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Festival And Play Celebrate Shetland Musician

The extraordinary story of Thomas Fraser, a Shetland fisherman and musician, has been turned into a play by the National Theatre of Scotland. At his home in Burra Isle, Fraser became a follower of American blues and country music, which he was able to hear on short-wave radio.

He went on to develop his own unique singing and playing style and recorded thousands of country and blues songs on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. After his death in 1978, the tapes lay untouched for almost 25 years. When his grandson found them, he realised their importance and in 2002 a CD was issued, with several more to follow. At the same time, the first of a series of annual festivals celebrating his life was held in his home community. The interest that this generated exceeded all expectations. In 2006, the Observer's music magazine published a four-page article about him; later, the BBC made a television documentary about his life. Critics regard his story as one of the most remarkable in recording history.

The National Theatre of Scotland realised that his life would make a fascinating piece of theatre. Orkney-based musician and author Duncan McLean was commissioned to write it and the production features the Lone Star Swing Band, in which he plays. The play, Long Gone Lonesome, has been touring Scotland over recent weeks and it has attracted warm praise. Joyce McMillan, writing in the Scotsman, said that it reflected the need to ‘honour and protect the kind of unsung grassroots creativity that Thomas Fraser represented' and was the ‘polar opposite' of today's conceptual work that may grab headlines but does not involve craft or skill'. The Guardian's Mark Fisher said that ‘with its understated championing of art for art's sake, it is both a defiant riposte to the cult of celebrity and a yodelling hoedown in its own right'. The play's tour comes to an appropriate conclusion in Burra Isle in the first week in November, when it will be performed as part of the 8th Thomas Fraser Memorial Festival.

Several of the musicians attending the festival come from as far afield as Nashville. One of them is Chris Scruggs, grandson of legendary bluegrass singer Earl Scruggs. There's more about Thomas Fraser and the festival here.

Published: 02/11/2009