Graham MacKenzie on taking Scottish folk music to the world with Assynt
Hello Streets of Your Towners! I have emerged from my cyclone and covid haze to finally bring out a new podcast episode and substack for you to enjoy!
On my recent travels through the UK and Ireland for Streets of Your Town, I was amazed to find how strong the cross-pollination between Australian and Indigenous music and Gaelic traditions were, and how it continues to evolve.
I realised this as I was interviewing Graham MacKenzie in his Glasgow living room for Streets of Your Town, with his fiddle sitting between us, never far from his thoughts. We chatted about the impact of his recent Australian tour with his award winning folk-trad band Assynt.
“It was surreal,” Graham says.
“Although it was a bit of a shock putting on a pair of shorts in December which was not the norm for somebody from Scotland.
“We did get warned about that and the humidity and the heat and it lived up to that anyway. But no, it was a fantastic experience.
“We’re part of a pretty vibrant folk scene here (in Glasgow) and there’s plenty of our friends who are part of bands that have been out to Australia. And you obviously hope that that’s going to be you someday. It was just brilliant to get out and play for the Australian folk. Hopefully we’ll be back again to experience it again.”
One of his favourite aspects of coming to Australia was hearing First Nations performers at Woodford Folk Festival, seeing it as a rare opportunity for two age-old cultures to learn from each other.
“It’s also great to see some of the Aboriginal music and obviously that’s not something that we’ve seen before. And to experience that Woodford was really amazing and learn a little bit about your culture as well,” he says.
“So that was good. That was amazing to see.”
The band had long held aspirations to play in Australia. Even the pandemic—while delaying their plans—couldn’t hold them back for long, and last year they came to the Woodford Folk Festival to perform and do workshops.
The trio also toured down the East Coast on a hectic trip for the Festival of Small Halls.
Inspired by the great piping, fiddle and Gaelic traditions of the Highlands where he grew up in Inverness, McKenzie’s self-penned melodies for Assynt have a contemporary edge while rooted in centuries-long musical traditions.
He says while some people may think of Glasgow as pretty isolated—it’s actually the ideal spot to base the band from.
“The slogan for Glasgow is People make Glasgow and it is really true,” he says.
“The people of Glasgow are great and over the years it’s become the hub for traditional music, really, particularly within the younger generation and just musicians in general find it’s a really good place to base themselves—easy connections up to the north of Scotland or to Scotland in general and then into England where people work as well.
“And we’ve also got the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland here as well. So a lot of the young ones will come and study traditional music or classical music, but you can find a lot of genres in Glasgow.
“There’s a lot of jazz music and there’s a pop scene and obviously traditional music is a big part of Scottish culture and heritage. It’s great and I recommend it to anyone around the world to come and see for themselves.”
He is relieved to find their workshops both in Scotland and Australia are now filled with young people embracing their fiddles and traditional Celtic instruments, and wanting to pick up tips.
“It’s very popular amongst the younger generation, and it has been over the last certainly 20 years I would say, and used to not be a very cool thing to do,” he says.
“But now it’s a very cool thing to be able to just take your instrument to a pub or something like that and join in with young folk. And it’s nice to see a lot of young folk going to gigs and there’s always going to be an older generation there as well, but it needs to be backed up with the younger generation there to keep it going. And that’s certainly there at the moment, I feel so.”