The North Atlantic Song Convention as seen by Molly Gawler
NASC is a weekend of sharing folk songs from all across the North Atlantic. There are multicultural singers coming together in the city of Edinburgh on a weekend: Friday, Saturday, Sunday for song circles, supportive discussions, a keynote speech, a concert on Saturday, workshops, and pub sings. This year Bennett Konesni and I (Molly Gawler) hopped across the big pond and went to Scotland on March 6, 7, 8 2026 as representatives from Bagaduce Music, Blue Hill/Belfast, Maine USA.
I am on the board of NASC which is a real honor and I continually learn from my collaborators. Our keynote speaker this year was a woman named Angeline Morrison. She launched us into the weekend in a way that opened my eyes to subjects of race and culture within our folk songs. Her mother is from Jamaica and her father is from Scotland, and she grew up in Birmingham, England. She’s walking with black heritage within English ballads. Her voice has tremendous depth and the way she can tell a story through her song was profound to witness.
We come together once a year in Edinburgh at the Scottish Storytelling Center and sing Songs with the North Atlantic as our common thread. This year there were singers from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Shetland, England, Sweden, Norway,Lithuania, Canada, United States (Maine.) When we do this, all the borders and boundaries fade away. When you hear someone singing, you know their soul. It’s an amazing way to get to know somebody. Through song we celebrate the commonalities and honor the differences.
The experience was not like a box. It was like a membrane; a permeable sphere where songs enter in their natural beauty, are given breath and life, and then drift away back home in the oceans and winds. It wasn’t all about academia. It was about an organic human way of exchanging our folk art forms and specifically song. The conference was not held with rigidity. It was held in a watery fluid mode with such care, somewhat like a womb. Each of us brought ourselves into the circle as the human beings that we are. I sensed a lot of humility. There was not a hierarchy. Each person was treated with equal importance. We had folks of all generations there from the smallest little three year-old that was present all the way to a few beloved elders who brought the experience of a lifetime.
This is a unique time set aside for singing - unaccompanied singing. There was not a guitar in sight. The whole weekend was dedicated to the voice. The songs that we shared and heard were mostly from memory. There was an (almost) no cell phone policy, which was very refreshing. We experienced people bringing the best of their traditions from their lands and their place.
What I brought home lives inside me it does not exist in the realm of stuff. I did not bring home a bagpipe or a fiddle. I brought home my voice. I did not bring home too many captured videos or recordings. I did bring a few and I am happy I did. What I did bring home was the experience of singing in circle, lots of stories, and a memory of all the songs shared. There’s a term for this that I’ve learned from my friends across the sea: it’s called intangible cultural heritage. It’s something that we need to treat with the utmost care, because it is less flashy and a bit less seen than a product that is tangible.
After three days of this conference, it was almost as if a magic spell was put over the place, and everyone settled into a world of no hurry and no worry. I saw people taking their time, sing an entire ballad all by themselves and the whole group around them would lean in, lean back and listen...listen...listen.