Music: it can be a way of learning about and understanding a new place; it can be a way of remembering home when away. It may be a source of identity, of connection, of memory, of inspiration. It can be a way to pass on stories and tradition, and a way to help sort out how what's known from other places may fit in a new home and landscape.

Those are all aspects and ideas of music which form background to the ideas Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr share in their book Wayfaring Strangers.

The musical journeys they trace travel from Scotland to Ulster in the north of Ireland to the shores of America and down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to the Appalachian Mountains in the American south. As they trace the journeys of emigrants tossed by the tides of history, economics, faith, family, and hope into travels to new lands, they invite the readers to see these travels through the prism of the music people brought with them and made up along the way. Many of these songs and tunes live on today in the work of contemporary folk and Celtic musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and others are ancestors of music made today.

Hanneke Cassell Trio, Celtic Connections 2015

That point is brought home in the many sidebars which appear throughout Wayfaring Strangers. Some add historic context to the main narrative, but most are comments -- Voices of Tradition, they are called --directly from musicians and scholars of music, expanding or offering counterpoint to the ideas of the text. Jean Redpath, Sheila Kay Adams, Len Graham, Doc Watson, and Cara Dillon are among those whose thoughts appear in the sidebars, and Dolly Parton contributes a thoughtful forward to the book.

Orr and Ritchie have first hand knowledge of these artists, and are well placed to illuminate the carrying stream of Celtic and Appalachian music. North Carolina-based Doug Orr is an educator -- president emeritus of Warren Wilson College -- who among other things founded the Swannanoa Gathering, a series of workshops where tradition bearers in music come to share their talents with students each summer. Scotland-based Fiona Ritchie is founder, host, and producer of the National Public Radio program Thistle and Shamrock, which features music from Celtic roots, and has been recognized for her work by being named an MBE by the Queen.

Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr, photo courtesy of the University of North Carolina Press

Wayfaring Strangers is divided into three major sections: Beginnings, Voyages, and Singing a New Song. There are stories of what it was like to make a life in Scotland two and three hundred years ago, and then in Ulster, and to travel across the wide ocean, and having arrived in North America to make a life in the hills and hollows of the Appalachians, in landscapes which to some of them must have looked very much like Scotland.

Wayfaring Strangers, Celtic Connections 2015

As Ritchie and Orr show in their narrative, the sidebars, and the many illustrations, all of this was accompanied by a deep connection to land, to home, and to music.

In one of the sidebars, Irish musician Nuala Kennedy reflects

"...If you have the gift of these songs with you, and you have the memory of them in your mind, it's like company for you in your life...the process of singing, and the process of remembering the words, it's a very powerful personal one. People who maybe couldn't remember all the words, they would appreciate being able to share them and to hear those songs again. So I'm sure that people who could sing and who could remember the songs were probably in demand in their new communities perhaps even more than they had been at home, I'd imagine."

The rich narrative of Wayfaring Strangers is added to by the twenty track CD which is included with the book, which comprises songs including Pretty Saro, Barbara Allen, Gypsy Davy, Shady Grove, and The Parting Glass, offered by artists including John Doyle, Dolly Parton, Doc Watson, and Pete Seeger. There is a section of resources at the end of the book as well, offering notes on the Voices of Tradition artists as well as the tracks on the CD, along with suggestions of sources for further reading and listening.

At the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, Scotland, in the winter of 2015 there was a further sharing of continuing stream of musical tradition: a concert featuring students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland directed by Phil Cunningham and Jenn Butterworth along with the band Twisted Pine, who are students of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as guest artists Qristina and Quinn Bachand from Canada, and the Hanneke Cassel Trio and Jenna Moynihan from the United States. Individually and in combination, through the evening the musicians ranged over the territory of the traditional musics of Ireland, Scotland, and the Appalachians, as well as their own compositions drawing that background. Rather than music playing as listeners walked in, there were selections of the interviews from the Voices of Tradition playing and being projected on a screen above the stage, along with images from the book. Along with the music shared through the evening, that proved an elegant and natural way to remind of the continuing connections in music explored in the book Wayfaring Strangers.

Jenna Moynihan, Celtic Connections 2015

Phil Cunningham, Celtic Connections 2015

Learn more:

Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia

Kerry Dexter is Music Editor at Wandering Educators. You may reach Kerry at music at wanderingeducators dot com.

You may find more of Kerry's work in National Geographic Traveler, Strings, Perceptive Travel, Journey to Scotland,and other places, as well as at her own site, Music Road.

All photos courtesy and copyright Kerry Dexter, except where noted