Fiona's Travels
By Fiona Frank
Fiona's Travels Aug 22, 2019
Growing up Jewish on Shetland - with Shetland Fiddling! Fiona's travels episode 7, August 2019
This episode, the last in Series One, features Ethel Hofman, author of Mackerel at Midnight: Growing up Jewish in the Shetland Isles (Revised edition Mercat Press, Edinburgh, 2006), the Shetland Fiddlers Society, and young Shetland fiddler Amber Thompson.
I set myself a challenge - to make a podcast during a trip to Shetland and Orkney rather than go back to recordings from last year like my last 6 podcasts - and I've done it! My podcast series subtitle is "Fascinating Conversations and Traditional Music". There's very seldom a week goes by when I don't come into contact with some traditional music. But last week in Shetland I was particularly lucky to find some AMAZING musc - there was a Shetland Showcase in the community centre, featuring the long-established Shetland Fiddlers Society (established in 1960 by Aly Bain), and a fabulous young fiddler, Amber Thompson - to hear her play you'd never believe she's only twelve. And I LOVE her teacher Eunice Henderson's piano accompaniment that's so typical of Shetland fiddling, a style I first heard with Violet Tulloch accompanying Aly Bain on the 1978 Topic "Shetland Folk Fiddling" record.
Playlist
Amber Thompson (Fiddle) Eunice Henderson (Piano)
Gig for Frances by Debbie Scott/Simon Thoumire's jig by John McCusker [Amber's favourite jig of all time!]/Izzy's Jig by Margaret Scollay [Eunice's favourite]
The Calgary Fiddler's Welcome to Shetland by Andrew Gifford/52 weeks of fiddle - written for Amber by Steven Smith to commemorate her year-long Shetland fiddle project - find it on youtube here/Cape Breton visit to Shetland (also known as "Welcome to the Cape Breton Fiddlers") by Willie Hunter.*
The Shetland Fiddlers Society
Da Ferry Reel/Lay Dee at Dee
Acknowledgements
Thanks to BBC Radio Shetland and David Gardner, to Shetland Library and Archives and Marghie West, and to the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC) who sponsored the tour.
And of course many thanks to Ethel Hofman - and her brother Roy Greenwald.
Production notes
Fiona's podcast no 7: Growing Up Jewish on Shetland - was recorded in Lerwick, Shetland on 12th - 14th August 2019, and mixed August 20th - 22nd 2019 in London, where I'm staying while I'm at Klezfest, a week long Klezmer festival which this year is directed by Alan Bern (interviewed on Fiona's Travels Podcast episode 2!).
This is the last one in the first series of Fiona's Travels Podcasts. Please subscribe to hear about the next series. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts please leave us a review!
*when you've finished listening to this podcast, you can watch the late Willie Hunter himself playing his Cape Breton Visit to Shetland tune, accompanied by Violet Tulloch, here.
Conversations at the Yiddish Summer Weimar, Fiona's Travels Podcast no 6 (August 2019)
This episode of Fiona’s Travels was recorded in August 2018 and mixed in 2019, and includes a selection of amazing music from around last year's Yiddish Summer Weimar festival where I spent three weeks volunteering - cleaning, working in the cafe, helping in the kitchen... as well as being part of the amazing concerts, workshops and jam sessions taking place around the festival.
While I was here I realised that Weimar was in former East Germany and i didn't know anything about that at all ... I started asking about books I could read about it, and then realised that there were people around who could talk to me about the topic... So I started asking the other volunteers to tell me about their experiences.
Alma talks about inhabiting an ‘inbetween space which shouldn’t even exist ’ with a mother from west Germany and a father from east Germany. Helena is 18 , plans to do a cultural studies degree, and spends hours with her father, analysing subversive GDR pop songs word by word . Claudia was born in West Germany, but met her East German husband online and now lives in Erfurt, just down the road from Weimar in the East.
And we finish with Cora from Holland, who was weeding the outside space when I met her - she''s been coming to the festival for seven years, and this time had taken part in the Yiddish Choir.
I met them all at the Yiddish Summer Weimar festival of Yiddish and Klezmer culture in 2018 . So this podcast is a mix of the interviews, and what can only be a tiny selection of the incredibly varied music at the festival - so there’s a mix of big-name concerts, a couple of performances at the late night cabarets, and a song from the showcase concert at the end of the Yiddish Choir workshop.
Playlist:
All recorded in Weimar in August 2018 at the Yiddish Summer Weimar.
Susi Evans and Szilvia Csaranko playing the Tshortkover Khosidl at "A shtim fun harts" (a 'feeling the spirit of Shabbos' night). Danced on the night by Jorg Breuininger.
Conversation with Alma
'Fun der Knupe' played by the Beigele Orchestra led by Amit Weisberger playing a Festival night concert at Mon Ami Concert Hall
Conversation with Helena
'Papirosen' sung at the late night cabaret by Miriam Camerini
Conversation with Claudia
'Lomir Zikh Iberbetn' performed at the late night cabaret by 'Tangoyim': Stefanie Hölze and Daniel Marsch
Conversation with Cora
Yiddish Choir workshop
Ed Harper, West Cork goat farmer: "following a dream" - Fiona's Travels episode five
This podcast is an interview with goat farmer, political thinker and singer - and my friend - Ed Harper, of Cape Clear Island, West Cork. It is published on the fortieth birthday of his farm Cleire Goats - 18th July 2019. Happy Birthday to the farm!
I don’t know if Ed’s the only blind goat farmer in the world, but he’s certainly the only one in Ireland… and this podcast makes amazing listening. We hear Ed talking about following a dream (literally!) - about the difficulties of raising goats on an island when you can’t get a vet when you need one… and we hear from some of the people who come from all over the world to hang out with Ed, to learn from him, and to meet his goats.
You can visit Cleire Goats by getting to Cape Clear Island - see the ferry timetable here https://www.capeclearferries.com/
You can buy Ed’s CD, The Goatman’s Litany, from Claddagh Records, at this link http://claddaghrecords.com/index.php/ed-harper-the-goatman-s-litany.html ….
And to order a pack of Cleire Goats postcards and contribute to the future of the farm, go to their Gofundme page here https://www.gofundme.com/f/cleiregoats40
"To be the best you can" - an interview with thatcher Matt Whelan. Fiona's Travels episode 4.
Matt Whelan was the first person I interviewed when I started travelling and making podcasts in May 2018. I saw an intriguing little scarecrow on top of one of his thatching jobs across from the cottage I was staying in in Kilmore Quay; I found a calendar celebrating his thatching career in the local community centre; and on his linked-in profile he was listed as “Matt Whelan – thatcher and part time philosopher”. So I had a hunch he’d be a good person to interview, and I was very excited when he agreed to come and meet me near the harbour at the end of my stay (you can hear the sea birds in the interview!) Turns out I was right. Well worth listening – and learning.
Recorded in Kilmore Quay, County Wexford in May 2018, and mixed on board the catamaran ‘Graceful Days’ moored in the beautiful Maddalena archipelago marine conservation area, Sardinia, in July 2018. Music: Mona Lisa Smile, words and music by Billy O’Dwyer Bob.
Lullaby for Jess: words and music by Matt Whelan himself: vocals Mary Whelan, guitar Nadia Gerber, piano Declan Cosgrove. (“Three special and very beautiful people”). Matt says: “My son turned to me on seeing his first full moon at two years old and said ‘look Dada, there’s a hole in the sky where the moon was’. The rest just fell into place. (Thanks to Jon Bateman for ‘Graceful Days’ and recording the credits for me.)
Matt has now set up the Irish School of Thatching to pass on his skills.
Peter Rankin, 1950-2018. A life in politics, and a sense of justice. Fiona's Travels episode 3.
Fiona’s Travels episode 3. Peter Rankin, 1950-2018. A life in politics and a sense of justice. (Plus Syrian dancers in Scotland!)
Peter Rankin was my brother in law. He was the leader of Preston City Council with political roots in Northern Ireland where he grew up reading about civil unrest in apartheid South Africa and seeing the links with the problems in his own country. He was also a wonderful husband to my sister Lynn and a brilliant father to my two nieces Gilly and Jen.
In this podcast I play, with permission, an interview he did with Hughie Parr on Preston FM in 2014. He talks about his admiration of Nelson Mandela, the importance of the living wage, the Guild Wheel, his love of his adopted city Preston, his admiration of the Harris museum and the city’s parks, and his thoughts about wages for councillors and MPs. And we hark back to the halcyon days pre-Brexit, when the only thing dividing Prestonions was what they thought of the Bus Station.
In this episode we also hear about a Syrian dance performance being premiered in Scotland on 27th and 30th June, we hear Dabke dance music played by the Dance Orchestra class at the Yiddish Summer Weimar 2018, there's a song Weary Winter by John Conolly sung by Bob at Preston Folk Club, and used with permission… and as usual, the podcast is topped and tailed with the playing of Brittany and Natalie Haas, which I recorded at the Baltimore Fiddle Fair at the beginning of my travels in summer 2018.
Please subscribe so you'll be the first to hear when my next episode comes out - currently every fortnight on a Friday. The next episode will feature a fabulous interview with master thatcher - and part time philosopher - Matt Whelan, from Kilmore Quay County Wexford.
An interview with Alan Bern, director of the Yiddish Summer Weimar - "Getting to know 'The Other'". Fiona's Travels Episode Two.
I went travelling for six months in 2018, and recorded lots of fascinating conversations and traditional music and here's the second of my podcasts from that time.
I spent three weeks at the Yiddish Summer Weimar, hosted by the ‘Other Music Academy‘ at Weimar in central Germany, in August 2018. I heard the director, Alan Bern, talking a little about the events in his life and how important he felt it was to get to know those people who were sometimes seen as the ‘other’, and so I asked if he’d tell me a couple of stories on tape. The result was this fascinating half hour interview, which he squeezed in for me between playing for our dance class and a lunchtime meeting with another of the Festival team. Well worth listening to, for Alan’s ideas about giving people 'creative control of their lives' and providing an alternative to consumerism and fundamentalism. The interview includes a ‘you can’t win’ story about contemporary antisemitism, a feel-good story about the Ku Klux Klan (!), the importance of getting away from the commodification, or ‘festivalisation’, of culture, and the background to the setting up of the OMA – the ‘Other Music Academy’. (OMA is ‘Grandmother’ in German, and the ‘Oma house’ is designed to feel like you’re going into your grandmother’s house, a place where you’ll feel safe and nurtured – and where culture can be transmitted and learned in a natural way. )
All being well there’ll be more podcasts from the music and interviews I recorded at #YSW2018 in due course. In the meantime I suggest that you book for #YSW2019 while there's still time! It's a month long event, but the 'festival week', from July 27–August 3, promises to be very special. The two Saturdays will feature numerous special events throughout the day, while from Sunday to Friday there will be a range of introductory workshops (instrumental music, song, dance, Yiddish language) as well as lectures, roundtable discussions and the Late Night Cabaret. Admission to all these events is free. You will also have the chance to make your very own ethnographic recording on wax cylinders, hear three workshop final presentations and, every evening between July 27 and August 3, attend a WORLD PREMIER with music, theater, cabaret, storytelling and more. As their website says, you're sure to find a "creative, illuminating, engaging and inspiring time at Yiddish Summer Weimar".
Abortion and the Republic of Ireland "I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to tell my story", an interview with Vanessa O'Sullivan. - Fiona's Travels Episode One.
One year on from the abortion referendum in Ireland 25th May 2019, abortion is now available for women in Ireland up to 12 weeks. Beyond that, it is available under some circumstances, but women may still have to travel if they go beyond 12 weeks. And we have to remember it's still illegal in Northern Ireland.
Vanessa O’Sullivan is a goat farmer and political activist living on Cape Clear Island in West Cork. This is her story - and includes the singing of Ed Harper with "The Bold Tenant Farmer", and the fiddle and cello of Brittany and Natalie Haas. Recorded at Cleire Goats, Cape Clear Island, May 2018 (the Haas sisters were recorded at the Baltimore Fiddle Fair a couple of weeks earlier) and mixed by Fiona Frank with technical support from Mike Carswell.
Number one in the remixed Fiona's Travels (fascinating conversations and traditional music) podcast series - the first two series will be the edited versions of the interviews and music I recorded when I was travelling in Summer 2018. Future episodes include 'To be the best you can' - an interview with County Wexford thatcher Matt Whelan (whose linkedin profile says he is a 'thatcher and part time philosopher) .. and 'Getting to know "the other"' - an interview with Alan Bern, director of the Yiddish Summer Weimar Klezmer music festival. And lots of music.
Watch this space, every fortnight!