The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #83675   Message #1540152
Posted By: MissouriMud
11-Aug-05 - 01:31 PM
Thread Name: Is Haggis Necessary?
Subject: RE: Is Haggis Necessary?
Probably most of the audience would notbe able to distinuish a scottish reel from an american one. Many would only recognize an instrumental scottish tune if it were played on bagpipe or made to sound like it. The few scottish fiddle tunes I have heard played by a Scot seemed to have a different lilt than our more straight driving rhythms, as most of our stuff has been adapted for playing square and contra dances.

Actually a good many of the tunes we play have at least some roots in Scottish/Irish/English tunes, although outside of a few obvious ones we havent done much detailed pedigree history research beyond the US to know which ones are more Scottish than say Irish. A lot came over with the Irish immgration groups who were I believe more numerous than Scottish immigrants. As such we probably unwittingly played more Irish based tunes than Scottish - but without causing a ruckus.

Most venues we play are not as ostensibly themed to a different country so I was curious as to whether we should make any adjustments.
Given the above the comments, we'll keep doing what we know best until someone tels us they dont like it.

Fortunately we do very few vocal tunes, so the issue of singing in dialect has not come up and is not likely to.   I don't think any of us would feel comfortable trying to mask our Missouri twang with a BBC accent let alone a phony scottish brogue - we is what we is (even though I'm from Connecticut originally so I dont have much accent).

As for the Mud - thats mostly on my shoes not in my stomach. Being at the convergence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers there is a lot of mud that travels a long way to get here, but I try my best not to ingest it. I'll try the haggis next time - but I may try to find out what "version" they are serving simply so I know what to expect. It appeared to be in slices so either it was fried or done like a pece of meat loaf. Not sure that you can improve the taste as you can with the relatively mild grits they serve a bit south of here by adding stuff like butter, sugar, syrup, cheese etc.