Rob’s enthusiasm for psalm singing is infectious and his weekly sessions have become an opportunity to not only to sing but to speak Gaelic and learn from each other. But Rob starts to question his authority to teach the psalms, he only learned how to precent relatively recently and didn’t grow up in the church. As spring turns to summer Rob starts to feel restless and decides to hit the road to reconnect with his Gaelic roots and hear how psalms are sung by Gaels in the communities that have nurtured the tradition.
His journey takes him from the Western Isles of Scotland to County Cork in the south of Ireland, following well-trodden ancient paths that unravel threads of music and ideas along the way.
On the Isle of Lewis, he visits Back Free Church, the heartland of the psalms, where he precents to hundreds of people. In the village of Kilmuir in Skye, he discovers a Gaelic oasis on an island where over-tourism and landlordism have threated the language and the communities that speak it. Travelling south through Ireland, he sings psalms with a cross community Gaeilge group in East Belfast beforearriving at the village of Cúil Aodha for Féile na Laoch. This is a place where his dad had been warmly recognised as a hero of poetry and where he will now precent presbyterian psalms in a Catholic Church, enrolling help from his friends, neighbours and people he meets on the road.
The pilgrimage brings up many questions in Rob’s mind about identity, culture and community. He immerses the audience in his perspective through his music and portable sound recorder which accompanies him on his journey.