Archive Trails – live at Cafe OTO

In Spring 2011, Tracer Trails invited three contemporary musicians to spend three months in residence in the Archive of the School of Scottish Studies. Aileen Campbell, Alasdair Roberts, and Wounded Knee (aka Drew Right) were given an open remit to create new work drawing on this unique and fascinating collection.

The ensuing tour landed at Cafe OTO on the 23rd of October. Alas, Aileen Campbell was unable to make it, so it was up to Alasdair Roberts to open the proceedings, which he did whith a brief 15 minute set inclusive of a song from his own father Alan Roberts.

Next on stage was Drew Right aka Wounded Knee – “I took inspiration from some writing by Ben Sidran in his book Black Talk which examines the continuity of oral culture in Afro-American music. It is worth quoting a particular extract: ‘The musician is the document. He is the information itself. The impact of the stored information is transmitted not through records or archives, but though the human response to life.’ It struck me that many of the inspiration recordings in the School of Scottish studies archive embody Sidran’s idea. It also made me think about my own personal repertoire of songs.”

And thus, Wounded Knee the document, performed from his personal archive asking members form the audience to pick a number from 1 to 53, each representing a specific song plucked from his life’s trajectory. A couple of Pogues tracks, some Blue Nile, Buffalo Tom and even Eric B & Rakin (courtesy of his sister), covered the space of what he noted as “45 minutes of something”.

The second half of the evening was taken by Alasdair Robert and Shane Connolly with Galoshins. “A few years ago I had come across a reference to something called ‘Galoshins’, a folk play traditionally performed in various places around the central belt of Scotland. It’s akin to the English mummer’s plays – a similar plot and theme of combat, death and resurrection. It was customarily enacted by groups of young boys (and very occasionally girls) going house-to-house around Hallowe’en or Hogmanay.”

In order to do something “physical, tangible, visual rather than the purely musical work he’d done before”, Roberts turned Galoshing into a puppet show teaming up with drummer Shane Connolly who also played on his latest album, and whose expertise is puppet theatre. Before treating the audience to a most enjoyable and refreshingly different show, Roberts and Connolly also presented a reenactment of the initiation ritual from the Society of Horseman, proving that archives can be living organisms ready to mutate and take unexpected forms.

Alasdair Roberts and Drew Right’s quotes are taken from the programme notes produced by Tracer Trails.

- Gianmarco Del Re for Fluid Radio

www.ArchiveTrails.com
www.TracerTrails.co.uk
www.CeltScot.ed.ac.uk
www.AlasdairRoberts.com
www.Sokobauno.com
www.iamwoundedknee.com