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Ishabel T. MacDonald
is a Gaelic tradition bearer who has served Gaelic culture as a
singer, singing teacher, song collector, composer and writer.
She was very much involved in the first-ever Fèis, held on Barra
in 1981, from which the Fèisean movement developed and has
contributed to the repertoires of emerging and established
singers. Since 2012 she has taught Gaelic singing at the Royal
Conservatoire of Scotland.
Ishabel was born in
Glasgow into a Gaelic-speaking family. Both her parents came
from South Uist and Gaelic was Ishabel’s first language. Her
father was part of a dynasty of pipers and was often sought out
for tunes and advice. He and his brother John were double piping
gold medallists and their cousin Archie MacDonald was also a
piper and the father of renowned piper Rona Lightfoot. The
well-known pipe tune Miss Ishabel T MacDonald was written in
Ishabel’s honor by her uncle John.
Although Ishabel
never learned to play the pipes, having been around pipe music
so much at home she did learn to play many pipe tunes on the
piano, which she took up at the age of four and studied through
to teaching level. She also studied classical violin in
secondary school.
On leaving school
Ishabel trained to be a primary school teacher and took up her
first post in Govan. Having spent her summer holidays in South
Uist as a child, she returned to the island as a student every
year and began collecting hundreds of songs from singers she
visited locally and went on to capture on video. In 1971 she
became the first winner of the Women’s Traditional Gold Medal at
the Mod in Stirling. Rather than perform as a singer, however,
she preferred to teach and share her repertoire of songs, some
of which she can now be heard singing on Tobar an Dualchais, the
online project that has preserved and digitized material
gathered in Scottish Gaelic, Scots and English by the School of
Scottish Studies, BBC Scotland and the Canna Collection of the
National Trust for Scotland.
Initially Ishabel
taught children whose parents brought them to her but she
gradually took on older students and has enjoyed great success
as a teacher of Mod gold medal winners. Her first successful
protégé, Margaret Callan won the traditional gold medal in 1994
and she has since coached another six traditional and two An
Comunn Gàidhealach Gold Medal winners including brother and
sister Gillebride and Mary MacMillan.
As well as
teaching singers, Ishabel has worked extensively in Gaelic
broadcasting and publishing. She has presented a series of
programs on the histories of Gaelic songs for BBC Radio
Scotland, collaborated on the script for the film Seachd and
written and researched numerous educational programs. She also
composed the music for a radio series based on Gaelic folk
tales, co-edited a Gaelic hymn book and has produced two
children’s books, one of children’s songs she collected and
another of her own stories.
For a number of
years Ishabel also contributed reviews and features to The
Scotsman newspaper’s Gaelic page, helping to spread the word
about new and established talents in Gaelic music and reporting
from events including Celtic Connections.
As the successor to Kenna Campbell as Gaelic singing tutor at
the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Ishabel takes great
pleasure in helping young singers to develop and choosing
suitable songs for them to sing, a role she has also performed
privately and informally.
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