File: mackenziesheila06-oh-youngfiddlers_M.mp3
Speakers:
SM – Sheila MacKenzie
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
SM: There's definitely a lot less older fiddlers out. You'd go to the ceilidh in Monticello on Sunday night and you'd have George [MacPhee] and you'd have a couple of other older fiddlers maybe, and then some of the younger ones, and Peter Chaisson would be there. But now it tends to be a younger crowd that may be going out at some of them.
KP: To play?
SM: To play, yeah. There's a lot less interaction between some of the younger players that I can think of and some of the older ones like Peter and them. They're not exposed to them, they don't even maybe know them. So they're maybe not getting the chance to learn from them as much as like when I – When I played, Angus McPhee would be at everything. And you'd get a few stories out of him or you'd get tunes, and even just to watch an older fiddler play. Like Angus he used to play the older way, when they'd play one tune for an entire figure of a set, which is I think how I learned Homeward Bound, because he'd play that all the time over and over and over. But those types of people are starting to pass, or they don't play any more. So the younger people aren't gettin' to see them, which is kind of too bad. I find, like I was saying before, people – The audience seems to need more singing now than before. So whereas before you'd have probably 75% fiddling at a ceilidh or something like that, now you're getting almost, if not 50/50: 60/40, where it's almost 60% singing, as opposed to being more fiddle than singing.