Tourism and Musical Heritage

1
Tourism and Musical Heritage

• Perspectives on Heritage
• 10th May 2005
• Lesley Stevenson
• Liverpool Hope University College

2
Scottish Evenings?

• Those involved in the tourist industry will have
  sat through some toe-curlingly awful Scottish
  Evenings. These roaming-in-the-gloaming
  extravaganzas tend to feature girls in mini-kilts
  and too much make-up dancing - allegedly - the
  Highland Fling. The star turn is usually a portly
  singer who struts about a small stage wiggling
  his hips to swing his kilt. (Maggie Craig, 1998).
  
• expensive and cringemaking kilted crimes
  against humanity (Gavin Esler, 2000).

3
Recordings?

• It makes my blood boil when I visit tourist
  information centres, woollen mill shops and other
  such places and find that the music available
  there is of the heather and haggis, grannys
  Heiland hame variety. I cringe at that people
  visit Scotland and enjoy traditional music, yet
  it is hard to find in the shops (Cathy Peattie
  MSP, 2003)
• in tourist information centres theres a
  contract to sell tartan tat and nothing else.
  you go in there and theres nothing but Andy
  Stewart, Tartan Lads, Alexander Brothers, massed
  pipe bands of such and such. Really bad music.

4
What is heritage?

• Heritage is the transvaluation of the
  obsolete, the mistaken, the outmoded, the dead,
  and the defunct. Heritage is created through a
  process of exhibition (as knowledge, as
  performance, as museum display).
• Heritage is a mode of cultural production in the
  present that has recourse to the past.
• Heritage produces the local for export.
• Heritage is a way of producing hereness
• Musical heritage is used in the production of a
  sense of place.
• Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Theorizing Heritage,
  Ethnomusicology, 39 (3), pp. 367-380.

5
Scottish Borders Musical Identity

• Walter Scott, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish
  Border, (1802-03).
• The Border district of Scotland was of all
  districts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently
  the singing country.
• John Ruskin

6
The Ballads Trail

• Launched by the Scottish Borders Tourist Board in
  2000
• Arguably a more populist and vernacular account
  of Scotts Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

7
Postmodernity, heritage and musical identities

• the proportion of vernacular, local and
  populist accounts of history and heritage in
  currency will rise vis-à-vis standard elitist
  accounts (Hollinshead, 2002 187).
• Musical identities are increasingly fragmented
• National musical identities are being challenged
  by cultural expressions which are rooted in the
  experiences of people and communities (Lipsitz,
  1994)

8
REAL The Scottish Borders Where the Traditional
Meets the Unexpected

• Such has been the concentration on the past that
  the place was in danger of being seen from
  outwith as a Brigadoon or theme park type of
  place. I felt this was perpetuated by writers who
  succumbed to the temptation to take the lazy way
  out, and just keep on churning out the same old
  tried and trusted stuff instead of taking a fresh
  look at our area
• REAL is not about historical, romantic, Thomas
  the Rhymer stuff
• It is about the antithesis of naff, theme-park
  kind of tourism

9
Cultural Selection and REAL

• it could be dead easy to do an album of Borders
  music tomorrow. I mean, if you say to somebody,
  Name me 3 Borders tunes, theyll say Jock o
  Hazeldean, The Low Rolling Hills of the Borders
  and something else, Lock the Door Lariston, or
  something. These are the ones that are really
  well known. But I thought, I wonder what else
  is going on? theres bound to be a wealth of
  good material that isnt so well known
• Subversion of musical stereotypes

10
REAL the Contents

• The Border ballad Drooned in Yarrow is one that
  nobody really records
• There for the Taking is about the mass
  redundancies caused by the closure of a local
  factory
• When The Railways Return is about life in the
  Borders.
• The Death of Tibbie Tamson is a story that
  should be known.
• Concerned with locally-oriented histories and the
  experiences of ordinary people.

11
The Performers on REAL

• Traditional songs are performed by musicians
  previously unfamiliar with the tracks
• one objective was to use respected artistes at
  times challenging them to step outside their
  normal repertoires when necessary, where it was
  thought their treatment would enhance certain
  material

12
Musical heritage and the production of hereness

• REAL is symptomatic of a wider trend
• Traditional musicians are increasingly
  dissatisfied with corporate (national)
  expressions of musical identities (e.g. Scottish
  Evenings)
• Various interest groups/individuals are offering
  competing accounts of Scotlands musical
  traditions, e.g.
• - An Drochaid CD sampler Skye and Lochalsh
• - Sang o the Solway Dumfries and Galloway
• - Highlands and Islands Series, Volume 1
  Lochaber