With Ian Turnbull’s encouragement and back up I have just finished a series of Scots song / story happenings at Cullerne House.

They’ve gone amazingly well. The sessions are themed and interwoven to form a sequence. They were more a transmission of my cultural inheritance, by the fireside, than a performance, I seek to bring this musical medicine to all who are drawn to seek nourishment from this wellspring of riches.

I felt I could maybe make a contribution to the misery of upheaval and rootlessness that happens in the Community, and worldwide in these troubled times – by sharing my own song and story roots – and supporting the process of ancestral work in intergenerational trauma – which seems to lie at the nub of things.

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The themes of the first session are the rich contribution of the Scots travelling folk with whom I spent time as a child.

The themes of the second session are the songs and stories of the North East of Scotland. In the rich dialect of Doric, my mother tongue, I read my mother Betty Allan’s poem ‘The Privilege‘ which urges people to keep indigenous language alive .

The themes of the third session are early life experiences and babies, lullabies, dreams. And the Cailleach.

The themes of the fourth session are the many faceted complexions of love, expressed in songs and stories – it’s  joys and pains.

The fifth session centres on musical medicine and salve for the wounds of humanity.

The theme of the final session in the series is end of life. The songs and stories of transition.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel which, as it builds, will contain more on song streams, grief tending through ancient Scottish traditional sound, Georgian harmony journeyings, and my mother, Betty Allan’s fine collection of poetry in the Doric.