Why the Scottish Highland Games and Festival is Starting to Bore Me
Sun, 06/29/2008 - 02:31 — Bobbo
My dad's parents were both Scottish immigrants and my mom's Scottish ancestors go back to before the American Revolution.
I think Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world, though it is not a warm cuddly beauty. The Highlands will take your breath away, but the weather can be dangerous and when the mists come down, it's all to easy to take a misstep and fall off a cliff.
Still, I'll watch just about any movie set in the Scotland just to help me remember the one time Estelle and I visited. So why did my annual trek to the biggest Scottish fest in Illinois seem like such a chore this year? I'm not even sure, but maybe its the ersatz nature of so much it. I guess I've grown weary of the cheesy tartan plush toys, the t-shirts about boozing it up and the godawful food they serve.
Don't get me wrong. The sound of the pipes and the look of the tartan on the human body still stir something within me, but something is missing.
You would think that somewhere in the vast vendor's tent there would have been one book table that talked about the modern Celtic nations. Instead there were volumes about clan tartans and a few history books that mostly stopped somewhere in the 18th century... as if people still wandered the glens trying to scare the Sassanach away with their bagpipes. "Sassanach" is a nasty ethnic slur for the English that comes from the now nearly extinct Scottish Gaelic language.
I was so turned off I even skipped the tossing of the caber which really is a cool athletic event where burley lads and lassies toss a huge thick pole for distance and accuracy.
I was reminded of the time I took my daughter to Disneyland and walked down Main Street...an experience which felt like something out of the Twilight Zone, where everything looks "normal", but feels phony as a $3 bill.
I think that some exposure to the "real" Scotland would benefit us Yanks. Scotland's powerful labor movement has resulted in a plethora of social benefits that we can only dream of over here. The National Health Service which covers all of the UK is probably the most prominent of these.
The political culture of Scotland is very different from our cut-throat individualism. Scotland's political culture is more similar to its Scandinavian neighbors who believe that society functions best when everyone is guaranteed a basic standard of living.
The two biggest Scottish parties are the Scottish Nationalists and the Labour Party. Both of these are social democratic in outlook and would be in the far left of US politics. In Scotland, they are the mainstream. Scotland also has a Green Party and some other left wing groups. The Conservative Party (or Tories as they are usually called) is weak compared to our Republican Party and has had little influence for quite a while.
I'm not suggesting that Scotland is free of social problems. There is depressing poverty...especially in the Glasgow area. Child poverty is a serious problem as is chronic unemployment. Violent crime fueled by booze and lack of opportunity make some areas of the country especially dangerous for young people. There is racism and ethnic conflict that goes back to the old Orange vrs. Green wars of yesteryear. When the Rangers play the Celtics in football the football hooligans can make life very unpleasant.
I think the difference between us and Scotland is that the Scottish people seem to have a greater commitment to improving their country and solving its problems. We're more inclined to look out only for ourselves as individuals. Our pretensions of patriotism seem to only come alive when we are making war on somebody, usually with little moral justification.
Besides the general lack of interest in the real Scotland from Scottish-Americans, there is only a superficial interest in the history of the Scots in America. For example, quite a few African Americans have Scottish names that go back to slavery times and come from the names of the Scottish slave masters and overseers. Isn't this part of our Celtic history also?
When I used to take my daughter to her Scottish dance classes I would quietly listen to some (not all) of the other parents pass the time by discussing their racial prejudices as if it was the birthright of every Scottish-American to be some kind of white supremacist.
This is especially embarrassing because the KKK adopted some Scottish traditions, I think largely because so many Scots did emigrate to Dixie. There is an entire book written just about the Highland Scots of North Carolina. My mother's people were among them but as far as I know, none of them had any connection to the KKK. In fact one of my North Carolina cousins was a civil rights activist. Whew!
According to a Yale musicologist, the African American music that has come down to us as gospel has some of its roots in the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
Hell, I am a Celto-maniac and I didn't know that until this week. Doh!
It's also obvious to me that the popularity of today's Celtic music can be partially traced to the integration of African American R&B as well as the sounds of contemporary Afro-Pop. One of the great street musician acts of Glasgow is a group consisting of 2-3 African drummers and a guy playing the bagpipes in full kilt. Talk about World Music!
Speaking of music, the only thing that saved the Illinois Highland Games and Scottish Festival for me was the Celtic music of Searson, a Canadian group of three sisters, their dad and an unrelated drummer. They rocked out with a fiddler who could get all the Standing Stones of Scotland dancing .
I wrote to the organizers of the Scottish Festival to get Searson back next year. If they do, I might even brave the sea of tartans to hear them again.
Maybe I'll even get off my fat Scottish-American ass and raise some of the issues I've raised here. Now that would be a bonnie thing to do.
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It's the troubles that cause the rebels.
