Music and Song Traditions in Scotland: Springthyme Records

Abstract

Recordings from British and Irish have regularly been mentioned in these pages in the past, but the focus has normally been on new material from the larger companies such as Topic, Flying Fish, or Green Linnet. Here I wish to take a somewhat different approach with a review of a small company, Springthyme Records (Springthyme Music, Balmalcolm House, Kingskettle, Fife), whose director, Peter Shepheard, has been producing recordings for nearly twenty years under that label, including some two dozen records and cassettes, and, to date, one videotape. This focus allows us to examine one person's involvement in and music over a period of time and to see how the understanding of folk and traditional music has guided the production of sound recordings for a public market. More broadly, it gives me a perspective from which to comment on music and song more generally-that is, what and what are meant when the phrase Scottish tradition is employed. Some of the issues that are raised within the framework of the review include continuity and revival, local practice and professional performance, the question of audience, and the definition of genres as traditional. By the time World War II had ended, rural society had changed from one in which agriculture was based on horse and human power to one in which the tractor dominated, especially in the Lowlands. This change in technology was paralleled by changes in the organization of rural society, where fermtouns with large numbers of resident workers and itinerant seasonal labor gave way to owner-occupied and operated farms. During the 19th century, Lowland rural economy had required a large, hired labor force of both women and men-some married but most single. Married couples were housed in cottages on the farm, while single women lived in the farmhouse. The single men either slept in a room in the steading and took their meals in the farm kitchen (the kitchie system), or lived in on the farm, usually a one-room bunkhouse where the men slept, ate, and socialized in their free time. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the bothies and farms (where harvest home dances were held, for example, in the barn), together with the local village hall, were the primary public context for local entertainment. By 1950, however, the situation had changed: the farm bothies and the young, single farm workers who moved frequently from place to place had been displaced by tractors and family labor; Travelling were being settled more and more in towns; and the Friday and Saturday night concerts and dances in the small village halls were being replaced by entertainment such as films in the now more accessible towns and, eventually, by television and VCRs in people's own homes.