NO LYRICS NEEDED w/Scottish Fish

Ava Montesi, Caroline Dressler, Giulia Haible, Julia Homa, and Maggie MacPhail are five young women who make up the formidable Celtic band of Boston, Massachusetts, Scottish Fish. Now playing together for thirteen years, the members of Scottish Fish have grown up together, meeting when they were only eleven and seven, regarding the youngest member, Maggie. While some of them knew each other prior, the band truly came together for the first time at Boston Harbor Scottish Fiddle School.

Throughout the music camp, they stuck together and learned to share their craft with each other until the culmination of the week, where they had the opportunity to perform. They recount that the culminating performance was a fun and encouraging display of talent from those at the camp, with some putting on skits and others showing off their skills in juggling. However, for the girls, they wanted to play together on stage, which would mark their first performance as a band. During the time they would have to sign up for this performance, they had been eating the candy Swedish Fish. As kids, they thought it would be funny if they would call themselves Scottish Fish because of the camp’s focus on the Scottish fiddle, the innocent joy of their first performance as children would mark the beginning of a flourishing journey in inspiration, passion, and success.

​After the camp, the girls would find comfort in each others’ company and continue to perform together when they had the chance. There was a sense of belonging already built between the members, a mutual appreciation and respect towards the music they were creating together. However, Ava recalls that a “huge reason [they] kept on playing was because [they] were inspired by a few women who played the fiddle who were from Boston.” Hanneke Cassel and Katie McNally were two of these individuals, captivating the young girls, holding their dreams within this band’s success and displaying a possibility to motivate the Scottish Fish members to continue their journey. It was not in the name of success entirely that the girls continued their careers. It was the raw exhibition of passion and the dedication to its pursuit from this older band that seemed to drive Scottish Fish forward. Simply, they were inspired.

Inspiration is a strange device to motivation. It sits in the core, next to passion, smoothing over the rough parts that lie in the space between determination and avail. However, my favorite aspect of inspiration is its ability to return. Early on, inspiration tends to steal, be it time, money, effort, emotion, tears, or laughter. Inspired people exist in a complex state of both yearning for a dream another has achieved and desiring to completely spin their idol’s dream on its head and create something brand new on its back. While this state is how artists are able to find ingenuity in the modern graveyard of originality, it is also what tends to take the most from passionate people. Inspired individuals will give their hearts to their dream and weave seeds of hope into the elusive future they live through someone else; it is a neighborhood next door to jealousy, the fence between these two cutting off the animosity and replacing it with respect and appreciation. However, no matter what inspiration takes from someone, it always returns. It may not return what it took in its recognizable form, but it does so through the individuals who allow themselves to change. For Scottish Fish, they allowed themselves to undergo growth within their music and within each other, a piece of the binding force that kept them together through their continuous thirteen years as a band.

Now, Scottish Fish’s inspiration from their childhood band has returned their efforts in the form of two bright eyes staring up at the young women, blinking with awe. The child of one of Cassel now looks up to the young women and uses them as a source of inspiration herself. In fact, many children will come up to the band after they perform and comment on how they wish to pursue music in a similar way, throwing themselves into the dream that Scottish Fish once had to rely on.

The members are able to now watch as they fulfill the role of inspiration themselves, observing the light enter the eyes of those in the crowd never exposed to their type of music before. When asked what the goal of their musical journey was, they all agreed on the idea of sharing. They inspire because they are able to share their music and the joy they find from their genre. All of the band members are drawn to the unique blend of the Irish and Scottish style. Hearing this music makes them happy, and in another way, it is how they spread joy. While this type of music is well known to those who are exposed to it, the Scottish Fish members admit that it remains a pretty niche genre of music. They are thankful for the reach that they have extended in this genre throughout and outside of Boston. Personally, after watching and viewing their concert myself, I can attest to the power of live music in this genre specifically. Something like a story poured out of these young women’s hearts and bled onto the stage, filling the room with fragments of imagery. In my mind, I saw pictures of landscapes I had never been to and could feel the music so deeply in my bones. Since then, I have been unable to stop listening to their music when studying or when I need to find a grounding sense of peace.

This connection that Scottish Fish has with their audience seems to source from their recognition of how much music makes up their lives. They admit themselves that their music has played an important role in establishing their worldview. I only have that one performance as an audience member to assume, but I believe this worldview must be filled with those fragmented images I am able to see when I listen to them. I attempt to fathom how a lifetime of creating these images for other people might affect an individual’s sense of belonging in an otherwise duller world. For Scottish Fish, they claim that this passion has grounded them into the world more than anything else. It has centered them and made it so that there is always something to return to.

Unfortunately, not everyone is able to open themselves up to that feeling live music creates for an audience. A common criticism Scottish Fish receives is their refusal to add vocals into their songs. With their band centered on original and cover pieces that are far from needing lyrics to convey its message, they have simply responded with the fact that they are not singers. Some critics take this as a lack of something, an absence of an art rather than what it is. It is the way they honor the genre, the way they nurture the purpose of the music they find so much joy in. They are not meant to sing through their voices, their voice lies in the strings of their instruments. These critics are blind to this, and unfortunately, this has made them blind to the lyricism that already exists in the pieces Scottish Fish perform.

Essentially, this band has created a sense of belonging centered in Boston. Not just within their community or performance areas, but also within the surrounding air. They have filled the skies with their music, adding to the tapestry of art that has been weaving for centuries. The new colors they have introduced to the humane piece in the sky is beautiful in my eyes, and I see how it is able to touch every individual in an audience. Scottish Fish has seen that inspiration returns, just as is intended. Not only does it return their dreams back to its members, but it has also returned joy and brilliancy to those fortunate enough to listen. ∎

Find & follow Scottish Fish on Instagram:
​@scottishfishband