We’ve been talking to…Irene Watt

At Open Road we’re passionate about storytelling and giving people voice. We believe that understanding the past can inspire change in the here and now and help build a better future. We regularly have inspiring conversations with remarkable people through our work who are using storytelling to drive change. We’ve created We’ve been talking to…  to share these conversations – the learning and the inspiration. Let us know if there is anyone we should be talking to. 

Irene Watt: “The song is always personal” 

Tell us about who you are and the work you’re currently doing?

I’m an ethnomusicologist. I lead two choirs, one in Macduff in North Aberdeenshire and another in Stonehaven a small coastal town south of Aberdeen. We cover a wide range of music from folk and traditional to more modern styles. I also write and arrange music for the choirs to sing. 

We have just returned from the Orkney Science Festival where I gave a presentation on the importance of music and singing for health and wellbeing and the choirs performed. I also teach the clarsach, which is a Celtic harp and the oldest instrument in Scotland. 

I’m currently working on a suite of songs about Gamrie Bay in Gardenstown a small coastal village in north Aberdeenshire where I live. These songs explore the local landscape and stories including the Battle of the Bloody Pits which took place in 1004 when the Vikings invaded Gamrie Bay. I’m writing from the perspective of the local women. Legend has it that because they didn’t have any weapons, they filled their knitted stockings and socks with stones and used them as slings to fight off the invaders. They won the battle. There are three mass graves where Viking bodies were buried, and the leaders’ heads were cut off and set into the walls of St. Johns Kirk by the locals. To this day you can still see three holes in the ruins of Kirk in Gardenstown and one of the Viking skulls is in the Banff Museum.

We’re living in a time of rapid change. What story from the past do you think is important to preserve? 

I think one of the most important kinds of stories to preserve are the ones that are hidden in plain sight such as the stories carried through lullabies. They may seem like simple bedtime songs, but they hold powerful reflections of people’s lives, emotions and the societies they lived in.

When I was doing my PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aberdeen I focused on lullabies and discovered just how much they can reveal. For example, in the northeast of Scotland there’s a lullaby called Hishie Ba, I’m your Ma, where a young woman sings to a baby she never wanted. The lyrics express how the child has kept her from enjoying the freedoms she once had, things like “loupin dykes,” balls and weddings. It hints at a situation where she was likely forced into a sexual encounter and she is left to bear the consequences alone. Through the lyrics, you can sense her resentment and pain. That song is a window into gender inequality, social expectations and the emotional cost of shame.

And it’s not unique to Scotland. When I compared lullabies across the world I found this kind of honesty everywhere. In some places mothers sing about preparing their children for war or hardship. In Jewish lullabies from the Holocaust mothers sang to their babies as they faced unimaginable fear, offering love and comfort even in the darkest moments. In Aboriginal Australian culture lullabies are used to pass down knowledge of the land and in Indonesia some lullabies contain warnings about tsunamis—life-saving knowledge sung softly to a child.

These songs might not make it into official history books, but they are history. They tell us about how ordinary people, especially women who are so often left out of the record, lived, felt, resisted and hoped. In a time of rapid change, I think preserving these stories matters because they remind us of our shared humanity. They connect us across generations and across cultures.

Lullabies might be quiet, but the stories they carry are anything but small.

I also find a lot of inspiration in local culture. During the Covid pandemic I was commissioned by Stonehaven Folk Club to write a song that captured the sense of place in this northeast corner of Scotland. I wrote Calloused Hands, a song about my grandmother who was a traditional fisherman’s wife. It tells of the tough life she led: shelling mussels at four in the morning, taking fish around the countryside to sell or trade for essentials like bread and eggs. 

I always try to incorporate storytelling into my songs. That’s how I bring them to life through music that interprets and carries those stories forward. 

What’s on your mind right now? 

Most of the people in my choirs are older people who are retired or approaching retirement. I see every week how valuable choir sessions are for them. There’s such a sense of satisfaction and I love watching people grow more confident in their own voice. The social aspect is just as important. The two choirs I run depend on one another, support each other and really come together as a community. For me, this is important work.

I also enjoy the process of finding songs, arranging them and bringing the past to life. I want to keep doing what I’m doing, but I also enjoy mixing it up with other projects like being invited to festivals to speak or run workshops. 

Looking three years into the future, what changes would you like to see? 

I’d like to see a greater recognition of the importance of music education especially in the early years. By the time children reach secondary school it’s often too late to introduce music in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, music is usually the first thing to be cut from school budgets. 

I’ve worked on many music projects in schools and what I’ve found is that music can pull everything together. It gives a social context to historical facts. So often school subjects can feel impersonal, but songs are never impersonal. They are always somebody’s story.