Sheila Stewart is one of Scotland's traditional Traveller storytellers, and Ballad singers. She has a rich repertoire of old folk tales, comic tales, Jack tales, Burker tales and tales of Traveller life, as well as a store of outstanding songs and ballads. She has a style of singing that is strong and passionate and distinctively her own yet in the finest mainstream of the Scottish tradition.
Sheila is the last in the line of her family now left to carry on the Stewart's great tradition. She has a passionate sense of the tragedies of life, and the oppression of the Travelling people. Her family comes from a long line of pipers, storytellers and ballad singers. She has sung to the pope and a crowd of 385,000 at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, during his visit to Scotland, and represented Scotland at the Bi-Centennial Celebrations in Washington D.C.
Sheila's mother, the late Belle Stewart, received the BEM from the Queen for her rich contribution to folk music. Her late father was the great piper Alex Stewart, and her sister Kathie is a fine singer. The family was known throughout the world as the "Stewarts of Blair".
" I WAS born in a stable," begins Sheila Stewart. "My mother put up big curtains to shield herself and then gave birth to me while my father waited outside." Sheila Stewart is a storyteller, so hers was a fitting entry into the world. She was born into a family of Perthshire travellers, living her life on the road, surrounded by stories and songs. Travellers spoke their own secret language – Cant – keeping it and the stories alive through the centuries. Sheila is 69, and when she dies the language and the ballad-singing particular to Perthshire will die with her...." Read the full interview with Shiela Stewart titled "The last of the ballad-singers" by Daine MacLean in The Scotsman: http://heritage.scotsman.com/traditions.cfm?id=692872005
|
|