Joan Mackenzie

Joan MacKenzie (Seonag NicCoinnich), singer and wine merchant: born Stornoway, Western Isles 2 September 1929; married 1956 Roddy Macleod (three sons); died Edinburgh 13 May 2007.

Joan MacKenzie's greatest legacy is reflected in the continuing survival of the Gaelic song tradition of the Western Isles. A reluctant icon she may have been, but her recordings and love of the songs she had mostly learned orally in childhood helped ensure the survival of a tradition that might otherwise have perished. At a time when Gaelic language and culture was discouraged and even derided on the Scottish mainland, her rich voice and passionate delivery went a long way to keeping it alive - she was dubbed "last of the island singers".

The daughter of a fisherman, Joan MacKenzie - Seonag NicCoinnich in her native tongue - was raised in the small community around Point at the extreme eastern tip of the isle of Lewis. Her mother sang, her grandmother was steeped in Gaelic folklore and music, and poetry and storytelling were an integral element of the family's daily life. For as long as she could remember, Joan sang the emotional songs of loss, hardship and emigration that reflected the island's history and were passed on by members of her family. She went to school at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway and it was there she was persuaded to sing in public for the first time.

Encouraged by the song collector Calum MacLean and Nan Dag, a retired local teacher who got her to sing at the regular ceilidhs held at his home, her fame quickly spread and she was invited to sing on other of the Western Isles, despite disapproval in some quarters - notably the Free Church, which equated traditional song with sin.

Joan Mackenzie left Lewis after the Second World War to train as a primary school teacher in Glasgow, and her natural singing talent came to the fore at the Royal National Mod - the annual festival of Gaelic arts and culture - when she won the traditional singing contest for four years in a row from 1951. Her greatest triumph, though, occurred in 1955 when she went to Aberdeen and overcame her fear of audiences to win (along with another Lewis singer Calum Kennedy) the Mod's top award - a gold medal presented to her by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Others recognised that her pure, expressive voice reflected a unique understanding of a traditional song style which had a direct link to the history and struggles that had shaped the character of life in the Outer Hebrides and the School of Scottish Studies of Edinburgh University gave her a tape recorder to collect as many traditional songs from Lewis as she could find. It spurred her to further explore the musical history of the Western Isles and immeasurably expanded her own repertoire.

Many of those songs were subsequently featured on regular BBC broadcasts through the 1950s and 1960s, notably on a radio show presented by one of the BBC's greatest champions of Gaelic radio and television, Fred MacAulay. James Ross of the School of Scottish Studies would talk about the background of the songs and explain their meaning and Joan Mackenzie would sing them. Later she made two records for the Gaelfonn label and sang with the Edinburgh female group the Edin Singers, appearing regularly on the BBC series Se Ur Beatha ("It's Your Life").

She married another Lewis resident, the RAF pilot Roddy Macleod, in 1956 and, always afflicted by stage fright, she later virtually gave up singing to concentrate on raising her three children. She and her husband opened a wine merchant business in Edinburgh and she embarked on a new career travelling around the vineyards of Europe searching for fine wine.

For many years her music was largely unavailable, until 1999 when the Greentrax label released her on CD for the first time, on Seonag NicCoinnich, a collection of 21 tracks drawn from recordings by the School of Scottish Studies and the BBC. It included material written by the bard Uilleam MacCoinnich and another famous Lewis émigré Calum MacLeod, but mainly featured songs of unknown origin passed on by her own family.

Colin Irwin