📷 Maggie MacInnes – by Vincent O’Brien

As some of you might know, my mother Flora MacNeil and I performed often together and nearly all the Gaelic songs I sing and have recorded, I learned from her. She learned them orally, mostly from her mother, grandmother, aunt, and uncle as she grew up in Barra. She has, without doubt and by a large measure, been the most important musical influence of my life. We were also extremely close…. I know that sounds easy to say but it is the truth that she was my closest friend in the world as well as being a wonderful mother to me and my four siblings. When she passed away in May 2015, the loss and sadness I felt was overwhelming.

📷 Maggie and Flora singing in Turin, Italy – by A. MacInnes

The first time I sang in public after she died was at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards ceremony in December 2015, where Simon Thoumire and the team put together a lovely tribute to her. I remember walking out onto the stage not knowing if any sound would come out of my mouth but, as is often the case, the music took over and I got through it.

Some years later, I came across some cassette tapes which my mother had given to me years before. I remembered her telling me that she had recorded lots of songs for an Australian folklorist, Dr James Kalokerinos, from when she was newly married to my father in 1955 until around 1961. He had recorded her on a large reel-to-reel tape recorder which he bought and left with her when he went back to Australia. Dr Kalokerinos arranged for the recordings to be put onto cassette tapes which he sent to my mother from Australia in the 1970s. I was intrigued but always reluctant to play the tapes in case they broke in the player due to their age. Also, I still had my mother there to pass on the songs to me directly, so I didn’t pay them too much attention. However, they came back into my mind after she passed away. When I was with her, my mother was always surprising me with beautiful songs I had never heard her sing before as she had a huge repertoire, none of which she had written down. I thought maybe there would be one or two special discoveries on these tapes.

This was all in the back of my mind for some years as I gradually began to perform more regularly again, releasing my 6th solo album, Port Bàn, in January 2020 just before the COVID pandemic. While at home during lockdown, I made the decision to get these recordings digitised and see what was there. I felt that it was wrong for me to hold on to them without investigating them further and possibly sharing them with others. I also got time then to go through my mother’s papers including letters, newspaper clippings, photos and performance reviews which gave me additional information about Dr Kalokerinos, their friendship and his passion for her singing and her songs. My interest and resolve grew.

In 2024, I applied to Creative Scotland for a grant to have the recordings digitised and for me to research the songs which were there and develop a show which would pay tribute to my mother and other tradition bearers from Barra who passed on the songs to her.

I am very pleased to say that my application for a grant was successful and the work began. I asked Chris Waite of Gran’s House Studio in Biggar to digitise the recordings and clean up those which had a lot of background noise. Chris shared all the digital files with me while I was at our family house in Barra. I cannot begin to tell you how emotional I felt listening to my mother speaking and singing. My father, Alister, is also speaking on the tapes and encouraging her to sing songs which he particularly liked. I listened, laughed and cried all the way through what turned out to be around 180 songs. This was just a fraction of my mother’s repertoire, but it is a wide and varied selection.

I began the process of researching the songs. This was very time consuming, but it was a “labour of love”. Some were songs I had heard my mother sing over the years but, as hoped, there were a number of others which I had never heard my mother or anyone else sing before…..and I loved them!

In order to get as much background information to the sort of life my mother would have had growing up in the 30s and 40s in Barra, I came to Barra on a number of occasions to speak to people of my mother’s generation who could share their memories of my mother and growing up on the island when getting together to sing and tell stories was a regular pastime. It became clear that some families were far more into that sort of thing than others. My mother always said she felt fortunate that songs were all around her at home and she just “soaked them up” rather than consciously learning them.

📷 Flora MacNeil, photographer unknown (from Flora’s own private photos)

I took a long time deciding which songs to include in the show. I chose some of my favourites of the songs I had never heard before, so that they would take on a new life. All the songs chosen helped me to tell something of my mother’s journey with the songs from Barra to many international stages of the world and to pay tribute to the tradition bearers of Barra more generally. One song which comes to mind in terms of helping tell my mother’s musical journey includes Mhic Iarla nam Bratach Bàna (Earl of the White Banners), which my mother sang with another great singer and piper from Barra, Calum Johnston, at the Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh of 1951, organised by Hamish Henderson. They were the only two Gaelic singers invited to perform and this concert is often referred to as a major catalyst which sparked the folk music revival of the 50s and 60s. For the show, I decided to emulate their performance, and I am very pleased that my son, Calum Park, was able to take the part of Calum Johnston and we perform it as a duo in the show.

I was so excited about the quality of the songs that I resolved to make a new album and Creative Scotland clearly felt that this was a worthwhile endeavour and supported me once again.

The album is called Uiseagan Bharraigh which means, Barra Skylarks, after all the singers from Barra who have been singing these songs for generations.

The recording process was joyful and creative from the start. I began by working closely with my son, Calum, who plays guitar and fiddle, and we started developing some arrangements together. For other songs, I wanted a very subtle approach with textures and sounds rather than the standard style of arrangement and it was at this stage that Calum introduced me to the amazing musician, Dan Brown. I listened to Dan’s music, especially his use of electronics and piano, and thought this was the direction I wanted to explore for certain tracks. After our first meeting, I knew that the fit was perfect and that Dan understood where I was coming from with my ideas for the songs. I can’t thank Dan and Calum enough for all that they brought to the songs in those early stages, and we built from there with more fantastic musicians. My first choice of cellist was the wonderful, Wendy Weatherby. Wendy and I first played together in the 1980s and it has been fantastic to be working with her again. My life is very blessed with many musical connections…one of which has introduced me to the beautiful fiddle playing of Robyn Gray who is well known on the folk-scene, especially in Ayrshire, where I now live. Robyn is soon to be marrying my other son, Ruaraidh, and we talk about and play music all together often. Add to this line-up, the superb pipe and flute playing of Ailis Sutherland and the innovative, sensitive percussion playing of Alex Palmer, and I must say that for me, I could not have picked a better ensemble for this album. I feel/hope that my album presents the songs in a new fresh way with an energy which never takes away from the raw heartfelt beauty of them.

The Creative Scotland funding has also allowed me to create a ‘Flora’ website (www.floramacneil.com) to release the archive to the world. My mother was always happy to pass on her songs to other singers who were interested, so this is being done in the same spirit. I thought how special it would be to dedicate a site to this particular set of recordings which would allow me to add information about the songs, my mother and some of the other tradition bearers from my family.

We first performed the show, ‘The Kalokerinos Tapes’, at Celtic Connections earlier this year and released the album on 15th June. We will be touring the islands soon:

HebCelt, An Lanntair, Stornoway, 18th July
Cnoc Soillier, South Uist, 20th July
Castlebay Hall, Barra, 21st July
Under Canvas, Eden Court, Inverness, 23rd July (trio gig)
Blas Festival, Cultarlann, Inverness, 9th September
LAS, Portree, Skye, 10th September
National Piping Centre, Glasgow, 17th September
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, 18th September

📷 Maggie and her band performing at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine on 19th June, 2026 – by Pete Heywood

The journey to this point has been a very emotional one from the start and I could not be happier to be taking the show on the road and, of course to Barra, shining a light on these songs and the legacy of my mother, Flora MacNeil.

The album (both digital and physical formats) is available on my website and also on my Bandcamp and other streaming platforms.