Frequent visitors to the Island Voices site will be familiar with Will Lamb already – the surfing dude who features in the Outdoors section of Series Two of the videos. In fact, Dr Lamb has many strings to his bow. Now a lecturer at Edinburgh University he recently returned to Uist to launch his new edition of Keith Norman Macdonald’s book, “Puirt-à-Beul”, in Daliburgh at the Ceòlas music school. The book is a unique anthology of “The Vocal Dance Music of the Scottish Gaels”, which had long been out of print, and to which Will has added significantly in order to bring it back to a modern readership (including links to recordings in the Tobar an Dualchais collection – another topic covered by Island Voices, this time in the Enterprise section).
In a fascinating talk in Daliburgh Will spoke about the original author and explained the background to the project.
He also called on some friends to give a demonstration of how “mouth music” and traditional dance went together hand in hand.
Here he gives Gordon Wells a potted summary in Gaelic.
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