2024 Year of Challenges

 

There are times we want to be challenged, other times when challenges are thrust upon us and we have to rise to them. 2024 has been hectic, some years disappear! 

The arts give us hope of the strength and joy of the human spirit. Amid a world of chaos, flags flags and bad actors. Do people know they are being manipulated? Do they know about AI even? Or what all this means? Of course there’s right wing chaos worldwide, driven by rich men’s controlling populism which is not good at all. Be wary and aware...... 

Here’s hoping for more peace, calmer heads, improved education and listening to each other....... for the new year!

Dreamspace

 

There’s a sweet spot or a zone, that can be reached creatively – through effort, time, concentration, patience – that’s well worth achieving. It doesn’t feel like your frontal conscious mind, but more like your dream space. 

 

I’ve first experienced these intense at times euphoric feelings playing piano, and through drawing. Later when pursuing photography – on a seriously long photoshoot and being lost and absorbed in the moment. 

 

Bob Dylan and his Scots folk music traditions

I enjoyed reading the informed article 'The Scottish folk origins of Dylan’s best loved tracks', Ruairdh Mackenzie, Sunday National 15/12/2024

It reminded me that a few years back I was listening to a Radio Six Music program – Cerys Matthews: A Birthday Tribute to Bob Dylan, May - 2014 

She was having a chat with one of Dylan’s legion of serious music fans. They were discussing the influence of British or Anglo-folk on Dylan’s music. Mathews asked whether Irish folk had a major influence on Dylan’s music. 

The fan replied, “well apart from being close with the Clancy Brothers during their time in Greenwich village, not so much, but that Scottish folk music....."  Mathews interrupted and stopped him, not once, but TWICE. And then she said, “Oh we cant single out one region of the UK for particular attention.” 

I was very disappointed as I was looking forward to a discussion on Scottish traditional folk music’s influence on Dylan’s music.It took me aback and I thought, clearly those in England view Scotland as a region, merely due equal attention of other regions of England – say Yorkshire or Northumberland – and not a nation or country in its own right. This is truly shocking and clearly politically driven. 

Afterwards I felt convinced there must be messaging from the BBC to the effect of – “any reference to Scotland as a unique or separate nation should be avoided.  In all respects only the viable UK should be promoted as an entire whole – that is Wales, Scotland and NI are merely regions of the United Kingdom.” Of course I could be entirely wrong about this??!  I did receive a response from the BBC asking where in the program I heard these comments. 

 

Dylan’s early songs were adapted from Scots folk tunes – He wrote his early classis of ‘A Hard Rain a Gonna Fall’ based on the 17^th century Scots border ballad Lord Randal. His ‘Times They are a Changing’ is based on Hamish Henderson’s Banks O Sicily.

Interestingly Mackenzie writes that when Dylan arrived in Greenwich village as a young 20yr old, he shared a flat with Scots singer Jean Redpath. She taught Dylan about Burns and Scots traditional music. “Giving Dylan the poetry and tunes to rise to the top of the New York folk music scene.”

 

On his 30^th studio album Time Out of Mind, the final track is Highlands,

Well my hearts in the highlands, gentle and fair,

Honeysuckle bloomin in the wildwood air,

Bluebells bloomin where the Aberdeen waters flow

Well my herats in the highlands

I’m goonna go there when I feel good enough to go.”,

 

So ten years later I get some answers to the my questions over Scottish tradiitonal folk music’s influence on Dylan’s song writing! I’ve been studying both Bob Dylan and Robert Burns genius song writing over the past decade. Dylan later names Burns "A Red Red Rose" as the song that most influenced his work.  

Make music organically. In 2009 Dylan purchased a mansion at Nithy Bridge in the Cairngorms. Here was an artist going home to his roots. 

‘A Complete Unknown’ film with Timothy Chalamet, due out 17^th Jan 2025 in the UK

 Sunday National - The Scottish folk origins of Bob Dylan’s best-loved tracks

https://www.thenational.scot/culture/24795016.scottish-folk-origins-bob-dylans-best-loved-tracks/

Timothy Chalamet in A Complete Unknown

Tom Nairn, Scotland missed Europes national revivals

 Tom Nairn, Scotland’s greatest political theorist of modern times. 

He writes on why Scottish nationalism is different to the rest of Europe. 

“All I’m arguing for is nations, minus the dratted “ism”; democratic natural, independent, diverse, ordinary, even boring rather than the museum pieces, or dictatorship or hustlers like Blair of Berlusconi.” Tom Nairn, Free worlds End, opendemocracy, Dec 4^th 2004. 

 

Nairn writes of the misfit of the British state to the modern world and not from the express of romantic tartanry, which the author excoriates – and the centrality of the nation in political change. 

"Break Up of Britain" (1977), one of the best reads on how and why the archaic institutions of the British state and its pre-democracy are failing us. How Scotland lost its way and its literary voice over the 1800s and of the fake tartanry of Walters Scott’s novels, of a Scotland that’s lost and can never return - “the heart regrets, but never the head.” Of the destructive and false nature of the Labour party. 

 

That the Scottish Enlightenment was very much a Tory project. While Scotland prospered during the 1800s with manufacturing, its literary voice became bereft. He sees Walter Scott’s work of a mythical Scotland and Scots heroes, as very much glorifying a past that was gone and to be forgotten. Scotland became north Britain. While Scott’s romantic and mythical novels were highly successful across the world. 

 

**Those Myths of Blood and spirit, such as Jacobites, Rob Roy, Robert the Bruce.

 

Nationalism, Nairn argues is always both good and bad. ’ 

And originated from that derived in – the impossibility of escape from the uneven development of capitalism.’

Nationalism is not a question of simple identity, but rather of something more – a catalyst.

 

Nearly all modern nations have a myth – a key to their nationalism and regeneration. But not England… :with an astonishing resistance of a fossilised and incompetent political order.  

“England’s peculiar form of nationalism  hopelessly stultifying inheritance of the state.…The main character of English history since 1688 “of which English ideology most proud is, her conditional and parliamentary revolution. “

“the mobilising myth of nationalism is an idea of the people … an emotive notion anchored in popular experience of love” – the revolution, war of liberation.”

 

He writes, “What counts is later mass beliefs. These are amplified into an inheritance, broadcast in ballads, written into documentary history text-books, novelized, sermonised and institutionalized into street-names and statues. From the process there derives an always latent conviction of popular will and capacity. That the people could always do it again.” 

 

**By contrast in Europe 1800s, nationalism took hold with the demise of empires, and the rise of nation states. “Only one country “stepped over before the Europe of 1800s – Scotland politics and culture was decisively and permanently altered by the great awaking of nationalist consciousness – Scotland or north Britain …due to the uneven development of capitalism. “

 

“After the black the unspeakable 17^th century was 1688 which marked the real dawn of Scotland, after the dark bloodshed years of religious conflicts across Europe. – William Robertson, in his book History of Scotland. When the Scottish bourgeoisie exploited the results of the English revolution. Scotland progressed from fortified castles and witch burning, to Edinburgh new town and Adam Smith in only a generation:”

“The most influential book on British politics to be published in the last half century,”  writes Anthony Burnett

Highlander Adam Fergusson, saw this contrast around him. “The Highlands were under-developed and didn’t have pre-requisite for nationalist existence. The Highland life was destroyed after 1745

The Scottish Enlightenment ended early 1800s. The Scottish literary tradition paused 1825 – 1860. Instead there was the Industrial Scotland of Glasgow-Edinburgh- Dundee – engineering, shipbuilding and iron stone. 

 

Scotland reverted to being a province in the 1800s Victorian times, while prosperous and imperial.  Why – because of the absence of political nationalism and a literary voice. The Scottish bourgeoisies pre-possessed the country’s distinctive and proto-national features – they believed in a universal and enlightened civilization .Therefore Scotland remained stuck betwixt and between - too much a nation to be a mere province, yet it could not develop into a nation-state on the basis either via nationalism. :

Was Robert Burns a Reformer, a Jacobin or a Supporter of King George

 

There has been a debates over Burns political views. Its particularly difficult because Burns had to play all sides in order to earn a living and to gain subscribers for his poetry. Burns grew up the oldest of seven children with a poor tenant farmer, who was told his land would be improved, but wasn’t. In July 1786 Buns published his first book of poetry, Poems Chiefly in the Scotch dialect” and to do so required many subscribers. 

 

Burns was an active freemason which was a great way to network, gain influence and meet men from all walks of life. He also belonged to gentlemen clubs in Edinburgh. For instance during his time in the crossroads town of Mauchline (1784-1786) he met all kinds of people from all walks of life at Poozie Nansies ale house -  titled landowning men, dukes, earls, lawyers, academics, clergy, farmers, peasants, shopkeepers, artists, doctors, scholars. 

 

His first book of poems received great acclaim and sold worldwide. He was given enough support to enable him to travel to Edinburgh for a second edition and later to travel across Scotland collecting both subscribers and traditional tunes and songs. As a man of genius he might have been better supported and after two years (1786-1788) he felt compelled to join the Excise to support his young family. He married Jean Armour in April 1788 and they moved to Ellisland farm north of Dumfries. He continued to write his poetry, collect songs, travel long distances for the Excise and keep detailed records. Jean looked after the farm. 

 

The Burns museum displays many of the myths that surround Burns – from one of the first Romantic poets, to the farmers son in enlightened Edinburgh. His image was appropriated in Victorian times to promote Scotland worldwide. Often Burns significant and interesting political views and the turbulent revolutionary times he lived in are glossed over. At the times 1780s there was the American wars of independence and the French revolution.

 

But this was not how Burns viewed his poetry and songs. He wrote in Scots and English, after reading Robert Fergusson Scots poems and Allan Ramsey. He collected and wrote to save and preserve the Scots language and songs. At a time when Scots voices were being crushed after Culloden (1746), when the highland way of life was destroyed by Cumberland and wearing the kilt was banned. 

 

Burns wore a plaid shawl around his shoulders and his hair in a pony tail as a sign of rebellion. His grandfather had worked for the Earl of Marischal south of Aberdeen - the most powerful Jacobite who fled after the 1715 uprising. His father then travelled south.

 

In Dumfries Burns drank with reformers at the Globe Inn. In fact there’s a story of Burns rudely keeping his hat on during the singing of the British national anthem at the new Dumfries theatre. He wrote to Mrs Dunlop about the “idiot French King Louis, who deserved to have his head chopped off”. His reformer friends at Dumfries Globe Inn, sent weapons to France to help the new republic. Tom Paine wrote the Rights of Man’ pamphlet which helped start the American wars of independence. Burns wrote his famous poem A Mans a Man For A That 1795 – “shall equals be for all that”

Burns certainly was a man of many sides – a Lad O Pairts, He adored lively debates, had renowned conversations, and looked widely for ideas. His favourite book A Man of Feeling by Henry McKenzie. He read all the great English poets and enlightenment figures. He lived in crossroads, turbulent times – just as Mozart (1756-1791) and Bob Dylan. Any study of Burns needs to dig deep into the many images and myths portrayed of Burns.  

 

In his book “Robert Burns and Political Culture” Dr Paul Malgrati advocates that Burns was politically ambiguous - he was so to protect himself and his family, from being investigated by the Hanoverian London authorities. He was nearly investigated but managed to contact supporters to protect him. At the time reformers such as the lawyer Thomas Muir were being put on trial and then sent to Australia. Malgrati suggests that our great Scottish bard is not the right role model or image for Scotland’s independence. (Sunday National, 22 Dec 2024. Book suggests independence movement should cut ties with Robert Burns).  

 

Reformers for liberty in turbulent times! - “I was the independent-minded man whose sympathies were with my own folk – even while I had to work for the crown and government. Democracy’ was a dangerous word. Reform! My god! What a reform I would make among the sons and even the daughters of men!”  RB

My impression of Burns is he had great humanity and understanding. Burns was a man of independent mind. His many letters show a man interested in politics and also a great reader. Reading his letters, poems, songs and biographies’ its hard not to believe Burns supported reform. 

He lived in turbulent times of reform. Burns wrote his famous ‘Scots wa Hae’ about all freedom fighters – from Wallace, Bruce to Thomas Muir. Burns questioned, he looked for truth, he studied enlightened thought. He’s Scotland’s best known and loved poet. In my view Burns views on egalite, freedom of thought, respect for nature, his wish to preserve Scots voices – make Burns exactly the role model for Scotland’s independent future.

A NEW “Robert Burns and Political Culture” book raises the question of whether Burns is the best cultural icon for the Yes movement. Book suggests independence movement should cut ties with Robert Burns - 

Sunday National 22 Dec 2024 - 

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24812289.book-suggests-independence-movement-cut-ties-robert-burns/