Calling A’Gairm

Calling – A Gairm is drawn from an extensive archive of recordings made over a three year period by Shona Illingworth of native Gaelic speaker Donnie Mackay, who spent his early years on Berneray, Outer Hebrides, Scotland in the 1940-50s. Donnie learnt to speak English on moving to Skye, an English speaking island across the water, at the age of 7 in the 1950’s. Calling – A Gairm explores the internal and cultural conflict of existing in an English speaking world where memory exists in Gaelic, and the impact this has on individual memory and sense of self.

The work explores how the narrative structures of memory are caught between two languages through the development of a complex multi-ligual audio composition, where linguistic clarity gives way, in the complex overlay of language, to expressive vocalised sound. The work traces profound cultural and historical ironies in the memory of a Gaelic speaking boy, who learns the words to a cowboy song ‘Old Faithful’, by listening to it through the bones of his finger placed in the groove of a record. Learning the English song verbatim, without understanding the words, his recital unknowingly includes the sound of a glitch in the vinyl of the record. Echoing the spin of the record, a large video projection shows the man’s head rotating as he recalls this event. As his words repeat, cut and distort, the song is heard sung over and over. Calling – A Gairm sets out to evoke the isolating space of an internal conflict between a dominant language and a language continually under threat.