“Aam gonnae sin' a wee tune in gàidhlic.”
The young man’s voice settled easily into its native air. A welcome sound in a city so full of strangers.
Fèis Rois and Cèol Mòr are not so much examples of Scottish identity as attempts to recreate it in its ts older forms. Fèis Rois, started by two women in 1986, aims to revive old Highland musical practices by providing tuition and touring opportunities for young people. Cèol Mòr (Aberdeen International Youth Festival’s young big band) does something similar, bringing together musicians from Scotland, Canada and the USA to play traditional Scottish music.
The first group that played in their joint show was made up of only Fèis Rois musicians, masters of their instruments who blended guitars, fiddles, whistles, border pipes, a bodhran, a clarsach and a mandolin in virtuosic medleys that mixed covers with original compositions. Their music alternated between huge orchestral numbers and quiet sequences led by a soloist. However, always it was complex and intricate, played to perfection by the gifted performers.
This group was followed by the Trad Trail musicians whose set was the culmination of a joint experiment by Fèis Rois and the Traditional Music and Song Association. The two organisations put musicians from all over Scotland in a house for a week and told them to come up with as much music as possible. The outcome of this was not the chaos one might expect. Although not as hair-raising as the first set of performers, given the circumstances the Trad Trail musicians played commendably well. Their pieces had more modern elements than the first group’s with more discordance and a slightly Americanised use of the guitar. Many of their traditional songs were standard playful jigs, but again their efforts were too difficult and well-executed to trivialise.
If there was to be a criticism of the evening, it would be that by the time Cèol Mòr came on, there seemed to be a general feeling that the show had already done its job. The last set felt a little gratuitous, especially given that none of them lived up to the explosion with which the first performers started. Perhaps this was to be expected though, given that the final group only began practicing two weeks before the performance. Nevertheless, this was music of superior quality: an amazing tribute to the difficulty and beauty of Scottish Highland songs.
