Mary Jane Lamond

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #127 (December 2006/January 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Mary Jane Lamond

Gaelic Culture Lives

by Tom Nelligan

As the forces of technology and mass marketing move the world toward an ever more homogenized global culture, regional traditions are increasingly endangered. The Scottish Gaelic culture that came to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, with the immigrants of the late 18th and early 19th centuries encompasses one of North America's most distinctive and lively musical traditions. People such as Canadian singer and storyteller Mary Jane Lamond are keeping it alive and vibrant for future generations.

Over the past 10 years, Lamond has made what is perhaps an unlikely career out of collecting and presenting the traditional Gaelic songs of Cape Breton, singing them as often in rock clubs as folk venues. She's a thoughtful woman who grew up listening to rock, but she later became one of the most dedicated advocates of the Gaelic tradition, introducing the music to an audience far broader than the tiny percentage of North Americans who speak the language. The smooth, polished arrangements that frame her sweet, clear voice are mostly modern and pop-friendly, yet they unmistakably carry on the lively spirit of the past generations in songs of love, both romantic and rowdy, laments and historical narratives, and upbeat mouth music that was just for fun. In addition to singing the songs and telling the stories behind them, Lamond works to promote the Gaelic language and its music by teaching workshops, especially for young people.

Although her music is tightly focused on the traditions of Cape Breton, Lamond spent most of her childhood elsewhere. She was born in 1960 in Kingston, Ontario, into a family of Scottish descent who moved several times but never forgot their Nova Scotia roots. "I think there's something about being from Nova Scotia," she explained in a recent phone conversation from her Cape Breton home. "My parents lived most of their adult lives away from Nova Scotia, but we always took our vacations there, and they always referred to it as going home. So somehow that message gets through to you as a kid that none of those other places that we lived were really our home. It was just feeling like there was a real attachment to a geographic location and family.

[cover #127]