The Edinburgh schoolboy who revolutionised trad music
From Broughton High to dance fusion pioneer: celebrating Martyn Bennett
“Everyone since who's gone down that more electronic route in Scotland, they see Martyn as having been the guru. They all acknowledge he was the one they're following,” says Gary West, author of the newly published biography of Martyn Bennett, Brave New Music. Tomorrow, Tradfest will host a memorial event to Martyn Bennett at the Traverse Theatre, including music performances from several of his contemporaries.
Brave New Music untangles the many contradictions of late Martyn Bennett; classically trained musician and pioneer of electronic-trad fusion; lover of Highland hills and bothies, as well as urban nightlife. It wasn’t long ago that Scottish traditional music was trapped in the twee image of old men in woolen jumpers at a rural pub. Martyn Bennett brought the genre out of its pigeon hole and laid the foundations for the thriving trad-fusion music scene which is enjoyed today by the likes of Talisk, Elephant Sessions, Valtos and Project Smok.
Bennett was the first traditional music player to ever be admitted to the City of Edinburgh Music School at Broughton High School. “Broughton was very much aimed at classical musicians, [but] he went along and did his audition… on pipes and whistle, and it was just so good, they said, right, we've got to have this guy,” says West. It was during Bennett’s high school studies that Bennett and West became acquainted; while West was five years older than the then teenage Bennett; the two bonded over playing pipes together at the School of Scottish Studies where West was a student.
“I didn't know Martyn well, but I knew him from a young age, and, you know, watched his career with amazement,” says West.
Violin virtuoso to star DJ
One of the most incredible things about Bennett was his sheer talent for music. In an era before the National Centre for Traditional Music at Plockton Music School, or the inclusion of traditional music into the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RSAMD), Bennett was trained as a classical musician during high school and university. After picking up violin on his arrival in Edinburgh as a teenager, he graduated from RSAMD as one of Scotland’s top virtuosos.
But seven years of classical tuition failed to turn Bennett’s head, and his professional career saw him catapulted to success as a popular trad musician, composer and DJ. Luckily for Bennett, Scotland was already shifting to recognise trad music as more than just old blokes in sweaters playing rural pub sessions. Celtic Connections was revolutionary, as a huge trad music festival in central Glasgow; and Bennett performed at the very first iteration of the festival. Contemporary artists like the Peatbog Faeries were also around, encouraging their audiences to dance and do as they liked rather than sit in rows and listen to their music.
Into this scene arrived Bennett, with dance music influences like Moby and Fatboy Slim, with an exceptional talent in pipes and fiddle, and with friends like Dolphin Boy who would teach him skills in electronic music. His music often spoke of rural Scotland; albums called “Glen Lyon” or “Bothy Culture,” showed his love for rural Scotland. According to West, Bennett famously compared a mountain bothy; full of strangers and music and perhaps a dram; to an underground bar in Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Trailblazer at the Castle
By the year 2000, Bennett and his band Cuillin were playing the millennium show at Edinburgh Castle, where they supported Texas, and touring internationally. However, Bennett said himself he was never fully successful as an electronic musician; while the trad music scene welcomed him with open arms, he was never able to convince those in the electronic scene that trad music was more than the twee woolly jumpers.
These unfulfilled ambitions are undoubtedly influenced by his tragically short career; after only five years of performing, Bennett became ill with cancer. Although he continued to produce music from home for the next five years, he passed away at the age of 33. “We can't lose sight of just how short a career that was, and why achieving five albums in that time, is pretty incredible,” says West. The producers of Bennett’s final and most famous album, Grit, have said that they knew the album would not be profitable due to Bennett’s inability to tour with it, but it was so good they had to make it anyway.
These days, trad fusion is booming across Scotland; drawing huge crows to Edinburgh’s Tradfest and the Tiree Music Festival. While this shift came about for many reasons, Martyn Bennett, the young lad from Broughton High with the unusual skill for fiddle and pipes, was a huge part of that shift. “You couldn't say he was first. But he definitely ran with it, and ran with it more deeply and further and more skilfully than anybody else.”
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