June 2004

by Arthur Watson

Bluesmen John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and B.B. King, Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa, bluegrass musicians Bill Munroe and Earl Scruggs, Appalachian singer and guitarist Doc Watson, ballad singer Almeda Riddle and Irish-American step-dancer Michael Flatley, all have been recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts in the USA.

something to sing about: The Aberdeen-born traditional singer and handloom weaver, Norman Kennedy, has been awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in the USA. [photo courtesy Tom Spiers]

Last year Norman Kennedy, the Aberdeen-born traditional singer and handloom weaver, also gained this prestigious award after living in America since 1966. The fellowship certificate recognises Norman as ‘a master traditional artist who has contributed to the shaping of our artistic traditions and to preserving the cultural diversity of the United States’. Admirable aims that seem to be reflected in the list of 283 fellowships awarded since the scheme was introduced in 1982. Recipients have represented traditions as diverse as those of Cambodia or the Ukraine, Tibet or the Basque Country and it is not just singers and musicians that are honoured, but artists, artisans and craft workers: carnival mask makers, boat builders, ribbon workers, basket weavers and even a maker of diving helmets. Norman is, however, one of the very few to be nominated in two diverse and seemingly unrelated disciplines and is also the only Scot on the list.

As a weaver Norman has had a commitment to passing on his traditional skills of carding, spinning, weaving and waulking – from fleece to finished cloth – through his own school in Vermont and at public demonstrations throughout the USA. His weaving is directly linked to his work as a singer of international significance.

He has frequently spoken of his need for songs and ballads and of how they are essential in sustaining him through long hours of repetitive work and how in turn this regular use keeps his extensive repertoire in both Scots and Gaelic active. So in the old way, singing is part of his everyday life, not just something to be rehearsed for concert hall performance, although Norman Kennedy is no stranger to the club or festival stage.

There has always been an intimacy in Norman’s performance, no matter how grand the setting or how large the audience. His songs and stories flow naturally as part of an extended conversation in which the attitudes of a contemporary creative artist are sublimated by a knowledge and continuing fascination with the lives and concerns of past generations.

Norman initially learned songs within his family and immediate social circle, both in Aberdeen and on visits to relations in the village of Methlick. He was privileged in having the great Jeannie Robertson as a neighbour and absorbed many of her songs and those of several wonderful traditional singers then in the North-East; settled travellers like Jeannie and her family, travelling street singers like Jimmy Macbeath and Davie Stewart, and the peripatetic farm workers with their particular repertoire of ploughmans’ songs. He came into contact with younger singers through the revival and at Aberdeen Folk Song Club. Unusually for a lowlander, Norman Kennedy also became fascinated by the Gaelic songs and traditions of the Western Isles, spending holidays with his mentor Annie Johnstone in Barra.

After half a lifetime in North America there is no dilution of Norman’s language or his cultural identity as a northeast Scot. America’s recognition of Norman Kennedy’s achievements as singer, storyteller and weaver is cause for celebration and I’m sure that many of us in Scotland would wish to congratulate Norman on this recognition of his consummate mastery. It has been widely recognised that traditional singers grow in stature and quality as they mature, but Norman’s unique position in Scottish folk song was recognised as early as 1968 when Peter Hall wrote in introduction to the Folk Legacy album, Ballads and Songs of Scotland: ‘It is a pleasure and a cause for hope when someone like Norman Kennedy emerges, who has deep roots in the rich soil of his native tradition and has the understanding and sureness which allows him to adapt and change without losing the essential qualities.’

Hearing Norman Kennedy sing today is unlike witnessing the performance of a singer who came to prominence as part of the Sixties folk revival. Unlike his contemporaries, he recast his whole lifestyle in a traditional mode around his work as a weaver, making the connection between life, work and song a seamless intermeshing where context is an established given. His way of life has brought him closer to the singers from which he learned as a young man and has helped form his understanding of them and the material they passed on. His own performance is thus enriched with strands of meaning that interpret the songs with verbal portraits of the old singers who sang them, giving them their due credit.

In celebrating Norman Kennedy’s achievement we are also celebrating the achievement of the singers of that earlier generation, we are celebrating the enduring qualities in Scots folk song and we are celebrating a traditional way of living and working that is now barely evident. We can also celebrate the enlightened patronage of the National Endowment for the Arts in awarding the National Heritage Fellowships.

Unfortunately amongst all this celebration is the underlying knowledge that nothing remotely like this exists in Scotland and a suspicion that if it did, it would have neither the focus on real bearers of tradition nor the cultural diversity that has been amply demonstrated by this exemplary American model.