'Ulster-Scots Music' by Gordon Ramsey

[Ptarmigan]

Here's a very interesting site a session friend of mine, Gordon Ramsey, who incidentally is also a member of this Forum!, put together to promote 'Ulster Scots Music' as he sees it.

It is very informative & poses some rather interesting questions. e.g.:

An interesting point in the development of the latter {ED: Rock n’ Roll} is that the distinctive backbeat which characterised early Rn’B and Rock n’ Roll has often been attributed to Afro-American influences. Whilst Afro-American traditions undoubtedly had a massive influence on the development of these genres, a backbeat was not a strong feature of the Jazz, Boogie-Woogie or Plantation songs that preceded their development. These were characterised by more complex syncopated rhythms, which may ultimately owe much to the polyrhythmic complexity of African drumming traditions. For the origins of the simpler backbeat, it may make more sense to look to the Strathspey, and to a lesser extent, the Reel, which had used backbeats since they were introduced to the South by the massive Ulster-Scots immigration of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and which influenced Bluegrass, in which the accent is also on the offbeat . In the 21st century, the musical transference is reversing, as Ulster-Scots find something which speaks to them in the musics of America, and traditions which crossed the Atlantic, and were transformed by the voyage, return and are transformed again.

Ulster-Scots Music by Gordon Ramsey