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Fair Isle's marine environment and music on Radio 3 this Saturday, 16th May. 14 May 2009 ON RADIO 3 THIS WEEK EMPTY OCEAN: BETWEEN THE EARS: Saturday 16th May 2130
Radio 3 came to Fair Isle in March to make a programme with Lise about a song written a couple of years ago with composer and producer Damian Montagu from London on the first leg of his Ocean Tracks project: a song with lyrics Lise based on the The Halibut Fisher’s Saturday Night: a poem by Paulo Dante from Unst about his grandfather the halibut fisherman, and times when the mighty halibut could be found in the seas around Shetland.
In the lifetime of the old fisherman, the landscape of fishing has completely changed:
It doesn’t surprise me, no-one has hauled
Anything so majestic from these waters in the 30 years since.
It’s an empty ocean out there,
And there are precious few men left, like this
Who might remember where to start looking.
This is a subject close to Fair Isle’s heart, as we sit in the middle of what used to be fertile fishing grounds, pressing the government on the need to understand and manage this environmental and economic resource. In the meantime, the cliffs empty of seabirds who can’t find fish for their young and in a wider context, the commercial fisherman try to adapt by managing bigger boats and sailing further and further, dredging new depths and negotiating high seas and quotas in search of their living.
Radio 3 senior producer Jessica Isaacs brought Damian back to Fair Isle to make a programme in music, sound, poetry and conversation: a non-journalistic approach to highlighting this Shetland’s waters. For the programme they interviewed Deryk Shaw and Nick Riddiford, Stewart Thomson senior and junior and Anne Sinclair about the seabird populations, the changes in fishing, marine protection and history, they caught the sea crashing in at Skadan and they made a new recording of the song with voice and accordion.
The original track can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/lisesinclair
LULLABY IDA MIRKENIN on LATE JUNCTION: Thursday 14th 2315
Ahead of the programme, Late Junction are playing Lise’s setting of Vagaland’s poem Lullaby Ida Mirkenin from Ivver Entrancin Wis, with Chris Stout, Catriona McKay and Wendy Weatherby.
Lise Sinclair is a poet, composer and musician steeped in her home landscape and traditions. The play between poetry, lyrics and music is equally familiar ground: she was one of an international group of poets and musicians who wrote a concert of new music for TheMusic of Language ~ Edinburgh Book Festival 2008 (Scottish Poetry Library and Literature Across Frontiers) and was invited to the Estonian Täiskuu Poetry Festival last September. This year, after the Shetland Folk Festival she is going to festivals in Helsinki and Bremen with poetry and songs. She was with Fiddlers Bid at Celtic Connections in the packed Concert Hall in Glasgow with Shetland dialect and songs — the sound of Shetland fiddle music has become synonymous with Shetland identity the world over, there is something new happening here with Shetland’s voice.
Contact:
Lise Sinclair lisesinclair@btinternet.com 01595 760229
Deryk Shaw fairisle.birdobs@zetnet.co.uk 01595 760258
Nick Riddiford nick.riddiford@lineone.net 01595 760250
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