of friends who were in a kind of folky scene. They enjoyed the storytelling in folk song, rehashing these songs, and I was still singing them the way that they were sung, quite sweetly and cleanly”.
What was it about Sheila Stewart’s singing that resonated? “It was a voice that was powerful and accurate and amazing but also fluid in how it fitted into that… not totally perfect, but kind of perfect in its own way.” Josie subsequently discovered an affinity with Traveller singers of the North- East, such as the late Jeannie Robertson and, more particularly, her daughter Lizzie Higgins, who remains a key influence: “She’s found her own style with it, which I like because I guess that’s what I was hoping to do… the way she kind of cuts notes off
uinie is the name under which Glasgow-based musician Josie Vallely makes idiosyncratic explo- rations of Scots lyrical song tradi-
and drops them back – and a lot of it is that I like the songs that she chooses to sing.”
The title of Quinie’s second cassette,
Buckie Prins, is a Scots expression for ‘peri- winkle’; each cassette case comes encrusted with shells, painstakingly gleaned and glued by Josie herself. She relates a happy coincidence that occurred after choosing the title: “I did a really nice show in Pitten- weem in Fife and there was a beach there that was just solid periwinkles. It was like ‘ah, what are the chances?’, so that’s where all the shells are from.”
Featuring nuanced instrumental contri- butions from fellow Glasgow-based musi- cians Neil McDermott, Ailbhe Nic Oireach- taigh and Oliver Pitt, Buckie Prins finds Josie interpreting traditional songs such as When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen, settings of texts by Scottish poets Violet Jacob and Marion Angus and Scots children’s lyrics by Sandy Thomas Ross. Her singing is assured and austere, by turns strident and gentle; it’s clearly informed by some of the afore- mentioned historical greats of Scots song but uniquely her own. There is a general preference for shorter, lyrical pieces, fre- quently sung from a woman’s perspective, rather than the ‘muckle sangs’ which are often equated with Scots song. This lends an appealingly fragmentary, patchwork quality to the work overall; in an essay accompany- ing the release, Josie likens her musical approach to the craft of quilt-making.
The general tone is resolutely, perhaps
defiantly, Scottish; the aforementioned essay alludes to the notion of the songs giv- ing her a “connection to an imaginary and real Scottishness.” Expanding on this notion, she says, “It’s about being seen as Scottish but at the same time working out
what that means, all these different layers of what it means to be Scottish.” This is per- haps significant in light of Josie’s family his- tory – it’s fair to say that the use of the Scots language wasn’t actively encouraged in her household. “Both my parents were English, so for them it was just a wrong way to speak… we weren’t allowed to say ‘aye’, you know? Part of it might have been that my parents wouldn’t have understood cer- tain words but it was just a general kind of ‘speak properly!’ kind of thing.”
erences are all so different.” Neil is a fid- dler with a lifetime’s background in Scot- tish and Irish music; Ailbhe is an Irish viola player with complementary interests in baroque music and free improvisation; and Oliver is a member of cult Glasgow band Golden Teacher. “Having Ollie there was really good because he was like ‘no, stretch it out, do this…’. I guess he’s into quite experimental music, so the weirder it is, the better from his perspective.”
J
Given the genre-spanning nature of her work, how does Josie see her position in Scottish music? “My scene is all about experimental music, so that’s what I’m gonna do because it’s fun!” And the folk scene? “I feel like I fit in to it when I stand up in a pub and blast everyone and make everyone shut up…”
Quinie will appear at Fire In The Moun- tain Festival, Aberystwyth on 1st/2nd June.
fireinthemountain.co.uk. Buckie Prins is available to download or buy on cassette at
glarc.bandcamp.com
quiniemusic.weebly.com F
osie describes the work of her collab- orators Neil, Ailbhe and Oliver as “like gold dust… they’re all just real- ly, really talented. Their musical ref-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
