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With news from New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Washington DC’s Tiny Desk Concerts and a short home run tour for my trio next month.
“Surplus wealth is a sacred trust, which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community”
Andrew Carnegie
March 22nd, 2019 - The grand entrance of Union Station, Washington DC opens directly onto the National Mall, which hosts memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln, as well as to Washington himself. Overlooking it is Capitol Hill, which we can see, as we emerge onto Massachusetts Avenue with our guitars and accordions strapped to our backs. The Mall is flanked on opposite sides by The White House, and by one of the world’s great cultural institutions and archives, The Smithsonian Institute.
I’ve been here once before, in the steamy summer of 2003, at the invitation of the Smithsonian, for its annual Folklife Festival. Back then I’m part of a Scottish delegation of around 200 traditional musicians, storytellers and artisan craftspeople. We’re in the company of 200 folks from Appalachia, and another 200 from Mali, who, it has to be said, are bearing the heat with rather more style and grace than the pasty-faced Scottish delegation. Several of us have already collapsed with exhaustion in close to 100 °C heat and 80 % humidity.
I recall my two weeks there as a joyous, expansive, transformative time, peppered with unforgettable moments of international connection: the legendary Ali Farka Touré in an anodyne hotel corridor jamming with Kevin Macleod, mandolin player with Scottish dance band The Occasionals; a crew of Malian women, nomadic Tuareg singers, leaping up to join Ishbel McCaskill of Lewis on a Gaelic waulking song; finding my own rhythmic space on a parking lot roof, singing Scots dance songs amongst a dozen Appalachian old timers; and squeezed into a lift beside the amazing Oumou Sangaré, perhaps the most regal human I’ve ever encountered.
It’s 16 years on and the World, and the USA (not to mention the UK), feels different: less expansive, less connected, less open. And yet here we are in America, rather unexpectedly, me and Steven and Inge, at the invitation of another great cultural institution, The Carnegie Hall, New York City. We’ll play there tomorrow, March 23rd, as part of a series entitled Migrations. But for now, after a four hour Amtrak adventure, we’re heading to NPR (National Public Radio) HQ, just a short walk from Capitol Hill.
NPR is home to Tiny Desk, a legendary series of office-based short concerts, which NPR films and distributes online. Many of our musical heroes have played these gigs. If we’re excited about playing Carnegie Hall, we can’t quite believe our luck with Tiny Desk either.
Here’s what we played, live in Washington DC. Enjoy!
Ophelia
I Burn But I Am Not Consumed (yes, we got out alive)
King of Birds
And as for The Carnegie Hall? Well, if Trump represents the worst in what Scotland’s exiles have gifted to the world (he speaks very loudly about his half Scottish heritage), and what business wealth can bestow, then Andrew Carnegie represents something else. Born in Dunfermline in Fife in 1835, he was the son of a handloom weaver. When the family became impoverished, at a time of widespread crop failure and starvation in many parts of Scotland, the family immigrated to Pennsylvania. There he began work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill. But he had access to books and learning on account of a free library established by the enlightened mill owner. He read what he could and quickly stood out as bright and ambitious. He was offered work as a railway telegraph operator, a working experience which proved invaluable to his later success investing in the burgeoning trans-continental railway system, in bridge building projects, and, above all else, in steel manufacture. He became one of the wealthiest industrialists ever, with assets of close to $100 billion.
No industrialist of any time has an entirely clean sheet (which of us do now, eh?). Capitalism is dirty. But Carnegie held a deep-seated belief that hoarding is inhumane and immoral. He gave away 90% of his wealth in his lifetime. Never forgetting the impact of his own working class access to education, he funded the establishment of around 3000 free public libraries, the first of which was in his birthplace of Dunfermline (he founded Edinburgh Central Library too). He invested in schools, colleges, music halls, and scientific laboratories. He built an observatory, opposed American colonialism, and established an endowment to promote international peace. Today the endowment legacy in his name is still vast.
He was a supporter of the Republican Party, by the way… changed days indeed.
With all this in mind, it was a pretty big deal for the three of us to perform in New York’s Carnegie Hall, not only because it’s one of the most beloved and prestigious venues in the world, but because it represents something about the best that our people might gift to the world. It speaks of community, connection, and the sharing of both life’s joys and hardships. All the more so, when the concert series at which we performed is called Migrations, and is rooted in the story of New York, of America, as a place built upon flight from persecution and the hope of sanctuary.
My heartfelt thanks to Rosanne Cash, Grammy ward winning songwriter, feminist and political activist (and daughter of the legendary Johnny Cash), who invited us to be part of her curated Migrations series at Carnegie Hall. She is proud of her Fife heritage too (her Cash ancestors were from Falkland), and she carries it generously into the world.
Meantime, my next four gigs with Steven and Inge are closer to home - not in Fife, I’m afraid - just across the water in Dundee at The Gardyne Theatre. We’re at the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock, from which Trump’s mother Mary Ann Macleod sailed in 1930. And we’re south and north, at Tait Hall, Kelso, in the Scottish Borders, a place of erstwhile weavers, and at Universal Hall in Findhorn, a venue that promotes peace and alternative sustainable ways of living.
Hope to see some of you there.
Take care,
Karine x
LIVE SHOWS
KARINE POLWART TRIO
MAY 16 : FINDHORN - UNIVERSAL HALL - TICKETS
MAY 17 : DUNDEE - GARDYNE THEATRE - TICKETS
MAY 18 : KELSO - TAIT HALL - TICKETS
MAY 19 : GREENOCK - BEACON ARTS - TICKETS
JULY 14 : FOLK BY THE OAK - TICKETS
AUG 02 : CAMBRIDGE FOLK FESTIVAL - TICKETS
AUG 16 : FOLK EAST - TICKETS
AUG 17 : PURBECK VALLEY FOLK FESTIVAL - TICKETS
AUG 18 : BEAUTIFUL DAYS - TICKETS
KARINE POLWART'S SCOTTISH SONGBOOK LIVE
NOV 14 : ABERDEEN - MUSIC HALL - TICKETS
NOV 15 : PERTH - CONCERT HALL - TICKETS
NOV 16 : EDINBURGH - USHER HALL - TICKETS
NOV 27 : LONDON - THE BARBICAN - TICKETS
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