QUINIE
  • QUINIE
    • Edinburgh Art Late
    • An Tobar Festival
    • Ghost tunes
    • A / Am / Ams
    • Almanac
    • Seized by the left hand
    • Shieling project
    • Live
    • Mixes and radio
  • RELEASES
    • Thyme Piobaireachd
    • Buckie Prins
    • Quinie
    • Betwixt and Between 4
  • Archive
  • BIO
  • Gigs

Things That happen every year in a cycle

3/10/2021

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. (sorry sold out)
​An almanac of Scottish traditions, seasonality, nature and cycling


​I started to collect over the year, things that felt relevant for each month. Traditions, stories, images, poems. I did this quite unconsciously in fits and bursts. In a kind of frustrated grab at trying to make something of the year, or get my head around the passing of the seasons without the usual marking points. I wanted to explore how folk culture and practices influence me even when I am not singing. Its an almanac with space for you to observe your own traditions, rhythms and important dates. I wanted to put it in a filofax but it was too expensive.
You can buy the almanac on bandcamp
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Whats in the Voicing?

4/2/2020

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Voicing  

​There are people who can or cannot sing particular songs, or whom songs belong to. 

This style of singing that I am inspired by is rooted in communities of Scottish Travellers of the North East of Scotland.  I have a commitment to the style of singing, but I do not see myself as having a role in the preservation of the arts of Traveller Culture or in saving songs from oblivion. Traveller Culture doesn’t need to be acknowledged or heard by settled people in order to have legitimacy.  That is why I focus my efforts on creating new work that isn’t based on a concept of these songs as archaic relics or cultural products for export. 

I see songs as “‘a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were.’” - Le Guin 1986 essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”

Tomorrow, songs
The Scottish Heritage Industrial Complex*  continues to articulate a reductive stereotype of our folk culture that re-enforces colonial nostalgia, nationalism, imperial militarism, toxic masculinity, and white supremacy. It is only by holding each other to account that we can begin to reaffirm our relationship with this type of music and create a space where folk traditions can exist outside the grip of authenticity. 

“We need to open up spaces for learning and dialogue, reflecting on shared experiences of dispossession, dislocation and subjugation, always in the spirit of reconciliation. In this context, giving new voice to these old songs becomes a radical act.” Mairi Mcfayden

Tradition is a organic and living process of meaning-making routed in place. These songs are articulations of living, making and working collectively. These images of spinning wheels, peat, washing drying on lines or herbs in forests draw community to me. They give me connection to an imagined and real Scottishness based on some pseudo shared cultural understanding of a past. 

Tomorrow, songs
Will flow free again, and new voices
Be borne on the carrying stream.  
Hamish Henderson

Josie Vallely


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Counterflows 2020: lockdown diary

3/31/2020

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Seized by the left hand: reflections

12/18/2019

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​I was invited to perform at the DCA for Seized by the Left Hand. This multifaceted project, curated by Eoin Dara and Kim McAleese (Programme Director of Grand Union, Birmingham), brought together artforms such as painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and film, with performance, poetry and writing. The exhibition at DCA also includes a curated display of artefacts from the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum housed within the University of Dundee, highlighting specimens from the animal kingdom that beautifully resist normative categorisation when it comes to gender, sexuality, bonding and kinship. Seized by the Left Hand set out to champion artists, performers and writers who, much like Le Guin was, are engaged in the vital act of radical imagining: crafting alternative spaces and worlds that hint at ways in which we all might better live, love and care for one another.

Opening this show really illuminated my own process to me. The curators explored aspects of Le Guins approach which influenced the show and their thinking, and discussed her 1986 essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” from the book “Dancing at the Edge of the World” (Grove Press, 1989). In “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, Ursula Le Guin reiterates the idea that the first tool, rather than being a weapon, was probably a vessel or bag for gathering.  This “carrier bag theory” has two key hypothesis: it positions women as the earliest creators of tools, and the novel as a vessel for stories which can move beyond a hero narrative. 

My process for creating new work tends to begin with gathering a whole range of material- poems, archive recordings, images, sounds, instruments, children’s rhymes, melodies and pieces of the landscape itself. Shells, bones, plants, ceramics. This is not so much a considered process but a kind of crashing through my natural encounters with the folk tradition and the context it sits in, and seeing what sticks. Le Guins essay helped me see this in the context of a wider approach to creating narratives and stories. 
“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a  container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time....”
Does it not describe perfectly the process of gathering, creating, recording, performing, sharing and saving that is inherent to the development of a repertoire of song? Hearing, hearing again, finding, practising, reiterating, choosing the colours, shifting, recombining but ultimately bringing together. 

Before setting out to achieve anything in particular, before i was performing, I developed a repertoire of stories sung from women’s perspectives. Once I started sharing this work the focus became the foundational space that women occupy in the Scots song tradition. Quinie is  NE scots word meaning a quine-stane, is a cornerstone- a foundational stone of a building, as well as a woman. Le Guins essay articulates why I was drawn to song to do this - how the singers process of gathering and holding creates a net where different kinds of narratives can be.
“It's clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or  a pedestal, or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.”

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Performing at DCA, December 2019. Photo by Erika Stevenson
“Like a potato”


Filling it

I began gathering from my usual standpoint-  archival recordings of my regular muse Lizzie Higgins (1929-1993). Lizzie was born in Aberdeen, and was a Scottish Gyspy Traveller. She working as a fish-filleter before coming to public attention as a singer at the age of 38, and unfortunately died only twenty-six years later. I could talk about Lizzie’s story all day but I won’t. There is loads more information about her life availible here.

Lizzie’s voice is striking in its ability to communicate meaning through shape, tone,
texture and volume. She was an interesting figure in the folk revival, as someone who embodies a kind of inbetween space between ‘authentic’ tradition bearer and revival performer. She was quite determined to articulate her USP as distinct from her mother, Jeannie Robertson, who was a famous traditional singer. Part of her articulation of the difference was based on Lizzie having learnt her singing technique and repertoire from her father-  who was an accomplished piper.

Beginning in the School of Scottish studies archives, I reviewed recordings and writing about Lizzie from 1970s and 80s. Some of these I had heard before- particularly recordings by Stephanie Smith and Hamish Henderson. In recordings of interviews with her, she talks about her thoughts on diddling and pipe mouth music. 

Diddling is the practice of singing a tune with non-lexical vocables instead of words, often to a fast rhythm used for dancing. Diddling comes in a variety of forms, with some linked to specific instruments such as bagpipes or fiddle, and others used as a standalone vocal performance (Chambers 1980: 17-24). Lizzie was a very good diddler- and she used diddling as a process to put together new tunes with songs. However she would never have performed diddling onstage. In fact she clarifies that her father forbade her from piping and pipe-diddling, in spite of her prodigious talent at the chanter (see Chambers 1980: 21-36).

Lizzie’s ‘piping sangs’ are for me where her magic lies- the modal melodies, ornamentation and boldness. Her relationship with her own process, and her social policing of her own talent, seemed to echo larger patterns in the traditional music world that I want to interrogate and disrupt with my work.

The establishment of diddling contests and the romanticism of the folk revival shifted diddling from being predominantly female discipline, performed in informal, domestic or care giving spaces to a predominantly male one. In this new realm, dominated by ideas prestige and a white male-normative model, women were structurally discouraged from joining in even if they were theoretically ‘allowed’ to contribute. The folk revival, obsessed with ideas of authenticity and nostalgic ideas of rurality, acted as a lens through which we now view folk cultures of Scotland. 

Alongside the divisions along gender lines, hierarchies were held up across ethnicities in pipe related mouth music. With canntaireachd held up as the ‘true’ translation of pipe music used for the purpose of transmission ‘cantering’ or ‘diddling’ was used to describe the vocal transcription process for non-pipers or informally trained pipers (e.g. Scottish Travellers). If you are interested in listening to some examples, Mary Morrison is a gaelic singer who has a wonderful example of canntaireachd in her rendition of the pibroch piece A Cholla Mo Rùn.

Following on from this line of enquiry, I am now gathering melodies and examples of piping mouth music from across the archives and other sources looking at how I can expand my understanding of the capacity of my voice to imitate the pipes.

In addition to the gathering of melody, I am also looking for inspiration and concepts for the lyrics of the songs.   The thing that has always brought my music together is that it is an expression of an imagined landscape. When I am singing these songs I am feeling a place. They are an amalgamation of feelings of places. I’m often drawn to poetry and pieces of scots writing that expand on this or ‘zoom in’ on particular aspects of place (objects / animals / plants / particular sites / homes).

“Language and its creative expression through song and story encodes human memory and experience. Songs are honed to the rhythms and patterns of speech which are connected to the land itself. Together they form a cultural ecology which passes on knowledge of flora and fauna, geological forms, seasonality.” Mairi McFadyen
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A map Illustrating the approximate linguistic situation in the north-east in the year 1800
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X-Ray Audio with Radiophrenia

6/7/2019

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X-ray Audio is a project by The Bureau of Lost Culture's Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield. It tells the story of the underground community of bootleggers and music lovers who defied the censor in cold war era Soviet Union to make their own records of forbidden Western Jazz, Rock ’n’ Roll and banned Russian music. It is now an online archive, a book, an award-winning documentary and an internationally touring exhibition with live events.
The Bureau of Lost Culture are dedicated to recollecting counter-cultural stories through film, installations and broadcasts. By evoking the spirit of the forgotten underground they aim to inspire with a sense of risk and provocation.
For Radiophrenia they will present the story of the X-Ray Audio Project and Soviet Bone Music culture in images, film and sounds from the era. This will be followed by live performances by Rebecca Wilcox, Quinie and Toi-so which will be directly recorded onto X-Rays using a 1950s recording lathe with immediate playback.
www.x-rayaudio.com/x-rayaudioproject
Commissioned as part of Radiophrenia’s two week long radio broadcasts, brought to you live from their studio at CCA Glasgow. Funded through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Funding with additional support from CCA Glasgow.
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Fire in the Mountain

6/7/2019

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Betwixt and Between tape review

5/21/2019

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From The kind people at Lost in a sea of sound

Sounds echoing through time, always infused and then diluted with the newest and most progressive music. The magnificence of days and decades ago rendered for aging souls. On the rare occasions, when current creations build upon fading sonic delight, the resonance of both past and present rings in quantum beauty. Betwixt & Between 4 has well formed roots though time, exhibiting many traditional attributes from the way music was played and sung. This composition is more though, subtle creativity procured from the span of years, making the finished delivery both nostalgic and contemporary simultaneously.

For cassettes, Betwixt & Between 4 clocks in around the very standard thirty minutes. With the sides split between Jacken Elswyth and Quinie, combined with how purely fascinating both artists are, the entire listen seems incredibly short. A very wonderful merit concurred by many repeated listens.

On the first side, Jacken Elswyth seamlessly plays the banjo through improvisational and traditional forms. Her use of the bow and shruti mesmerize time and place only to be followed by traditional folk pronunciations, equally as captivating. The third track, and the shortest on Jacken's side, is an absolute sublime en-devour. Her use of delay with banjo flows like early dawn light, images slowly substantiating with colors that can not be accurately described. Then grounded on "The Banks of The Green Willow". Accompanied only by birds, Jacken sings a sad tale similar to the unfortunate death of Omie Wise.

Quinie has six songs on the second side. Josie Vallely singing with Gordon Bruce and Tom Merewether accompanying in sound. Alluring traditional Scottish song style in modern context. Songs drawing from cheerful sources as well as traditional. A refreshing direction from years ago, many songs of this genre were depictions on the harshness of life. Now on this set, the ability to draw from comedy rather than tragedy is part of the makeup. One aspect making delightful realization is how experimental this group is. An assortment of sounds surfacing with grandeur, supporting traditional vocal style with present day wisdom. Quinie is completely compelling, thoughts of these selections being recorded a century ago are real, but more light and playful topics with effects are well received.  

This is the fourth cassette from Betwixt & Between Tapes. There are a few different purchase options with cassette being described here, also compact disc, and lastly hand-carved linocut / hand-pulled prints with digital included. Looking through everything Betwixt & Between Tapes has done to present, there are not many physical pieces remaining. Only fifty copies of Betwixt & Between 4, so don't wait very long.
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Betwixt and Between Tape Launch

5/9/2019

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​"On Betwixt & Between 4 we welcome Glasgow-based Scots folk-singer Quinie, with a clutch of songs hot on the heels of last year's album Buckie Prins (on the always-excellent GLARC label). 

Jacken Elswyth's side consists of four banjo pieces plus a venture into English folk-song, with a recording of 'The Banks of Green Willow' made in a field in Herefordshire. Among the banjo pieces are three improvisations, plus an arrangement of the hymn tune (and John Fahey standard) 'In Christ there is no East or West'. Each of the improvisations stretches the banjo in a different direction – the first by bowing, the second by adding delay, and the third by looping the sound of brushes across its skin as a soundscape for improvising across. 

On the other side Quinie sings a set of songs playfully embellished with occasional bells, whistles, and percussion, and interspersed with odd interludes of reedy drone. The songs themselves draw on some gently comedic sources – as on Matt McGuinn's 'Red Yoyo' or Duncan MacRae's 'Wee Cock Sparra' – alongside Quinie's continued exploration of the repertoire of Lizzie Higgins on 'Wha's at the windy'. The songs are presented largely unaccompanied, with instrumentation lending carefully placed emphasis around her wonderfully trad Scots singing style. 

The Betwixt & Between 4 mascot is the harpy: a beautiful human vulture, and a vicious thief. The cover image is adapted from marginalia in the Rutland Psalter.  "

On Jacken's side: 
All tracks arranged, performed, recorded and mixed by Jacken Elswyth. 

On Quinie's side: 
Tracks performed and recorded by Josie Vallely, Gordon Bruce, and Tom Merewether
 

​released May 1, 2019
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Betwixt and Between Recording

5/9/2019

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Yesterday I was back in the studio with Tom Merewether and Gordon T Brwce recording for a new release with the inimitable Jacken Elswyth - Betwixt and Between Tapes, my voice isnt back to were it should be yet because iv been on mega asthma vibe, but we had some fun with snippets of songs, some bairn sangs, a few improvised bits and bobs and Tom's beautiful spluttering. I think its all going to come together in chaotic splendour. We also recorded a version of Lal Waterston's Fine Horseman which I have been doing live for a while and which is potentially one of my favourite songs ever (sorry its not in Scots- OFF BRAND!)
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Cafe oto

5/9/2019

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living the dream.
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  • QUINIE
    • Edinburgh Art Late
    • An Tobar Festival
    • Ghost tunes
    • A / Am / Ams
    • Almanac
    • Seized by the left hand
    • Shieling project
    • Live
    • Mixes and radio
  • RELEASES
    • Thyme Piobaireachd
    • Buckie Prins
    • Quinie
    • Betwixt and Between 4
  • Archive
  • BIO
  • Gigs