05 Aug Mishra’s Dream

Mishra's Dream: Rob Scott, Donald MacLennan, Graham Scott, Michael Dalton, and Devin Ryan. The unlikely Antigonish group begins a national tour Thursday night at Stayner

Donald MacLennan grew up in Chimney Corner, Inverness County, a tiny place where it’s still cool for kids to take up the fiddle. He played Scottish tunes from the age of 12, but at 18, around the time he headed to St. F.X., Donald got bored with the old diddly-diddly, and set aside his violin.

A couple of years later, Donald was hanging out at home when he some strange guitar riffs wafted in from the front deck. Mike Dalton and another friend were outide jamming.

“What’s that you’re playing?” asked Donald.

“It’s Django Reinhardt—Gypsy jazz,” said Rob Scott.

“Who? What’s Gypsy jazz?”

Scott popped a CD into the player, and the fluid notes of guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli filled the room. Donald stared wide-eyed at the speakers.

“That’s what I want to play,” he said.

Donald blew the dust off his fiddle and began a new phase of his musical life. The result is Mishra’s Dream, an unlikely Antigonish Gypsy swing band formed by MacLennan and Scott three years ago. It begins a national tour to promote is debut self-titled CD Thursday with a 10 p.m. performance at Stayner’s Wharf in Halifax.

Canada has several modern groups fashioned after the  Quintette of the Hot Club of France, the groundbreaking swing band Grappelli and Reinhardt founded in the 1930s  (rare video footage here). But MacLennan brings a welcome new element to the music, the strong bow hand made famous by Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIssac. It brings a new energy to modern interpretations of the genre. It’s gypsy music as one imagines it might have been played around caravan campfires a century ago.

Here’s a sample:

More clips at the band’s website.