Alan Lomax on Uist

I came across a short piece in G2 in today's The Guardian - The Year Alan Lomax came to South Uist - written by the Uistman Angus-Peter Campbell. The year in question, 1951, was when the great American folklorist visited Scotland and the Hebrides to record the indigenous songs and stories. 

What is newsworthy is that these recordings have just been made freely available on the internet from the site of the Association for Cultural Equity. Go to www.culturalequity.org - look for the 'SOUND COLLECTIONS' on the left column, choose 'Scotland 1951, 1953, 1957' and follow this link through. This will then take you to two pages of recordings from a number of places including Daliburgh and Garrynamonie on South Uist. 

Of special interest are the songs recorded in Angus MacPhee's home community of Eochar during June 1951. These include 3 interviews and 5 milking work songs by Kate Nicholson, vividly accompanied by the squeeze and rush of milk into the pail. Wonderful!

More memories...

The one and only surviving poster from our 1984 tour. I took the photograph at Callanish, Clachan Chalanais, on one of our many reconnaissance visits with Moira Hirst, the company's horse-handler. For this image Moira wore the mask and shawl that I carried in the car. In fact the tour never actually reached Lewis, finishing at Tarbert, on Harris just south of the long pull (for a horse) up to Lewis. 

This is us on Barra, with a semi-staged photograph for The Guardian, who flew up their Arts Reporter, Robin Thornber and the photographer, Dennis Thorpe, and published an almost full page (large, pre-Berliner format) photo-feature on our tour.