The sonorous verse of Duncan Ban MacIntyre can now be heard on your phone any time you visit the Scottish Poetry Rose Garden in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park.
Friends of Queen’s Park invited Alan Riach and Allan MacDonald to mark his 300th anniversary last year, and they provided a remarkable open air music and poetry double act in the garden, presenting extracts both in the original Gaelic and in English translation.
Island Voices were on hand to film the event, and we’re delighted that visitors can now access the recording in situ through these displayed QR codes, and so get a taste again of a magical occasion.
Queen’s Park will be humming again with snippets of Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain…
Island Voices just struck lucky on a visit to Glasgow, witnessing and recording this free and open bilingual event put on by the Friends of Queens Park to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Duncan Ban MacIntyre – Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir. The occasion was blessed by the renowned performing talents of Alan Riach and Allan MacDonald in both Gaelic and English, and a large and appreciative audience.
While poetry has not featured hugely in Island Voices recordings to date, that is about to change, with conversations with, and recitals from, various contemporary writers currently in the works, and not just in Gaelic or English. These will be in video form, as we maintain our focus on the Primacy of Speech, a fundamental tenet of linguistic analysis that may be easily forgotten, or brushed over, in times of near-universal literacy. How appropriate then that Donnchadh Bàn is currently being commemorated, a non-writer of Gaelic, but great composer of remarkable poetry.
This event kicked off with Allan MacDonald “singing on the pipes”. The video contains selected snippets to give a taste of the proceedings. Enjoy the voices of these accomplished artists!
