Natalie macmaster

Celtic music is, admittedly, a small genre of music, and although it has its own set of "superstars", it has yet to produce its first crossover star, someone who attracts the notice of fans of other genres. It is very likely that the first person to achieve this may be a Canadian fiddler named Natalie MacMaster.

MacMaster, who is from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, plays two hundred fifty to three hundred sold out concerts a year for an evergrowing number of fans and shows no signs of slowing down or even peaking. Not yet thirty years old, she seems to have it all. She is beautiful, personable, has both feet firmly planted on the ground, and above all, is not merely talented, but gifted. Her "In My Hands" album went gold and "My Roots Are Showing", her last U.S. release, was nominated for a Grammy, although it did not win. Add to this two Junos, (Canada's Grammy), and a long list of other awards and it adds up to a a major achivement in a difficult field. But why has this young woman garnered so many accolades?

The music she plays is called Celtic, but Celtic is really nothing more than folk music and folk music is, as its name implies, music about "folks", the ordinary people. Born in the towns, villages and farming communties of Scotland and Ireland, refined in their pubs and at their dances, it made its way to Cape Breton, a small island populated by people of Scottish descent, but with a generous sprinkling of Irish and French as well. They added their own tunes and their own techinques and came up with a sound distinctly unique, but still Celtic in its roots. Rather than the "formal" style of Scotland and Ireland, with each note sounded clearly, the Cape Breton style was rawer, the notes blending more, overlapping,(MacMaster calls it "playing dirty"), becoming more of an emotional sound.

And into this musical melting pot, on June 13th, 1972, Natalie MacMaster was born in the Cape Breton town of Troy. Music was part of her life almost from the start. She remembers as a young child lying down in front of the radio on pillows, listening to the music until she would fall asleep. At age five, she was stepdancing, and was given her first fiddle at the age of nine, and according to her music teacher, she was "literally able to play a tune the first time she had a fiddle in her hands." The next year, only ten years old, and "a very shy little girl" according to her mother, she played her first concert, accompanied by her aunt on a piano. For the next number of years, she played locally, at small concerts and festivals. By sixteen, she had earned enough from these concerts to pay for the recording of her first album, "Four On the Floor". Selling the album at concerts as she played up and down Canada's East Coast, she began to attract a following. Still playing "part-time", she released her second album, two years later, while in college.(She has a teaching degree.) "Road to the Isle", again financed by MacMaster's concert earnings, garnered her more acclaim and a wider following, cumulating in recording contract.

Any fears that MacMaster's music would have only a small following were put to rest when she released "No Boundaries", a widely accaimed album expanding and mixing both MacMasters music and traditional celtic sound with more modern seasoning. The reception guaranteed more MacMaster releases. If anyone feared that MacMaster was planing to abandon her traditonal roots, her next release "Fit As a Fiddle" reassured them. Totally traditional in scope, the music glides easily between lively jigs and reels to poigant waltes and airs. To me, her playing reaches a height on this recording that transcends anything she had done before, her excellent work on "No Boundaries" notwithstanding. If it can be said an album can be pure fun to listen to, as opposed to "merely" enjoyable, "Fit As A Fiddle" qualifies. This is truly MacMaster at her best. "In My Hands", MacMasters most popular album to date, was a continuation of the experminting with expanding the borders of celtic music she began in "No Boundaries", and in a departure from what she has done in the past, for the first time, she uses her own voice for the title track. Not singing so much as a chant, (Cape Breton Rap as it were)it is a tribute to the magic she finds in her fiddle. A wonderful collaboration between MacMasters fiddle and the beautiful voice of blue grass singer Alison Kraus resulted in "Get me Through December", a song that make the country western charts. Her most recent release is the Grammy nominated "My Roots Are Showing" (actually released prior to "In My Hands" in Canada and the United Kingdom), another traditional album that again challenges anyone who would dismiss Celtic Music as a lesser genre. Each year, each concert, each album, more and more people are discovering the magic of Natalie MacMaster. She has an offical web site, and unofficial site, a "Yahoo" fan club, and despite this she is remarkably unchanged. She is still "Nat" to her friends, "Natalie" to her fans, and happily brags about her car with the "seven disc CD player."

She has gathered enough recognition that her native Nova Scotia makes sure that a shot of her performing is included in their "Come Visit Nova Scotia" travel commerical, but she has not yet achieved the recognition she deserves, but it will come. Write that name, Natalie MacMaster, down and remember it. You will hearing a lot more about and from this amazingly talented young woman.