Baddeck Gathering Ceilidh

Dara MacDonald-Smith (fiddle) & Aaron Young (piano)

A Ceilidh (KAY-lee) is a Gaelic name for a kitchen party, a gathering where everyone is invited to play their instruments and dance.

The Ceilidh is part of the traditional culture of Cape Breton, which is an island in the northeastern part of the province of Nova Scotia. Because of the island’s Scottish and Irish roots, it has traditions of fiddle music and step dancing.

In the town of Baddeck (buh-DECK) a local couple has been keeping these traditions and traditional music alive. During the summer months they host a nightly ceilidh featuring local musicians.

Pictured above are Dara Smith-MacDonald on fiddle and Adam Young on piano.

Learn more or buy music at: https://www.adamcdyoung.com/bio or by googling Dara Smith-MacDonald.

During intermission the gathering is served tea and oatcakes, which are thin, crisp cookies, not very sweet. On the very warm evening that we were there, the small crowd spilled out of the small hall to sip and munch. I marveled at the endurance of the musicians.

Below are three snippets of the music. Each piece was a compilation of many tunes and I didn’t catch the names. I think of them as: fast, medium and slow. Click to figure out which is which. Enjoy the music!