‘Why do the skies roar?’ is an invitation to the audience to wonder about stories of thunder and make their own: you are welcome to roar and cackle along with the track! The work is based on depictions of thunder as found in Celtic folklore and storytelling. The track features a commissioned song from Empress, the artist and community practitioner from Paisley. The voices in the track represent questions which resound throughout our heritage about the sources and power of the natural world. The work is a collaboration from our UWS MA Music team in response to Professional Music Brief 1 and responds to Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022 by using local references to explore natural phenomena. 

In the North East of Scotland, there is a tale about ‘The Thunder Hag’ who served Beira, the Queen of Winter. The story goes that The Thunder Hag rode into King Angus’ lands and brought darkening heavy clouds at the peak of a (rare) hot Scottish summer. She throws fireballs as she rides her chariot pulled by snarling hounds. Eventually, the hero, Conall Curlew, tricks the hag into revealing herself and vanquishes her with spear. So great is her fear of Conall, that she never returns. The seed of the idea for ‘Why do the skies roar?’ came from imagining The Thunder Hag’s answer to Conall’s claim...