Kristin Nord’s Book Review of Natalie MacMaster’s Cape Breton Aire

by Kristin Nord

Natalie MacMaster’s Cape Breton Aire: A Story of a Musical Life and Place
Published by MacMaster Music, Inc., available through her website, as well as at select bookstores.

Natalie MacMaster’s Cape Breton Aire: The Story of a Musical Life and Place would seek to introduce you to the influences of family, faith and natural beauty that have infused her music. And to capture the pieces that have made up this famous Cape Breton fiddler’s life she’s enlisted Eric Roth, a gifted photographer, and Eileen MacNamara, a prize-winning journalist. While Roth provides the visual frame, MacNamara has distilled many hours of MacMaster’s thoughts and observations.

MacMaster’s aim, she said in a telephone interview from Ontario, was to offer in fragments a sense of place and inspiration. As such the book functions as a tender family scrapbook and a photographic travelogue that delves into the world of this Cape Breton musician.

Her heritage stems not only from an august musical lineage that includes her beloved uncle, Buddy MacMaster, and a remarkable constellation of talented family members, but also from two highly spirited grandmothers who jigged tunes and instilled a love of God and music and great fun in the lives of their children. The Beaton/MacMaster families were poor in material wealth, but strong in musical genes and in spirit. These were — and remain —  Scots Catholic families that worship regularly and view the gifts bestowed upon them as gifts to be shared with their communities.

Children from these Cape Breton parishes often perform at church festivals when they are very young. For Natalie, her debut came at Glendale less than year after she’d begun playing her first ¾ size fiddle.

“By the time I picked up the fiddle, I felt as if I had nine years of experience already,” she recalls. “I had so many melodies in my head, I could hum a lot of tunes.”

Her parents encouraged her playing from the very start, transporting her to the halls and packing a blanket and a pillow in the backseat on the nights when they knew she’d be up late playing for a dance. Their behind-the-scenes guidance, Natalie will quickly tell you, kept her grounded; “If I was responsible to play at a concert, then I had to practice. My dad never made me take a gig, but if I took the gig I was going to have to take responsibility for it.”

They nurtured her musical education much as they had always done, through the music making that was part of daily life and through access to recordings that helped to refine her taste and her ear.

“The source of the music for me is not the books or the archives, it’s the house parties where the music was captured on tape,” she writes. “They are just gold, those tapes.”