26 October 2008
Posted in News - 2008 News Archive

Gaelic College puts masters together with students

THE BOW is a blur against the fiddle as tiny fingers move on the strings and the boy’s small, freckled face pinches in concentration.

His instructor plays along, using his feet to keep time, nodding and smiling as the young fiddler slides through a difficult passage in the music.

"That’s it, you’ve got it. Now we’ll try it again a little bit faster," says Ed Rodgers, a teacher of Cape Breton-style fiddling at the Gaelic College of Arts and Crafts on the shores of St. Anns Bay, Victoria County.

Just about everything at this 70-year-old institution seems to be a little bit faster, whether it’s fiddling, step-dancing, piping or bodhran drumming.

This fiddler is no more than 10 years old.

As Mr. Rodgers readies for his next class, the little guy plunks his instrument into its case.

He’s small and the case bangs against the side of a scabby knee when he adjusts his T-shirt. He has a hole in one sneaker and his elbows could use a good scrubbing, but this is one serious student of the fiddle.

"He’s got a lot of potential, too," smiles Mr. Rodgers.

In the middle of the college’s summer camp season, you’ll hear the strains of Scotland the Brave coming from an open window of the piper’s shed.

On this 140-hectare campus (created to preserve Gaelic language, arts, culture) music is everywhere.

It’s in a cool basement room where a collection of Celtic harpists coax gentle music from their instruments.

It’s outside where the drummers practise precise rata-tat-tats to accompany the pipers.

There are step dancers on the outdoor stage at one end of the campus, and on the grass near the weaving shed, a group of highland dancers practise their moves.

Since 1938, students from across Cape Breton and mainland Nova Scotia, Jamaica, United States, United Kingdom, Europe and South America have come here to learn from the "masters."

Some of Cape Breton’s best-regarded musicians have taught at this college, including Premier Rodney MacDonald, renowned for both his step-dancing abilities and his fiddling.

Fiddlers Glen Graham and Allie Bennett have taught here and Lucy MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils teaches bodhran whenever she gets a chance.

It’s all about passing on the music, the language and the traditions.

"Well, the Cape Breton style of playing fiddle and piano accompaniment is distinctive and it comes directly from the Gaelic language," says Angus MacLeod, a Gaelic language instructor.

"There’s a lovely cadence to the language and you can actually hear the language in the tunes," Mr. MacLeod said.

Like Mr. MacLeod, Hector MacNeil is a case in point. His speech is slow, melodic and filled with the expressive lilt of the Gaels.

The tall, dignified man is slow to stir and quick to laugh.

He is director of Gaelic language at the college and a professor at Cape Breton University.

Mr. MacNeil has what’s known as a very "Gaelic" sense of humour.

"There were two Cape Bretoners leaving a bar one day (dramatic pause) . . . it happens sometimes," he says to a group of adult students.

Whether he’s leading the song at a milling frolic or leading a group of students on a nighttime tour of the old cemetery on the college grounds, Mr. MacNeil takes every opportunity to pass on the language.

"Well, the language is the soul of the culture and it’s all intimately tied together," he explains.

Aside from the summer courses, the college holds a series of March break workshops and is often used for special occasions.

The teenagers at the Gaelic College are probably the biggest surprise. There’s no television here, no rap music.

The girls walk in groups across the campus, looking just as they would on the grounds of any junior or senior high school. They wear makeup, carry cellphones and sport the latest fashions.

The boys roughhouse in the cafeteria and play football on the lawns.

But when the piper blasts them from their beds with a rather loud and sometimes rancorous pipe tune at 7 a.m., the students begin long days of steeping themselves in the ancient arts and crafts of the Celts.

When the day ends, fiddlers will sometimes meet in the great room for an impromptu jam session. The music calls out to dancers and other musicians and soon someone sits down at the piano or picks up a bodhran. Students who’ve played or danced to music all day long seem ready to go again. This time, though, it’s called a ceilidh.

 

Copyright © 2008 The Chronicle Herald . All Rights Reserved

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