File: mackenziesheila06-oh-womanfiddling_M.mp3
Speakers
SM – Sheila MacKenzie
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
KP: Did you experience any sort of resistance yourself to your wanting to play?
SM: I definitely didn't meet any resistance, just because I think – Around the time that I was learning to play and starting to play was the same time Natalie MacMaster was really becoming known, and along with a few others, the Brenda Stubberts. And peole like that were becoming more commonly known. So I think it was just more accepted at that point that women could play just as well. I think a couple of reasons that women weren't encouraged was because of the association with fiddlers back in the day, of fiddlers and drinking, where the fiddler got paid with drinks a lot of the time. So I think a lot of the fiddlers had a bit of a problem (laughs) with drinking, or at least that was the perception. And of course that wasn't something: that women were to – were ever to be seen drinking or drunk, or anything like that. Another reason though too, and I can appreciate it myself, in that – Women had their jobs at that point in time. Women looked after the home, and looked after the kids, and they did all the cooking and the cleaning. And the men went and did their thing, and they came home and supper was ready, and if they had to go play they didn't have to worry about anything. Well the women couldn't really be goin' out and takin' off some night to go play because the husband wouldn't know what to do (laughs) with all these kids at home and all this work to be done: and not just two or three kids: twelve and fourteen. That was just the woman's place to be was at home lookin' after everything and not out runnin' the roads. And I can appreciate that. It's a little easier today, but as a woman who works full time, you have a child, and you're playin' here there and everywhere, and you still have laundry to do and supper to make. I can appreciate how it would be difficult.