Espeeera...
Quitando el polvo a la aguja…
Espeeera...
Quitando el polvo a la aguja…
Fiddles, uilleann pipes, and voices from two islands.
ThistleRadio is one of the few SomaFM channels with a person's name attached to it. Fiona Ritchie, a Scot who began a Celtic music programme as a volunteer at an NPR affiliate in Charlotte in 1981, took it national two years later and moved production home to Perthshire in 1990. By then The Thistle & Shamrock was carried on hundreds of stations and NPR was calling it the most-heard Celtic show anywhere. SomaFM handed her a stream of her own in 2015, running around the clock ever since.
The NPR show ended in September 2024 after forty-three years. The stream did not, and it is now the surviving half of the operation. Ritchie programmes the tradition next to what has grown out of it: Kevin Burke and Stockton's Wing playing jigs straight, Karen Matheson and Karan Casey singing, and The Chieftains recording with Bon Iver and Paolo Nutini.
Trad that refuses to fossilize.
