Ian Muir – Music Director For the past six years Ian Muir has been doing one of the most demanding jobs in the RSCDS. Like all the volunteers who take on Society positions, he has put a tremendous amount of time and effort into his work – most recently and memorably, hosting the weekly podcasts for Dance Scottish at Home. Here he describes how he started playing for Scottish country dancing and his time as Music Director. When I became Music Director of the Society in 2014, I always intended to write a piece about what the job of the Music Director entailed as it was the one question that I was always asked. Little did I know that it would be such a full-time job and that I would finally find the time to write my article as I was about to leave the post. I was born in Hammersmith, West London, and spent all of my formative and schooling years in Heston, Middlesex. My two brothers, sister and I were all encouraged by our parents to learn musical instruments although, funnily enough, all had very different interests musically so we never actually played together! Having failed the 11+, I was lucky enough to go to one of the first of the then new Comprehensive Schools where there was a very strong folk-dance tradition. This was my making. Not being ‘fleet of foot’, I was side-tracked by being encouraged into learning the accordion with the comment from the teacher in charge, “he’ll never stick at it!”
1940s. It was through Alan that I was invited at the age of 17 to join the band and there started my passion for Scottish dance music. Over the years McBain’s had had several notable Scottish musicians – Willie Hunter and John Ellis from north of the border, and Nan Fleming-Williams and Pat Shuldham-Shaw, who were great exponents and collectors of Scottish dance music from south of the border. Although they had all played before I joined the band, they had left a legacy which Alan encouraged me to explore and cherish. It was Nan who first got me into teaching musicians about playing for dancing when the Cambridge Branch of the RSCDS ran its very first musicians’ Day School. Nan and I were to jointly deliver, but tragically her husband had died a couple of weeks before and she withdrew from all playing leaving me, a rather inexperienced leader of such an occasion, in charge. I remember that day vividly and the feeling in the evening when the full dance floor acknowledged the experience of dancing to 20+ musicians all playing together. It was magic. Two of those musicians were none other than my future wife, Judith, and her brother Ian Robertson, both at that time in their late teens.
First gig We soon had our own English folk-dance band and I remember our first gig, and trying to the find the hall where we were to play in the dark during the power-cuts associated with the miners’ strikes of the winter of 1972. I was so lucky that, despite his initial views, Charles Pegram sought every opportunity for me to gain experience in playing. It was in these early days that I first met Alan Humberstone, the pianist in McBain’s Scottish Country Dance Band – London’s premier Scottish dance band at that time, with a playing history that went back to the mid-
12
www.rscds.org
Ian as a young lad playing with McBain’s Band
Early influences Asked whether I have favourite musicians who have influenced me, that is a difficult question to answer as I have so many. I would have to say firstly McBain’s band and in particular Alan,
