Blogmas Day 12: Natalie MacMaster

Hello! Welcome to Blogmas Day 12!

I actually can’t believe I’ve kept up this daily blogging this long. 😅 But it’s fun, so let’s continue!

Advent Calendar

Today’s jigsaw puzzle would complete the second row of the amalgamated puzzle if I were doing it that way. No surprises or great challenges today, just a cute picture:

Natalie MacMaster – I Have a Love Story

I was going to make this post a review of Natalie MacMaster’s new memoir, I Have a Love Story, but I haven’t actually finished reading it yet. Plus, I don’t think very many people who read this blog would be interested, though I could be wrong. Natalie MacMaster is one of Canada’s top fiddle players (THE top, imo), and I was mildly obsessed with her and her music in the 90s. She’s a big part of the reason I’m so in love with the violin in general. So when I saw that she’s written a book about her life, I snapped it up immediately.

The book is mostly a love letter to her husband (another top Canadian fiddler, Donnell Leahy) and children, but she does also talk about her childhood and her rise to fame in her teens and twenties. The book also includes family recipes and sheet music for some of her tunes. It’s just an all-around sweet, wholesome, family-oriented memoir, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. And it’s kind of cute that it’s styled more like a coffee table book with glossy pages and lots of pictures.

The Celtic Tradition

Reading this book has made me nostalgic for the Celtic music I listened to a lot in the 90s. I’ve been exploring my Celtic roots a lot lately (I have a lot of Scottish, Irish, English, and Welsh in me), and it always amazes me how comforting I find anything to do with the Celtic tradition. Sometimes I’m tempted to believe in genetic memory, and that our ancestors’ way of life can call to us many generations later. I’ve never been to Scotland or Ireland, but every time I see images of their rolling green hills, I feel a little homesick. Canada’s Celtic music evokes those hills and ancestral traditions, and listening to it feels like coming home.

Celtic Family Christmas

Natalie and Donnell and their 7 kids now perform together, and a few years ago they filmed a Christmas special that I like to watch every year. It’s called Celtic Family Christmas, and it’s available on YouTube. Check it out below! Canada’s royal fiddling family at their Christmassy best. Each of the kids coming out in reverse age order to play and step dance, getting more and more confident and amazing from one to the next, is SO CUTE. 🥰

If you’re interested in Natalie MacMaster’s I Have a Love Story, you can buy it here on Bookshop.org*.
*As an affiliate, I’ll get a small commission for any purchase made through this link, at no extra cost to you.