Mouth Music (band)
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Mouth Music is the Edinburgh-based collaboration of Talitha MacKenzie and Martin Swan, whose combination of traditional Gaelic song and contemporary instrumental settings led them to international fame in the early 1990s. The name Mouth Music is a translation of the Gaelic term puirt a beul (the vocalisation of instrumental music).
The performance of Gaelic word rhythms using ethnic instruments and computer samples created an African feel to some of the tracks, which has led to the categorisation of Mouth Music as an Afro-Celtic music project.[1]
Their album, Mouth Music, reached number one on the Billboard Top World Music Albums chart in 1991. Piper and fiddler Martyn Bennett was a featured collaborator on this album.
In June 1991, Swan made the decision to abandon his focus on Gaelic and leave the duo, creating a quintet under the name Mouth Music. His next album Mo-Di rose to number two in the same category in 1993.[2][3]
Since then, several further albums with an ever-changing line-up have been released by Martin Swan under the name Mouth Music.
The 2005 album The Order of Things contains the track The Dae Doers, which is the oldest known written Scottish music extant. [4]
[edit] Discography
- Mouth Music (1991)
- Blue Door Green Sea EP (1992)
- Mo-Di (1993)
- Shorelife (1995)
- Seafaring Man (2001)
- The Scrape (2003)
- The Order of Things (2005)
