I took a mirror selfie in the plane bathroom on my way to Scotland, and I took another on the flight that carried me away more than a month later. My travel outfit is identical. But in the second photo, the brightness in my eyes, the confidence in my smile, and a more relaxed posture give a whisper of insight into what this trip gave me.
There is value in experiencing new cultures and exploring new places, this I knew. But somehow it didn’t occur to me until I watched the sunset over the tarmac in Boston that my own mind would be my primary company for the ensuing month. I will forever treasure the places I saw, the experiences I had, and the people I met, but learning to thrive alone was the greatest lesson of all.
The goal of my trip was to immerse myself in Scottish music. Upon my arrival to Edinburgh, I began exploring local bars and pubs. Many have nightly live music, including The White Hart Inn, which became my favorite pub in part due to its long history and connection to Robert Burns, a prominent Scottish writer and musician of the eighteenth century.
Later on I visited Sandy Bells, a historic pub and prominent folk music venue. Sandy Bells is a small, narrow, establishment, and listeners are crammed wall to wall. Musicians squeeze through the crowd, joining and departing from the performance at their leisure. Anyone seemed to be able to join in at any point. I found myself reminded of American jazz, both in the relaxed way the musicians interacted with one another and their ability to bounce off of one another as they played, communicating only through the music.
Perhaps my biggest exposure to Scottish music came when I travelled to Glasgow for the Celtic Connections festival. This annual festival showcases Celtic musicians from all over the world. I did my best to focus on Scottish performers, including Beth Malcolm, a new personal favorite who mixes modern pop with Scottish Gaelic folk. I also saw bigger names like Natalie McMaster and Transatlantic Sessions.
A highlight was a walking tour of local folk music sites in Glasgow, which started with a viewing of significant musical archives. I learned that Robert Burns and Fredrick Douglas were friends, and Burns became a staunch abolitionist as a result. Douglas shared traditional slaves’ work songs with Burns, which inspired some of Burns’ own songwriting. In American jazz and Scottish folk, both evolutions of this eighteenth century work music, one can detect similarities in phrasing, beat, and, perhaps most importantly, the pure emotion that oozes from the seams of these tunes.
I also took bagpipe lessons, through which I learned about the instrument itself, and its vast historical significance, including the evolution of bagpipes to suit the Scottish military. The drone note of a set of bagpipes sits somewhere between a B and a B flat–in other words, not a note that most western instruments can play or tune to. Because of this discrepancy, pipers used beeswax to change the size of the instrument's holes to tune the drone to a more suitable note when they began to serve as calling instruments in military bands. Nowadays, manufacturers can make adjustments to the bagpipes or individual players can use electrical tape to change the size of the holes.
This report barely scratches the surface of my time in Scotland, but the knowledge and perspective gained will last me a lifetime.
