Robert Burns, Dave Swarbrick and a splash of reggae
January 25, 2024
Andrew Curry writes: I had much of my education in Scotland, so need no persuading that Robert Burns is second only to Shakespeare in the pantheon of British writers. The range of his work is huge, the quality is high, and his use of the Scots vernacular is radical, which was why some of his contemporaries disapproved of it.
(Robert Burns. Portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Public Domain.)
And celebrating Burns’s birthday, more or less on the right day, is a reasonably regular Salut! Live institution, so we have said all the right things here in the past about some of the best interpreters of Burns’s songs, such as Eddi Reader, whose Songs of Robert Burns record is a great collection.
So this year, we’re taking a slightly different tack. Because right towards the end of his life, the great Dave Swarbrick teamed up with the Canadian musician Jason Wilson for a pair of records that included some Robert Burns songs on them.
And yes, this seems left-field to me as well, although Jason Wilson has a long-standing interest in Scots music, along with reggae. (Salut! Live saw him with his current band, Ashara, at Celtic Connections last year.)
Here’s a version of Burns’s song My Love is Like A Red Red Rose from Wilson and Swarbrick’s 2014 record Lion Rampant that segues seamlessly into Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.
Both Lion Rampant and the 2018 Kailyard Tales come recommended here: as well as Dave Swarbrick there are some fine guests, including Peggy Seeger, Martin Carthy, Dick Gaughan, John Kirkpatrick and Ali Campbell of UB40.
But you might like your Burns Night accompaniment a little more traditional, in which case Robyn Stapleton might be your woman. She’s a former winner of Radio Scotland’s award for Best Young Traditional Musician, and sings in both Gaelic and English. She released a record of Burns songs a few years back with a terrific collection of Scots musicians, and there are a few highlights from that on Spotify. Here’s Robyn Stapleton’s fine version of Ae Fond Kiss—shot in artful back and white.
If you’ve been to a Burns Night Supper, or even if you haven’t, you’ll know that the high point of the evening is the piping in of the haggis, and then the reading of Burns’s poem Address To a Haggis, which accompanies the cutting of it. The poem starts like this:
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
(Haggis, neeps and tatties. Photo by Bernt Rostad/flickr. CC BY 2.0)
Jason Wilson had the idea of getting the mostly Canadian members of his band to have a go at reading the poem. They give it their best shot:
If you’re ever called on to do the reading this version might be a better guide, although the loud waistcoat is not compulsory. But, wherever you are tonight: don’t forget to raise a glass of something to toast Scotland’s finest Bard.
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