Salut! Live

Andrew Curry writes: One of the highlights of the career of the Scots dance-folk band Niteworks was being invited to do the music for the Edinburgh Hogmanay celebrations in 2020, the year of COVID-19.

Niteworks, from Skye, disbanded earlier this year with a final series of concerts in London and Scotland (our review here).

(Photo: Copyright Underbelly, 2020)

Hogmanay, at the very end of the year, is a much bigger deal in Scotland than Christmas Day is. It’s not an accident that its most famous song, with its words by Scotland’s most famous poet, is sung as the New Year comes in.

Of course, the 2020 Hogmanay celebrations were a bit different. The COVID pandemic prevented people from gathering in the streets. And so the organisers, from the Underbelly festival and events group, did something different.

They commissioned music from Niteworks to match words from ‘Fare Well‘—a specially written poem from the then Scots Makar, Jackie Kay. The space between the words is not a misprint.

And then they set all of this to an aerobatic drone display designed by Celestial. The result was released as three short films across Hogmanay.

The Makar is a Scots version of the British national Poet Laureate, but a lot more democratic and a lot more inclusive. In the third film, Kay writes, in the Scots language:

Ye ken this night. Here we cry it Hogmanay

A rhyme from the French, of the ‘homme est nee’—

The man is born. So aye, the New Year’s born.

At midnight. Good riddance to the last page torn

From this scunnered year. And though we can’t First Foot,

Wi’ lumps o’ coal, black bun, and Raasay Malt,

Or join thigether in a ring o’ haunds

Singing Auld Acquaintance fit to break the band

We send out hope into this Scottish air

Breathed out by widows, workers, weans, by those who care

By those who vote, shout, march to ring the changes

At the bells, who’ve clocked the dangers.

I grew up in Scotland, and some of this language is still familiar to me—‘ken’ is ‘to know’; ‘scunnered’ (what a fantastic word this is) translates loosely here as ‘disgusting’ or ‘horrible’; and ‘weans’ are children.

The reading is by David Tennant and Siobhan Redmond, among others. But it’s best seen as a film. Happy New Year to all of our readers.

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Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.