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

Of course as a young fiddler, Natalie said she never dreamed that her playing could be parlayed into a full-time career, much less make her a global phenomenon. But she knew as a young person that talent would not be enough. Overcoming stage fright, and the early injuries caused by tension were obstacles that she had to conquer. Hard work, determination, and openness to the world around her were the skills she would need to get to ever-higher levels. She touches on these, as well as her challenges now as a professional musician with a growing family, with refreshing candor.

The timing had been right to introduce Cape Breton music to the rest of the world — but one of her early champions, Mike Denney, who helped present her in festivals throughout the United States and who now divides his year between Belle Cote and Portland, ME, watched her hone her stagecraft skills. Natalie “was like a sponge, absorbing and responding to everything,“ he said but she was also exceedingly shy. While the MacMasters in private are dry-witted and hilarious — it was a leap for Natalie to see that she could show that side of herself on stage, he added.

Just minutes from the MacMaster house in Troy is the stately sanctuary where Natalie’s family worships. Beyond that the string of towns that were once Gaelic speaking settlements. Roth trains his camera primarily on the sights along Route 19 from Troy north to Judique and Mabou, and further, through Glenora, Dunvegan, Inverness, and the Margarees. When locals hear Gaelic in the fiddle, it refers to how the music has been shaped by the language. While people from off-island may study this style and try to emulate it, it’s rare to find a non-native fiddler who makes it his or her own.

“The music is like the people and the land — strong, powerful, and rugged. It all blends. It all matches, “ she says.

As the photographic journey progresses, fans who’ve followed Natalie’s career may find themselves leaping to fill in the spaces of the narrative that have been left partially to the imagination:

There’s the faded sign to Charlie’s Music Store in Cheticamp, where Natalie delivered her first cassette at the age of 16; and one of the annual concerts sponsored by the Cape Breton Fiddler’s Association, where she and so many like her cut their teeth as performers and where you see, in the baby-faced Douglas Cameron, the same seriousness of purpose that presages a serious musical career. There are wonderful renderings of Natalie firing up the dance sets at Glencoe Mills, and performing at Celtic Colours. And Natalie’s favorite — a portrait of Buddy, at home and at ease. “Eric really captured his sweetness,” she says.

As the tunes Cape Breton musicians play follow the twists and turns of lives and landscape, so too do the familiar sights of the island’s history and bounty further enhance the repertoire. They emanate from homes and dimly lighted church halls. They are found in the Cape Islander listing on the shore after the lobster season, or in the vestiges of the mining towns’ red rows, now sheathed in vinyl siding. They are seen and felt in the island’s changing light and mercurial weather and in its forests as well as along a gritty Sidney street.

Roth juxtaposes these iconic images with scenes depicting the lives of Natalie’s immediate and extended families. The MacMaster house still brims “with music and dancing and people laughing and talking;” the fiddle still rests on top of the piano in the family music room, in case a visitor might like to share a tune.

While Natalie now lives on a farm in Ontario, one imagines the life she and her husband, Donnell Leahy, have chosen for their family will not be averse to change but will remain faithful to the sources of who they are and where they came from. With their marriage, yet another music lineage has been combined and is now appearing up in the temperaments of their children. Mary Frances, their oldest, is showing interest in playing the fiddle; could there be another version of the story thus far?

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

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