Elizabeth Stewart, a folks singer, pianist and composer who furthered the legacy of her musical household and the tradition of the ethnic grouping referred to as Scottish Travellers by her recordings, performances and musicology, died on Oct. 13 within the village of Kemnay, close to Aberdeen, Scotland. She was 83.
Thomas A. McKean, director of the Elphinstone Institute on the College of Aberdeen, a middle for the examine of folklore and ethnology, confirmed the dying. No trigger was specified.
Stewart’s prolonged household, recognized with the Aberdeenshire village of Fetterangus, is a part of the Travellers, a gaggle with a definite tradition and historical past. Many reside an itinerant way of life, although the Stewarts had been a “settled” Traveller household with a enterprise dealing in secondhand items when, in 1954, the Scottish folklorist Hamish Henderson got here calling on the household residence and started documenting the household’s wealthy musical historical past.
He recorded Lucy Stewart, Elizabeth’s aunt, and earlier than lengthy others made the identical pilgrimage, together with the American folklorists Kenneth S. Goldstein and Charles Joyner. Although Goldstein launched an album of Lucy Stewart singing a choice of the normal songs referred to as Youngster ballads in 1961, she didn’t typically carry out for paying audiences or in any other case promote herself. It was left to Elizabeth to additional the household’s musical heritage, singing the normal songs of affection, ghosts, battle and hardship she had heard since childhood.
“Elizabeth was a peerless singer, pianist, storyteller, trainer, vendor and raconteur, in addition to a novel participant of Scottish conventional music on the piano,” McKean stated by electronic mail.
In an undated picture offered by Alison McMorland, through College of Aberdeen, Elizabeth Stewart in 2003.
(Alison McMorland, through College of Aberdeen through The New York Occasions)
“Behind her,” he added, “she had centuries of folks music custom: the songs and ballads carried so effectively by Traveller communities throughout Scotland and additional afield, the dance music and piping traditions of reels, strathspeys, jigs and marches.”
She turned a part of the folks music revival in Scotland within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s, taking part in in dance halls and accommodations and, later, at folks festivals. On the identical time, the US was present process its personal folks revival, and the affect of the Stewarts and different musicians from northeast Scotland seeped into North American music.
McKean stated artists like Joan Baez and Neil Younger may hint their household roots to northeast Scotland. Others took a liking to the songs that originated within the area, together with Bob Dylan, whose debut album, launched in 1962, included “Fairly Peggy-O,” a model of the Scottish music “The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie.” The affect can be heard in Appalachian folks music, which in flip influenced nation music and early rock ’n’ roll.
“The northeast of Scotland is likely one of the most fertile areas for folks music anyplace on the earth,” McKean famous, “residence to hundreds of songs and ballads composed by atypical folks as they went about their work and to entertain themselves within the lengthy winter evenings.”
Stewart recorded a lot of these songs on “Atween You and Me” (1992) and “Binnorrie,” a double CD launched in 2004.
“Hearken to her supply of ‘The Gallant Rangers,’ ‘The Butcher’s Boy’ and even the humorous ‘Little Ball of Yarn,’” Mary DesRosiers wrote in a evaluate of “Binnorrie” in Sing Out! journal, “and you’ll inform she comes from a custom the place the telling of the story is paramount.”
Stewart additionally advised her household’s story, interspersed with the music and lyrics for quite a few folks songs, in a memoir, “Up Yon Huge and Lonely Glen: Travellers’ Songs, Tales and Tunes of the Fetterangus Stewarts,” compiled and edited by Alison McMorland and revealed in 2012.
“For me,” she stated close to the tip of that guide, which is written within the Scots language, “the music is in my blood an once I’ve been unhappy, it’s made me comfortable, an once I’ve been comfortable, it’s made me happier! It’s niver a burden, an it’s teen me fae one aspect o the world tae the opposite.”
Elizabeth Campbell Stewart was born on Could 13, 1939, in Fetterangus, Aberdeenshire. Her father, Donald Stewart, was a soldier and later a laborer. Her mom, Jean Stewart, was a musician and bandleader who performed a number of devices however was particularly identified for her accordion expertise.
Elizabeth’s mom led a band that was heard on BBC broadcasts, and by the age of 9 Elizabeth was becoming a member of her onstage and on the air. Along with her aunt Lucy, Elizabeth’s prolonged household included expert pipers and fiddlers.
“Tunes hiv been whirlin aroon within the air an in ma heid an hairt since I wis a bairn, an I wis composing tunes an songs even then,” she wrote in her guide. “At hame I’d hear my mom’s stunning piano an accordion items. I’d sit by my Uncle Ned’s fireplace an pay attention tae his candy fiddle airs, an I’d hear my ither uncles playin the pipes within the open air.”
However not all the pieces was blissful at residence. In her guide, she described her father as bodily and emotionally abusive towards her mom; as soon as, she stated, he offered her prize accordion with out her information.
Jean Stewart died in 1962, at age 50.
Henderson’s visits within the mid-Nineteen Fifties introduced the Stewart musicians wider fame, and he and Elizabeth turned lifelong pals. Henderson urged to Goldsmith that he come for a go to, and he did, in 1959, staying for the higher a part of a yr. (Not all these to beat a path to Fetterangus left an excellent impression, nevertheless. “They wid come an take oor songs, an then go,” Stewart wrote.)
About that point Stewart and her sister Jane reached a broader viewers by contributing their variations of conventional folks songs to “Singing the Fishing,” considered one of a collection of so-called “radio ballads” that blended music and narrative. Radio ballads had been modern for the time in that they used precise villagers, slightly than actors studying a script, to inform a narrative. “Singing the Fishing” was made by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger (half sister of Pete) and was broadly acclaimed, although the Stewart sisters’ musical contributions usually went uncredited.
“The songs that had been featured within the broadcast went on to develop into world well-known, and you continue to hear them to today,” Stewart advised The Aberdeen Press and Journal in 2007. “It upsets me if you hear it sung the way in which we sang all of it these years in the past, as a result of we by no means get the popularity. We took the normal phrases and set them to trendy, pop melodies. They sounded nice, they usually nonetheless do.”
Within the early Seventies, Joyner organized a tour of American faculties and folks festivals for Stewart. It was considered one of a number of journeys she made to the US.
Stewart, whose solely marriage led to divorce in 1971, is survived by her sister Jane; three youngsters, Jeannette Stewart Reid, Elizabeth Morewood and Michael Hutchison; seven grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren.
In his electronic mail, McKean recalled his first assembly with Stewart, at a folks competition in 1988.
“Standing within the foyer afterwards, she took my hand, seemed me within the eye and sang to me, into me, and, it appeared, to me alone,” he stated. “Nobody, and I imply nobody, may put a music throughout like Elizabeth, generally so effectively that she herself couldn’t go on, overcome by the unfolding tragedy and by the constellation of household, historical past, love and emotional life that informs the songs.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
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