Some friends of mine have a group called Crépuscule (French for twilight) and they have recently produced their own CD, Frontière (French for Border). Most of the music is in the Lowlands style. The CD features SSPs and Border Pipes as well as harp and cittern. It’s very good (except for the poetry reading geek on track 2, but ignore him). If anyone’s interested, here’s the link to their website where you can hear some sound files:
Yeah, the costumes … There’s not a large market for Scottish Lowlands music in Quebec. A lot of their business is medival banquets and similar events. For that sort of event, you look silly if you DON’T dress up.
But basically, music is what they do and they’re good at it. If you haven’t listened to the clips on their website yet you should.
These days I’m getting quite an education in Scottish music. Not just the instruments, but the tunes too. Some lovely stuff, once you get past ‘Scotland the Brave’.
Still, I don’t think I’ll be giving up the UPs just yet, although the temptation to play some Border pipes tunes on the UPs is strong.
