Nov. 14th at Art House Gallery & Cultural Center Norman Kennedy was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, into a family with roots in that port city dating to the 13th century. The Kennedys had been shipbuilders and merchant seamen for generations. While learning songs , stories, and lore from family members and neighbors, Kennedy spent part of his teen years hanging around the local handweavers. During the 1950s, he made annual trips to the Outer Hebrides to learn the local weaving, Gaelic songs, and cultural practices. In 1965, he was invited to perform at the Newport Folk Festival to represent Scotland in a program on the origins of the American ballad tradition. A year later, he returned to the United States to co-found Country Roads, a shop and organization intended to support traditional crafts. From 1967 to 1972, he served as the master weaver at Colonial Williamsburg. Finally, Kennedy founded the Marshfield School of Weaving in Marshfield, Vermont, in 1976 where he taught until he closed it in 1995. Kennedy travels the country performing the old songs, telling stories, and instructing people in traditional weaving techniques, including the rarely practiced community method of waulking (shrinking) cloth accompanied by group song. He once answered someone, who asked him why he didnt use some of the new labor and cost-saving devices for preparing cloth, with his own question: How much is a pound of pride and maybe a half a pound of satisfaction? Norman Kennedy is one of Scotlands finest traditional singers with a unique repertoire of folk songs and ballads. Born and brought up in Aberdeen, he was a neighbor of the great ballad singer Jeanie Robertson and during the evolving folk scene of the 1960s he picked up many songs from her and from other singers such as the bothy ballad singer Jimmy McBeath and the traveler and street singer Davie Stewart. Norman is a keeper of the old ways, a master practitioner and teacher of textile arts as well as an unaccompanied singer of traditional Scottish Songs that he learned while growing up. In 1966 he moved to the USA after representing Scotland at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he was an immediate success with the folkies and the academic alike. The former loved his relaxed, easy style, while the latter recognized a deep knowledge and understanding of the songs, which went way beyond book learning. Here was a young man truly immersed in his tradition and culture. And all these years later he has lost none of that magnetism. But theres more to Norman than just singing and storytelling. He is an accomplished weaver, who cards, spins, and dyes his own wool in the old ways. It is a mark of his quest for perfection that he is as well-known in this field as for his singing. But he does not see them as separate entities - the songs help him to concentrate on his weaving and the weaving gives rhythm to his songs. When Norman sings as he weaves it seems the art and the craft were meant to be together. In June 2003, Norman was awarded the highest honor in folk and traditional arts in the United States. This Master Artist was the recipient of one of eleven fellowships awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The award was presented in The Library of Congress by United States President George W Bush. There has always been an intimacy in Normans performance, no matter how grand the setting or how large the audience. His songs and stories flow naturally as part of an extended conversation in which the attitudes of a contemporary creative artist are sublimated by a knowledge and continuing fascination with the lives and concerns of past generations. Hearing Norman Kennedy sing today is unlike witnessing the performance of a singer who came to prominence as part of the Sixties folk revival. Unlike his contemporaries, he recast his whole lifestyle in a traditional mode around his work as a weaver, making the connection between life, work and song a seamless intermeshing where context is an established given. His way of life has brought him closer to the singers from which he learned as a young man and has helped form his understanding of them and the material they passed on. His own performance is thus enriched with strands of meaning that interpret the songs with verbal portraits of the old singers who sang them, giving them their due credit. Recordings Norman Kennedys Ballads and Songs of Scotland was released as FSS-34 in 1968. At this writing Ballads and Songs of Scotland is one of the few, if the only, full length studio LPs recorded by Kennedy. The other I found was Scots Songs and Ballads (Topic Records 12T 178, 1968 UK), which seemed to be credited as a Folk Legacy Recording with many, but not all, of the same tracks featured here. Kennedy, who hails from Aberdeen, Scotland, was invited to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Yes, the same year Bob Dylan became Electric Bob.” From handbills of the day, Kennedy led a workshop of British Songs & Singing Styles on Saturday afternoon from 3:00-4:00pm and performed during the evening concert on July 24th. Dylan plugged in for 15 historical minutes on the evening of Sunday, July 25th. In my mind, Kennedy performed on the last day of the early 60s. (See also: the last day of the late 60s a.k.a Altamont Speedway Free Festival) Ok, enough with the dates, lets talk about the record. For me this record was a challenging listen. It is the only record in my collection of traditional Scottish folk music. Keeping that in mind, I found it refreshing, and made me focus on the inflection of the singing even more. Kennedy sings each tune unaccompanied either in Gaelic or with a heavy Scottish accent. At times it sounds like it could be a combination of the two. Unfortunately, I do not have the book insert for this album, so following along with the songs was a difficult at times. The biggest take away from me is a deeper understanding of the Gaelic influence in folk music. Any full album of unaccompanied music could seem tedious, but Norman Kennedy executes this album perfectly. It is hard to emphasize how important rhythm and enunciation is to the root of Gaelic folk without listening to this album. A few tracks have brief spoken word introductions to the songs. Guise O Tough ends with quick story about a special chair used to get rid of unwanted guests where local musicians performed. At the start Kishmuls Galley, Kennedy explains how the song speeds up during a quick ad lib to Sandy Paton (recording engineer and founder of Folk Legacy). The song is a waulking song, which is essentially a work song sung while making tweed. Norman Kennedy currently resides in Vermont. In 1976 he founded the Marshfield School of Weaving in Marshfield, Vermont. Kennedy still performs occasionally, but his recorded output remains fairly limited. Outside of the album on Folk Legacy, a handful of his tracks have popped up on compilations. The sound clip* presented is from the track Mouth Music. If you liked what youve heard, the CD of this recording is available through Folk-Legacy directly here. Art House Gallery & Cultural Center 2905 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, Ca 94705 info 510-472-3170 Friday Night November 14,2014 7PM door 7:30 SHOW ALL AGES and Wheelchair Accessible $10.00-20.00 Donation PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTS!
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 18:07:45 +0000
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