Aberdeen songsmiths create new musical legacy for city

Aberdeen musicians will create songs based on events that have been found in the city’s unique records.

Aberdeen-based musicians Davy Cattanach, Paddy Buchanan and Claire Hawes have written new music based on the city’s UNESCO recognised Burgh records, which date from 1398-1511, and offer a unique insight into life in medieval Scotland.

The Aberdeen registers are the most complete for any Scottish town and historians at the University of Aberdeen have led a project, in collaboration with the City Archives, to transcribe the handwritten entries and to open them to the world by making them available as the Aberdeen Registers Online.

Their research has already revealed that Aberdeen may have been the birthplace of Scotch whisky as they uncovered the earliest ever reference to a still for production of the drink (aquavite) in Scotland and demonstrated that a king stepped in to settle a dispute on piracy in Aberdeen.

One of the songs, ‘Brokin folkis’, tells the story of lawless people who are referenced in the Burgh Records through a court appearance of a man called Gilbert Litster who says that the ‘broken folks’ are living outside the town gates waiting to steal cloth.

A project is also underway looking at how the stories and characters of the registers might be incorporated into video games.

Dr Hawes was also part of a team of historians working on the registers. She said: ‘The Burgh Records offer us a unique glimpse into political and social life in Medieval Aberdeen and are unparalleled for any other Scottish city.

‘The challenge was in seeing if we could take academic historical research and use it in the creative process but it has worked well.

‘One of the most interesting aspects is that Davy and Paddy have positioned themselves at the perspective of the poorer people of the town – those who had to abide by the rules, rather than getting to make them.

‘It’s a group who are really difficult to uncover as a historian – a lot of the focus is on the burgesses who ran the town, simply because we have much more information about them.’