An audio-visual exploration of the music that emerged from the seventeenth century in the wake of the Scottish whaling and fishing industries and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The talk is accompanied by archive recordings and live performance of instrumental music and songs from these times along with a wealth of anecdotes, photography and video recordings. A compelling account of the importance of music among Scottish sailors and the impact of this music on those who came into contact with it.

Scotland is home to an incredible wealth and variety of sacred song traditions with unique and varied histories, providing soundtracks to peoples’ daily lives for generations. In this illustrated talk, Frances explores some of these traditions including Gaelic psalmody, hymnody and bàrdachd. Drawing on some of the many field recordings made over the last 6 years, the talk explores the repertoires and roles of sacred singing both in the past and the present day.

Fiddle music and dancing have been integral to the social lives of the Eeyou people of James Bay, Northern Canada for around 300 years. The instrument, along with dances and their tunes, were first brought to the region by Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders who were stationed there from the late seventeenth until the twentieth century. Most of the fur traders in James Bay were Scottish, and the Eeyou didn’t take long to adopt instruments, music and dances. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork and archive research since 2011, this talk explores the transatlantic musical flow from Scotland to James Bay and investigates how fiddle music and dances were re-shaped and re-formed through indigenisation into Eeyou performance practice.