The evening opens with a view of Glasgow, its grainy black and white images a window to our past. As the music soars, the iconic image of the Cranes on the River Clyde appears, followed by the bleak and barren beauty of the highland landscape.
These are picture postcards from our collective past; our collective identity that has seeped into our pores with city grime or salty sea-spray.
“From Scotland with Love” is a unique collaboration, a film directed by Edinburgh based writer and director Virginia Heath, with music specially composed by legendary scots musician King Creosote, aka Kenny Anderson. As part of Edinburgh International Festival’s screening of this unique film archive, he is joined by other luminaries from the Scottish music scene, including Louis Abbott and Kevin Brolly from Admiral Fallow, drummer Andy Robinson, bassist Pete Macleod and Keyboard player Derek O’Neil.
The industrial images of steelworkers remind us of an era when Scotland built things that are more solid and robust that than the computer games that comprise our main cultural export today. The fiery glow of the furnace is closely followed by images of the more benign golden glow of the Water of Life, reminding us of the long tradition of the Scottish Whisky Industry that remains as vital now as it ever did.
The evening is profoundly moving, powerful and inspiring, as the music moves effortlessly from the lofty heights of vocals and strings to the grounded bass guitar and drums. This is a soundtrack to our social history, exploring universal themes of love, family, work and landscape. It reveals layers upon layers of cultural complexity, our shared heritage, our attitudes and beliefs that we absorbed with mothers milk before we were self- aware enough to know were doing so.
Particularly powerful are the ever emotive scenes of coal mines and Scottish Miners; the physical hardship and danger of the mines made more potent with our knowledge of the violence and eventual, inevitable demise of the Scottish miner.
As the screening moves seamlessly from scene to scene it is accompanied by music that is times elegiac, at times playful. Particularly memorable is film of Glasgow tenements’ ‘single-ends’ with public wash houses. This part of the film shows scenes of poverty, of community, of fun. ‘Paupers Dough’ with its invocation “You’ve got to rise above the gutter you are inside” speaks to the social mobility possible as free education ended child labour. The son of a shipbuilder could benefit from free education, and rise out of the crushing poverty that many endured. It reminds us that modern Scotland still grips firmly to this tradition of free University education while the rest of Britain does not.
This unique event of film and music reminds us that we can choose our own future, but we cannot escape our past. For better or worse, our nation’s identify was forged before we were born. It is in acknowledging our shared past can we chose our future. Events such as ”From Scotland with Love” allow us to do this while celebrating our cultural identity.