I wrote this 7 years ago but it still holds true:
A response to Mairi McFadyen’s blog post on GRIT: Mairi McFadyen nails much better than I ever could the second of three reasons I have always felt that the GRIT orchestra is special – ie the cultural context of it. The way Martyn had taken Scottish indigenous music like traveller’s song and ‘low’ culture and had brilliantly placed it over dance grooves and mixed it with a whole range of other musical components and so had taken that older “low”culture and reframed and refreshed it and placed it in a modern creative contemporary setting, and then when Donald Shaw and Greg Lawson had taken Martyn’s complex and nuanced project and placed it on a concert hall stage as confident scottish ‘high’ culture that cultural journey was somehow taken deservedly further. GRIT being featured in the EIF was another significant marker of that journey being completed and it feels that somehow in the process the way Scotland sees itself musically has been ever so slightly shifted yet again. The first and primary reason GRIT is special is of course the story of Martyn and his relationship with his music and his tradition, the way he became a master of traditional music,classical music, and electronic dance music, combined them to make this intensely personal, intensely Scottish and unique fusion, and the tragedy of his early loss, and the way the reception of the GRIT ORCHESTRA somehow further vindicates his vision, his genius, and his struggle over whether what he was doing was valid, of wider significances , and NOT a betrayal of the tradition. For me the third reason has yet, to my knowledge, to be clearly mapped out – so here is an attempt. The Venezuelan founder of El Sistema José Antonio Abreu claims that the symphony orchestra is a model for human society. While I can see what he is driving at I have always found this view a bit problematic because, despite the symphony orchestra and its musical output being one of humanity’s undoubted greatest achievements and it being a wonderful experience for young people , as an organisation of humans it doesn’t quite embody what many would see as the key elements needed for model for a wider society. Conventionally a symphony orchestra seems very hierarchical with one or two people (the conductor and composer) having almost total control over what everyone else does. This isn’t a problem when the objective is to produce symphonic music, but it is to me problematic as a vision for wider society. BTW my personal problem with symphonic music as a drummer was that often I needed to count 178 bars and then play 4 bars on timpani at the climax of the piece. Invariably I would lose count and get lost and miss my entry and end up not playing at all. I ditched classical music for other styles where the drummer generally played all the way through and didn’t have to count any bars rest! Anyway if we are going to pick large scale musical ensemble models for society I feel the GRIT Orchestra is arguably a better fit. This orchestra is musically multi-cultural in that it contains musicians from several very different musical traditions who make music in radically different ways and somehow Greg Lawson has brought them together in a way in which these different cultures and approaches are valued and respected and it works to make something greater than the sum of the parts. And despite Greg being the undisputed leader the decision making roles over what is and should be happening are spread out around the band, in a way that is collaborative and democratic. The different musical tribes in the GRIT ORCHESTRA bring very different skill sets, types of musical knowledge and music-making processes. This includes areas of real deep knowledge, professional experience and skill, and also areas where we are being asked to do less familiar things outside our comfort zones. As usual what follows is a shorthand generalisation which I hope you can forgive: The classical musicians are phenomenal at converting notated music precisely into sound and working cohesively and precisely under the control of a conductor from the score. The traditional musicians and singers have a lifetime of study in learning to reproduce melodies and songs from the tradition authentically with the unique groove, sound, ornamentation and inflection of Celtic traditional music. Often their normal daily practice doesn’t involve a lot of notated music , and learning is often more aural. The jazz musicians and groove players again do not always work with scores but have developed skills in improvisation and skills at performing different grooves and dance music styles. We also have a Gregorian Chant choir! I dont know much about their process only that they are named after Greg Lawson….. It is only when we work side by side like this that top level musicians from these different traditions can see how radically different our normal music making processes are from each other’s. All of us are masters of what we do and also in many ways beginners at some of what each other does. So this orchestra combines, values, and tolerates very different approaches, value systems, experiences, skill sets, strengths and weaknesses in a respectful and joyful way that enables all these very different musicians to work together towards a shared vision. To me that is a great model of what a society should be. And it is uniquely and unalterably Scottish. There are also the ‘process’ centred challenges of converting Martyn’s studio built music into something performed live. Large parts of this were done exceptionally well by Greg Lawson writing his orchestral score of Grit the album. But in some cases that wasn’t the end of the story. When Martyn made the album Grit he took acappella recordings of songs and chopped them up and placed them over electronic beats in the computer. So actually before the concert in Glasgow no one had actually performed GRIT live before – Martyn kind of built it. So Fiona Hunter singing Blackbird live over the orchestra had to do something Sheila Stewart never had to do. James MacKintosh, Iain Sandilands, and I on drums and percussion had to look at recreating the grooves and drum beats live, and the sonic, technical , and instrumental challenges of that and were very much equal partners with Greg in mapping that out and James and I as non classical players didn’t work from a score but from the album and made up our own parts. We also soon found out how unused to (and in my case bad) we are at following a classical conductor particularly at high pressure count ins. The final relevant story was the reaction the classical players had to the jazzers constantly interrupting rehearsals and making suggestions to Greg about changes to the arrangements, something totally normal for us but seemingly not normal practice in professional classical orchestras. I am not claiming this kind of multi-genre large ensemble hasn’t happened before, it has even happened on occasion in Scotland, but it is rare especially on this scale and at this level of ambition, and with this set of values. . There is something about Greg’s approach, his selection of musicians, and the way these overlapping skill sets are respected, valued and utilised, and also the overarching embrace of Martyn’s pan-musical vision and aesthetic, that makes this feel like another area in which this is a very special ensemble that lays out a very high quality inclusive example of uniquely Scottish contemporary music making. For those of us that knew Martyn it feels only right that his music should have led to this ensemble and the incredible energy and emotion being generated at the concerts.
