In the age of the manufactured TV pop star, ROB ADAMS meets an outstanding talent who feels a deep connection with traditional music

When Emily Smith opened her 15-minute spot at the Young Traditional Musician final with her unaccompanied Nithsdale Ballad earlier this year, I made the mental note: "She's got it."
This isn't to suggest extraordinary prescience or presumption on my part. I didn't mean she had won first prize - it's the judges' unenviable task to pick a winner on these occasions, and this year's competition, held during Celtic Connections in January, presented a very strong field indeed.
Although, as it turned out, Emily did win, the X-factor I heard was the
tradition at work, that sense of music and song coming, not just from the heart, but from, well, where exactly? Up from the soil through the soles of the feet? Maybe.
The enthusiastic response to Emily's singing has been fairly general among the folknoscenti. Sheena Wellington, never one to miss an opportunity to promote young talent, but equally discerning as to the extent of her
enthusiasm, said exactly the same thing. As did Margaret Bennett, whose
story featured on this page on Tuesday, and just about everyone else I've spoken to.
So, where did this remarkably self-possessed young woman from near
Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, who claims no family musical heritage, get her special talent from? The soles of her feet may well have some bearing on the matter.
Piano lessons from the age of seven schooled her in classical music and have provided a grounding in musical arrangement and song accompaniment. Then the arrival, out of the blue, of an accordion for Christmas when she was 14, opened the door to playing traditional music. Before that, however, dancing to the Irish music that, due to the large numbers of migratory workers,
proliferates in her area, gave her a feel for jigs and reels.
"My mum's a dance instructor so, inevitably, I got involved, too," she says.
"Until the accordion arrived, though, playing traditional music hadn't
occurred to me at all. I'd hear my parents' tapes of Aly Bain & Phil
Cunningham and the Boys of the Lough in the car, but I wasn't what you'd call surrounded by it."
Encouraged to take lessons on the accordion, rather than teach herself as she'd assumed she'd do, she soon found herself playing in a dance band at school and in another band, Koda, at weekends.
The first time she sang in public was in an Easter concert with the school choir.
"It wasn't a traditional song - it was a pop cover, True Colours by Cindi Lauper. After I sang it, everybody was like, Oh, Emily's a singer, too, and I got shoved to the front of the band. It was good because we were busy - we still work regularly; we're going to Prague soon - and it really built up my confidence singing with a big band with accordions and other instruments behind me."
It was when she enrolled on the RSAMD's traditional music course that she really became aware of traditional singing, however.
"Until then I'd been playing mostly Irish tunes, but when I started to hear people like Jeannie Robertson, Lizzie Higgins, and the Stewarts of Blair on the academy's archive recordings, it really opened my eyes," she says. "I really like Karine Polwart and Kate Rusby of the younger generation and
singers like Elspeth Cowie and Alison McMorland, who's my tutor on the
course and has taught me so much. But it's good to go back to the roots, not just for repertoire but for understanding where the songs have come from.
You have to respect these singers because, without them, we wouldn't have the music we have today."
If winning Young Traditional Musician of the Year has been a great boost, it's also added to her workload because, as well as keeping up with her studies, she is preparing to record her first CD, which forms part of her prize, along with appearances at festivals including Tonder in Denmark.
She also features on the RSAMD's imminent CD from pupils and staff, and is about to record a second album with Koda. Her CD, to be recorded in June,will feature a band which includes Ross Ainsley, the brilliant piper from Perth who was also a Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist, and an as-yet unnamed guitarist and percussionist.
"I like singing with accompaniment because it can really lift a song and I wouldn't want to give audiences unaccompanied song after unaccompanied song, that's too heavy," she says. "But there's something special about singing unaccompanied. It puts you one-to-one with the audience and it allows you the freedom to sing to your own rhythm and put whatever decoration you like on a melody."
And in an age when million-selling pop stars are being manufactured before our very eyes on the television, she really feels a connection with traditional songs.
"Oh yes. I've always been interested in history, which a lot of traditional song is all about really," she says. "Especially local history, because I could visit the places and get to know the names and families involved. So I'm particularly keen to learn songs from Dumfriesshire because I'm sure there's lots of them, it's just a question of digging around.
"You have to know the story behind a song before you can sing it, but if you can relate to it as a singer, you can pass that on to an audience and I find that really inspiring."
-March 21st – The Herald