NAFCo’s festival is paralleled by an international conference that will bring together scholars and researchers to explore the ways in which local roots have been transformed through transnational routes in the context of countries and communities that border the North Atlantic. Thus to be ‘local’ is also to be ‘global’. Blanket labels such as ‘Scottish fiddling’ are no longer sufficient. Scholars and performers need to know about lineage, context, and provenance – if it is Orcadian or Border, West Highland or North-East, Shetland or Cape Breton. The aim of the conference is to explore our understanding of the interrelatedness of fiddle and dance traditions, and how they are affected and transformed by processes of globalisation, to create fresh insights and new perspectives.

Papers will consider a wide range of topics including: fiddle and dance traditions in transformation; performance, place, and identity; centres and peripheries; mediation and cultural tourism; the role of the individual; socialisation and competition; tradition and innovation; dance and music interplay; and new research approaches and methods. The fact that many of our speakers are also accomplished performers is a great strength of the conference.

We welcome as our keynote speakers four leading scholars, who have contributed greatly to our understanding of the field. Dr Liz Doherty lectures in Irish traditional music at the School of Creative Arts in the University of Ulster, based at Magee Campus in the City of Derry. She is the Chair of the International Council for Traditional Music (Ireland) and a celebrated fiddler in the Donegal tradition. Her lecture will provide us with ‘A Guide to the Roots and Routes of Cape Breton Fiddling’, which is the tradition that she studied for her PhD. She is joined by another Irish scholar whose expertise is in dance.

Dr Catherine Foley (pictured left) directs the MA in Ethnochoreology and the MA in Irish Traditional Dance Performance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. A performer and a choreographer, she chairs Dance Research Forum Ireland and will take us to ‘The Roots and Routes of Irish Dance: Issues of Identity, Aesthetics and Representation’.

Our speaker from the USA has researched the fiddle both in Texas and in Norway. Chris Goertzen is Professor of Music History in the Department of Music, at the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, and plays the guitar. His concern is style as he leads us to find the ‘Routes to Roots for Texas Contest Fiddlers: Seeking the Aesthetics of Traditional Tunes through Modern Variation Techniques’.

Our final speaker from the island of Gotland in Sweden is Owe Ronström (see picture on right), who is Professor in Ethnology at Gotland University in Visby. Like his colleagues, he too embodies the artist-scholar paradigm, as a master fiddler and a broadcaster. In his paper he tackles both repertoire and ideology in the ‘Routes to the Roots of Swedish Fiddle Music Collections: The Changing Mindscapes of the Past.’