Scotlandsmusic

Len Wilson was born in Stromness, Orkney in 1938 into a Graemsay seafaring family. Fiddle players in his family include his father, grandfather, grand-uncles on both sides, cousins, great-grandfather etc. As a teenager Len took lessons from the late Willie Sinclair of Braeland, South Ronaldsay who had learned the traditional way. Len went to sea and travelled the world but in the 60’s he was inspired by the recordings of Hector MacAndrew to take his fiddle playing more seriously. On returning to Orkney in 1974 he joined the Orkney Strathspey & Reel Society under Ronnie Aim and then became leader for a couple of years. Nowadays his interest is in the music of the natives of Northern Canada, brought to them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Orcadians (some of whom were his ancestors) and Scots of the Hudson’s Bay Company.