Music from the Dead: The Tune-Making of John MacDougall

Author

Robert Macdonald, Utah State University

Date of Award:

5-2009

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

English

Department name when degree awarded

Folklore

Committee Chair(s)

Jeannie B. Thomas

Committee

Jeannie B. Thomas

Committee

Lisa Gabbert

Committee

Patricia Gantt

Abstract

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia has been a stronghold of active and integrated community traditions of Scotch-Gaelic music and dance since it was settled by large numbers of Scottish emigrants in the nineteenth century. Though these emigrants brought with them an extensive store of tunes common to the Highlands of Scotland, the majority of them were carried in the collective oral memory. Consequently, the traditional Scottish repertoire of Cape Breton fiddlers steadily declined as generations of fiddlers who never learned to read or write music died. In the nearly two centuries that Scots have populated the island, there have been many gifted Cape Breton tune composers. Of these, certainly the most prolific is `old style' fiddler John MacDougall. To date his output numbers over forty thousand tunes. It is not just the staggering quantity of tunes however, that makes MacDougall's composing noteworthy, but his extraordinary claim that he does not write them himself. MacDougall insists that he simply records the tunes whole as they are given to him from the spirits of Cape Bretoners who have long since passed away. This paper examines the connection between MacDougall's tune `making' and the supernatural as an extension and a Christianized revision of a traditional Scottish motif that connects music making with fairylore. It suggests that MacDougall's modernized version of this motif serves to legitimize his large body of tunes to a community of fiddlers that, following in the footsteps of their forbearers, place enormous value on tune authenticity and correctness.

Checksum

8753052bf8ef566ed9ad2d667eee8ed2

Recommended Citation

Macdonald, Robert, "Music from the Dead: The Tune-Making of John MacDougall" (2009). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 414.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/414