Scotia Nova – Songs
for a better nation *** GRCH, Strathclyde Suite
The problem with
projects like this, is that you end up with a bunch of compositions, some of
which won’t be as good as others.
That problem is magnified when you base it on such a crucial event as
Scotland’s referendum, where strong opinions abound and the capacity for
And this is what has
happened with Scotia Nova – a
parallel musical project to the similarly-titled selection of poetry published
last year - some of the songs are
very good, some are frankly, poor.
The diamonds are often
those that address real issues – rather than vague appeals to abstract notions
or continued harking back to the constitution. Brian McNeill – self proclaimed
socialist – was probably the high point with his piece The War of the Crofter on the fight of the Assynt crofters to buy
their own crofts. Scott Murray’s song about Edinburgh’s homeless – Duke Street to Jericho, taken straight
from their own words, and Mari Campbell and Dan Francis’ O Man, Jock Tamson, a lament for the impoverished, also both shone
out.
I’m afraid Charlie
Milne’s Scotland’s Future didn’t
really deal with our future in any real way, and Simon Kempston’s We must unite, for all its laudable
aims, failed to grasp – well anything really.
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