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Greetings...
it was a pleasure to
come back from such a week to find more than 100 e-mails from a lively Sinclair
group...
As some of you in the
past have expressed an interest in Celtic music, and fiddling, I feel compelled
to tell you the story of John Morris Rankin, who was taken by the sea early last
Sunday morning when he swerved his 4X4 to avoid a dolmen of salt on a
snow-covered, twisting highway...he, and three young passengers who survived,
plunged off one of the more beautiful 90-foot cliffs and into Whale Cove...along
the windswept northwestern coast of Cape Breton Isle...
John Morris was native
of Mabou Cape Breton...he was well-known throughout his 40 years as a master
fiddler and one of the more beautiful pianists the island has ever produced...He
was a blessed soul - more-than-nice to everyone he met - and with a sharp Cape
Breton sense of humour...in his community, throughout the region, across this
country and over the seas he is mourned as a key man in the resurgence of
Scottish Culture...
He was the musical
arranger for The Rankin Family Band...he and four siblings - Raylene, Heather,
Cookie, and Jimmy took centuries of Scottish Music that had been preserved
intact in the communities of an isolated island...they mastered the language,
they harmonized with the intuition only life-long family practice can bring,
they learned to step dance as they learned to walk...there are twelve offspring
of Buddy and Kathlene Rankin and they are the essence of all that makes Cape
Breton whatever it is...
They have, I think,
Sinclair blood...They are closely related somehow to Jim St. Clair - one of the
wise men of Cape Breton...he runs the Iona Gaelic Village and writes for the
venerated Inverness Oran...I have heard it said that he is Prince Henry's most
direct descendant in the province...we talk about it and he officially and
strongly feels that it's bunk...but then again, he's spent too much time talking
with the department of culture...
When the Rankin Family
decided to give up their day jobs in September of 1989 to try the band thing for
two years there was no organized music industry on the east coast of
Canada...lots of musicians - but they were all playing Top 40 covers on
perpetual tiny-tavern-tours of the region...
Although as individuals
they were Cape Breton legends already, The Rankins had to make a record on their
own resources...this first record contains some of the enduring classics of
celtic music...they started to book shows on their own and they, their Mom, and
their enfianced, drove casettes around the province bullying them into
stores...
They built momentum on
grassroots word of mouth...they became a foundation stone in the building of the
east coast music industry, hooking up with the East Coast Music Awards and
becoming the standard bearer...They recorded Fare thee Well, Love which went on
to sell 500,000 copies and released it independantly...they did their first
organized tours of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Manitoba...the records sold
like crazy...
Toronto yawned at
first...it was from the east so who cares? And worse - it's fiddle music they
openly said...So the band looked to Scotland...John Smith, a producer at BBC
Scotland's Gaelic television called... He flew them over for ten days and hooked
them up with Phil Cunningham to produce some radio and tv shows...I set up a
showcase at The Glasgow University Debating Hall...we hung out with
Capercaillie, who would drive up after their concerts with Runrig to hang out in
the Studio with the Rankins...We hung out with Scottish nationists and musicians
in the pubs long past the point where we could stand erect...I drove through
Glencoe while Heather sang a sad tale of that place for me...
The day after the
showcase the quote-of-the-day on the front page of the Glasgow Herald came from
the review of the show:
"Sadly, they don't make families like this in Scotland
anymore"
Others had come before, and many would follow but that trip
triggered a flood (that began the next month with a BBC Hogemany Live headline
performance for 4 million viewers) and has not subsided...Ashley MacIsaac, The
Barra MacNeils, Slainte Mhath, Rawlins Cross, Natalie MacMaster, Buddy
MacMaster, Jerry Holland, Mary Jane Lamond, dancers, storytellers, milners,
linguists, archivists, and writers all regularly make the trek...Sydney, Cape
Breton resident Bruce Guthro is now the lead singer for
Runrig...
I
personally find it interesting that Scotland's outlawed culture was preserved
and returned intact at just the right time...At the recent Stone of Scone
ceremony one wag was heard to say that this wasn't the real stone...Cape Breton
Stepdancer Willie Fraser is the real stone...this for his role in returning step
dancing to Scotland...
For
the first time in too long Scotland has her own Parliament...and a legal
culture...
For
the Rankin Family it was the music that drove it all...all of the majesty
of the mountains of Cape Breton, the mists, the winds and the cry of the
oceans...Raylene has ruined me for other female vocalists - she has the richest,
most pure voice I have ever heard...Heather gets the best songs and Cookie sings
the singles...Jimmy writes and sings with the grit of the mines and the roll of
the seas in his songs...the voices are individually and collectively
stunning...and the community has more than it's share of outstanding voices in
the Parrish choir...
The
music was underscored by centuries of Scottish Culture and John Morris
Rankin...he was the musical arranger and band leader...also the arbitrator in
sometimes difficult situations between siblings...he is most responsible for the
end sound and it's creation, not just on record - but night after night from the
days they played the cow palaces and were the best band anyone had ever heard -
night after night after night...
When the regions
of Canada began their own navel gazing in the early parts of the past decade as
a result of Quebec's identity crisis, it was the east coast who next discovered
that we also were distinct culturally... the Rankin Family were the soundtrack
of that discovery...
They sold more than 2 million records in 10 years before letting it all go last
autumn...John Morris still lived in Judique, just down the coast from Mabou...he
had left the stadiums and concert halls behind to play the dance halls once
again...and to spend time with his beautiful wife and soul-mate Sally, and their
two children - Michael and Molly...He was driving Micheal to a hockey game in
Cheticamp that morning...Michael and his teammates were able to escape
relatively physically unscathed...
After years of gloating about the weather in Nova Scotia it has been snowing for
a week...Mabou, a town of around 100 at the end of Mabou Harbour, is one of the
most beautiful places in a beautiful province...huddled in a narrow valley
between the mountains which line the coast, the area endured a week of almost
non-stop snow with high winds making movement almost impossible...an eclipse is
little solace...dark omens abound...
The
Catholic Parrish of St Mary's has a long musical history...one of the more
interesting anecdotes concerns a certain Father Kenneth MacDonald who, in the
mid-19th century ordered all of the fiddles of the parrish burned as "the
instrument of the devil"...(working with Ashley MacIsaac has given me some
insight into the well-intentioned father's motives)...but it is more than
evident that, with a good measure of thanks to John Morris Rankin, MacDonald
failed utterly...
He had been cited as early as 1973 in a television documentary program -
The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler, as a leader of the new generation of fiddlers
who were struggling to keep the dying Gaelic culture alive...that program acted
as a clarion call that led to not only the preservation of Scottish Culture but
to it's flourishing...and as for Mabou's fiddlers - the current member of the
Nova Scotia Legislature for Mabou is a local 27-ish fiddler - Rodney
MacDonald...
The
funeral was attended by more than 1000 souls; and more than 75 Cape Breton
fiddlers, including many of the best fiddlers in the world, answered the call to
play...Howie MacDonald, Buddy MacMaster, Sheumas MacNeil, Ashley and fiddlers
from 8 to 88 brought the only smiles to any faces on a dark dark day...John
Morris touched so many people in so many ways...
And
so, I call your attention to John Morris Rankin, and Sinclair, please call the
names of Sally and Michael and Molly wherever you may, I don't think we can
begin to understand what he has done for us all...
rob
nova scotia/cape breton
ps. I forward some photos which JSQ has
stuffed under:
...and with apologies...I always carry a
camera but rarely use it...I'm always too busy...so I have nothing of Mabou -
but that is because I never felt my type of drive-by photgraphy could do it
justice...
The first was taken in Glencoe, Scotland
on the drive abovementioned drive...
The second is of the Glasgow U. debating
hall (on the left) where the Showcase was held
The third is from and of a friend's
place about 8 miles north of Mabou which would be to the right with the
ocean...imagine it this week under three feet of snow...
The fourth is a Glenora Falls Valley
drive-by one winter's day in a forgotten year...
The fifth is of Ashley MacIsaac
and Natalie MacMaster from a ECMA '95 rehearsal...
and the sixth is of John Morris from the cover of their 1997
Collection...
and for you ravenous Sinclairs who read all the way to the end of this -
there is lastly a picture which I took of Rosslyn Castle 14 months ago...
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