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Transmitting Traditional Music Today: A research project

Guest blog by Natalie Brown
Through my own teaching and performance, I have found that musicians in the United States are interested in adapting and reinterpreting traditional melodies and styles. Contemporary Scottish musicians are actively engaged in just this practice.

Guest blog by Natalie Brown

Through my own teaching and performance, I have found that musicians in the United States are interested in adapting and reinterpreting traditional melodies and styles. Contemporary Scottish musicians are actively engaged in just this practice. During my time in Aberdeen, my main interest has been to explore and document the transmission of traditional Scottish fiddle music from generation to generation and to research its place in both contemporary performance and music education. I am considering how individual musicians put their own stamp on music that has been passed on for generations and will determine those qualities that fiddlers would identify as distinctively “Scottish” in their music. My project should add a new chapter to a long history of dialogue and cross-influences between Scottish and American folk music. I hope to join this “carrying stream” by performing my discoveries in my own music, teaching, and writing.

My dissertation will consider the youngest generation; I am currently investigating the state of music in the schools of Scotland, primarily but not exclusively the North-East coast. Through music educator case studies I have been looking at the place of traditional music in the school curriculum at public, private and specialized schools, as well as opportunities for students as they move on to secondary school.  Interviews so far have included several music teachers, mainly violin, some who teach classical and some who include classical and traditional repertoire. I am considering the relation between music educators’ personal history (influences, training, and such from childhood on) and their current practice, suppositions and point of view.

While exploring current trends in music curriculum there appears to be a growing acceptance of traditional music but I am finding conflicting views about resistance to traditional music in Universities. Some other recurring topics have been the methods of teaching traditional music and student reaction to it, especially whether they learn by ear or by notation. The place of examinations and competitions in traditional music has brought varied views, and informal settings of education and social settings of music such as folk clubs and sessions will also be examined.

I have a lifelong engagement with music and commitment to teaching music. Scottish music, in which tradition is alive and well, has captured my imagination. I hope, with the musicians, educators and students that I engage with in Scotland, that my interest would enhance their own sense of the value of what they are doing.

Natalie Brown is a high school orchestra director and professional musician from Iowa, USA and is a MLitt Ethnology and Folklore student at the University of Aberdeen Elphinstone Institute. Input on her research is welcome atnatalie.brown.11@aberdeen.ac.uk.