A Journey in Celtic Music-Cape Breton Style

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

Although this book—a heavily footnoted marriage of personal memoir and
scholarly essay—does not work particularly well, Sheldon MacInnes’s
passion for the Celtic music of Cape Breton is unmistakable, especially
when he is discussing its fiddle tradition, about which he includes some
valuable and interesting material.

MacInnes, who has had a notable career as a concert organizer, a
musician, and an educator at the University College of Cape Breton, grew
up in impoverished rural Cape Breton listening to the music of his
father, fiddler Dan Joe MacInnes. This exposure made a lasting
impression, and the chapter on his father is the best in the book. But
though there is discussion of fiddle repertoire and technique, the son
keeps the veil firmly drawn on their personal relationship.

The same reticence affects MacInnes’s other reminiscences about his
years as a piper with the Sons of Skye musical group and as an organizer
of such festivals as the annual event at Big Pond. A galaxy of musicians
walk through these pages, but the anecdotes seem tame and polite, rather
than pungent and illuminating. Nevertheless, MacInnes is candid in his
concluding chapters when discussing the record companies’ variable
treatment of Celtic music and the “two solitudes” relationship
between Cape Breton’s fiddle tradition and the efforts to revive the
Gaelic language and song.