 |
| Jim Lauderdale |
 |
| Julie Fowlis |
Here are a few images of the top singers I’ve been privileged to take photos of, who have sung with the Transatlantic Sessions band at Celtic Connections music festival Glasgow over the past decade. Nothing much beats singing with such a quality band!
Wonderful memories.
https://www.celticconnections.com
 |
| John Paul White |
 |
| Kris Drever |
 |
| Cara Dillon |
 |
| Sierra Hull |
 |
| Eddi Reader |
 |
| Karen Matheson |
 |
| Rachel Sermanni |
**Celtic Connections 2021 announces its first live digital festival from 15th January to 1st February 2021
Offers a unique content online fro the very first time, hoping to reach an even wider audience with special collaborations and workshops.
Donald Shaw, artistic director on Folk nights Radio Two, spoke of his long time collaborations with American Dirk Powell and of the ceilidh bands he grew up with on the Argyll peninsula. Shaw visited Powell when the Transatlantic Sessions played several concerts over in America a few years back. Shaw likes to soak up the ambience of any region and celebrate our differences and also for the festival to engage internationally.
Folk music is about the community and is inter-generational. The old plus the new.
Celtic Connections is Europe’s largest winter music festival – welcoming over 2K artists over 300 events. 2021 will be the festivals 28th year with some of the biggest names in Scottish music scene and beyond. The full program will be announced in early December – with some fo the well-known and bets-loved acts that have graced the festival stages.
A number of international artists will be filmed remotely and added to the line up. Shows will be available for a week .
Funded by Glasgow Life, Creative Scotland and the Scottish government.
https://www.celticconnections.com
However according to Professor Tom Devine, Dr Eric Graham, Dr Stuart Nesbi. until the past twenty years 2000 – 2020, there had been no academic studies into Scotland’s part in empire and slavery
Glasgow was the centre of the Tobacco trade. The Tobacco Lords were Scotland’s richest men and built magnificent townhouses in the merchant city. Scotland was a poor country 1690s but by 1850 it was a leading industrial nation. Sugar was traded for 200 years: with sugar houses in Glasgow from 1667. India remained mostly with the English east India Co until 1801. After the loss of the American colonies in 1775 there was renewed focus in the West Indies trade.
1711 – 1763 Scots plantations Jamaica.
From 1750 – 1800, over 20 thousand Scots left to seek fortunes in the Caribbean as doctors, lawyers, merchants, plantation owners, bookkeepers, slave traders and overseers - mostly to Jamaica. Scots originally surveyed Jamaica and set boundaries of slave plantations. Many Jamaican place names are Scots and are descended from Scots. In 1774 Edward Long estimated that a third of the white population was Scots. Port Glasgow and Greenock records don’t reveal a great deal.
In Jamaica today there are many Scots surnames – Campbell, Douglas, Reid, McKenzie, MacDonald, McFarlane, grant, Gordon. Glasgow, Argyle, Dundee, Fort William, Montrose, St. Andrews. Of the names in Greater Kingston a quarter are Scottish.
 |
| Naomi Campbell |
The Scottish Enlightenment figures helped to achieve the Abolition of Slavery abolished 1838. Scotland has a very mixed history: with the tobacco and sugar trade many in Glasgow and Edinburgh became rich, but in the 18th century many ordinary Scots suffered under the wars with America and France. Jamaica became independent in 1962.
In 2009 the Homecoming Scotland which was a celebration of Scots culture and heritage, organised by Event Scotland and Visit Scotland (funded EU) 3m program, 2m marketing. Shockingly in the Booklet mentions of the Jamaican Diaspora were taken out by the then Labour Scottish government. I remember the major event called the Gathering and I attended one of its main events with a march up the high street by the clans and a tattoo at the castle. We photographers had to run ahead up the Royal mile. Photos below from this occasion.
 |
| Homecoming Scotland 2009 |
Many Scottish Independence supporters prefer to be known as Democrats. We must acknowledge our nationalism as international, forward-looking and progressive. One way is by acknowledging the Caribbean, as Devine mentions, as being a large part of the Scots history and the Jamaican Scots diaspora a part of our history which has been ignored until recently. Time to change that.
Nationalism is about our connections, those threads that lead us to know our own voice, and in doing so, better understand ‘otherness.’ We can send voices of light, hope and possibilities around the world. As the poet Hugh MacDermid put it, we must be both international and national: today there’s an urgent need for empathy and to think local.
Scots have long been great explorers, travellers and innovators. We live in a time when Teutonic plates are shifting and its more important than ever we question, challenge and seek truth, hope and belief in the human spirit. Against selfishness, greed, arrogance and ignorance. Seek informed voices.
Which brings me to unity, equality, openness and internationalism for a new Scotland. Last century Scotland strove to shake off the chains of colonialism and its now time to move on from the sentiments of fighting back in our national song, and to express the new future we all hope to build of an open, fair, inclusive and more equal nation that is so well expressed and hoped for by our great and much loved national bard Robert Burns in his song, Auld Lang Syne – yes its coming yet for a that.
Christine and the Queens – what style, musicality and joy. Young French singer, who combines melody and funky dance beats.
Bob Dylan’s new album – Rough and Rowdy Ways. His first album of original composition since
Blue Rose Code – New Album - Healing of the Deepest Kind
Bandcamp Fridays – when you can contribute all your money to the
Top 100 albums Rolling Stones
Includes
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Marvin Gaye – what’s going on Joni Mitchell - Blue
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
**Celtic Connections 2021 announces its first live digital festival from 15th January to 1st February 2021
Offers a unique content online fro the very first time, hoping to reach an even wider audience. With special collaboration and workshops. Folk music is about the community and is inter-generational. The old plus the new.
Celtic connections is Europe’s largest winter music festival – welcoming over 2K artists over 300 events. 2021 will be the festivals 28th year.- with some of the biggest names in Scottish music scene and beyond. The full program will be announced in early December – with some fo the well-known and bets-loved acts that have graced the festival stages.
Roots music is always at the heart of the festival that unites with cultures and music world wide. The festival will focus on creating new digital content commissioned projects filmed over some fo Glasgow’s iconic venues. To support and encourage creative industries and to protect Scotland’s rich musical legacy.
A number of international artists will be filmed remotely and added to the line up. Shows will be available for a week .
Funded by Glasgow life, creative Scotland and the Scottish government. https://www.celticconnections.com
We continue to enjoy the entirety and story of the album.
The album, as musician Pat Kane writes – “can contain express and captures a whole imaginary world or a rich slice of their era – and sometimes they can do both at the same time. “