‘This is more impressive than just playing normally’: Musician breaks her wrist right before gig, but hero dad steps in to save the day

From now until the end of the time, we’re likely to be worshipping all the musical geniuses who have left this mortal plane: Beethoven, Joseph Bologne, Aretha Franklin, and so on. We’d be remiss, however, to heed those that still walk among us today, and one such maverick is the Cape Breton hive mind.

For those of you not in the know, Cape Breton is a small island attached the northernmost end of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Here, professional hockey players can be found golfing away their off-season as select anxious high schoolers dream of the big bucks out in Fort McMurray. And, nothing — absolutely nothing — can get between the population of Cape Breton and their collective love of beer, bologna, and the fiddle. You can quote me on that.

The case of the latter of our beloved pillars was proved magnificently by one @maryfrances903 on TikTok, who joined forces with her father (pronounced “fahder” back home) for one of the most sensational duets this side of the strait.

Burdened by a broken wrist and entirely out of luck considering the state of my home province’s healthcare situation, all hope initially seemed lost for Mary, who was due to perform a fiddle piece called “Chinese Breakdown” in front of an outdoor crowd. Like an angel from the string gods, however, her father rolled up on stage with her, picked up the bow, and strummed where Mary couldn’t, her healthier hand toying with the fiddle’s strings in perfect unison with her father’s playing. If there was ever a more impressive duet, no there wasn’t.

A follow-up video gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the unstoppable, gerrymandering spirit of the islander ⏤ the very spirit that drove this gutsy musical endeavor. And in case this wasn’t already glaringly apparent, it also takes a lot more than a broken wrist to keep a gal from her step-dancing.

And this wasn’t just some cool talent; this is Mary’s life. The fiddler is the eldest daughter of the prolific Canadian artist Natalie MacMaster, and at 18 years old already has close to 600 live performances all over North America as just one part of her impressive résumé. And while Mary herself was born and raised in Ontario, the islander blood that courses within her thanks to her mother is very viscerally on display here.

Indeed, we Cape Bretoners come from the high tide, are descendants of the coal mines, and are all but determined to keep the Gaelic language alive and well in some capacity, so should ever a broken wrist happen to come along, smirking a naive smirk, and think that it’s about to prevent us from putting on a damn fine Celtic music show, it can think again. Thank you, Mary, as well as your father, for proving just what we’re capable of in times of duress, and if you get the chance, tell the Barra MacNeils that their’s was one of my favorite albums I ever wrote about.