PETER URPETH is uplifted by radiant Gaelic song on the opening day of the Hebridean Celtic Festival, but sounds a note of caution on one of the weekend’s headline acts.

Mary Jane Lamond

THE HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL opened  its doors to an expectant public last night, with a concert of rare beauty. No, not for us on this grassy knoll bound by the mad Atlantic foam, the fire-tailed rocket of a whirling gig to blast us into four days of  musical and other indulgence, but a welcoming, softly spoken musical failte.

But then, every tent needs a peg, and the big top that is the Hebridean Celtic Festival marked its ground and secured its lines last night with an emphatic paean, a celebration of the language of the Gael, both east and west, and north and south.

But an aside. Earlier this week on BBC Radio na Gaidheal, Christine Kennedy sat in for one of the morning show hosts and commented that, in her opinion, many Gaelic language learners are taught certain words, and often inappropriately, such that the word was ‘losing its soul’ . One such word she mentioned is ‘sgoinneil’.

This word, she claims is now so common that it lost its edge, and even its meaning has changed from sort of neat, tidy, careful, to mean excellent or fabulous, wonderful, enjoyable. So, in that spirit, if in the next few days this writer drifts into superlatives, please be assured that they are measured against a real proof of their meaning and not the lazy habits of contemporary journalistic life.

In Studio Alba, on the outskirts of Stornoway, the festival commission ‘Atlantic Movement’ was premiered to a packed house. The idea of the piece was simple in structure. Gather together seven female voices from both sides of the Atlantic – Cape Breton, Ireland, Wales and the Hebrides – and join them with a small band of traditional musicians to make a piece that celebrates and explores the shared spoken and musical language of the pan-Atlantic Gael.

Under the musical direction of Andy Thorburn, with Dylan Fowler (guitar), Aidan O’Rourke (fiddle) and Fraya Thomsen (clarsach), Gaelic singers Mairi Smith, Julie Fowlis and Alyth McCormack were met on home soil by County Meath’s singing sisters Maighread and Triona Ni Dhomhnaill, Welsh singer Julie Murphy, and Cape Breton’s Mary Jane Lamond.

Rather than clutter the finery of their voices, the piece was assembled from traditional songs from each of the areas represented, with subtle musical and vocal support. The piece worked through a series of themes, opening with ‘Failte bho na Gaidheal / Welcome From the Gaels’ to sections exploring work songs, old songs, uprooting and ‘Gluaiseachd / Movement’.

The success of the structure given to the piece by Andy Thorburn was its almost complete invisibility. This was not over-worked or forced, or even contrived to force sameness or difference against the grain of the music. The success was in the sense of unity and warmth that simply exuded from the singers. Not saccharine platitude but real, genuine emotion.

One poignant moment came early on when Cape Breton’s Mary Jane Lamond introduced herself and a love song, but prefixed her introduction with the statement that she was from the once large Gaelic-speaking community of Cape Breton Island, where 30,000 highlanders and islanders settled and made one corner of the Canadian nation their own.

Mary Jane said that she felt privileged to be a part of the tail-end of that culture that was now almost gone. This remark reverberated with many islanders – many of the older generation living here in Canada’s ‘old country’ will have direct blood connection with Cape Breton, and the loss of its Gaelic culture over the last fifty years has been like the loss of a twin.

The set of Sean Nos early in proceedings brought forth another highlight, the singing of Lewis’s Mairi Smith. It is perhaps unfair to single out one of these voices, but Mairi Smith is truly one of the finest traditional singers in Scotland. Her voice seems to have contact with the elemental and raw emotions of these songs in a way that many singers can only imitate.

On one level, singing is all about the beauty of  sound, and the distinctive, instantly recognisable timbre of Mairi Smith’s singing is one of the hallmarks sounds of Lewis. For some bizarre reason Mairi remains unrecorded although, I understand that is about to change.

A note of regret. Maighread and Triona ni Dhomhnaill accompanied themselves early on in this piece with a keyboard set on a kind of strings / electric piano blend that seemed to underpin an ambiguity in their early songs about its direction. The keys were far too mushy and swamped the edges of these two fine singers’ voices. But that is but an aside.

The Hebridean Celtic Festival organisers were right to set this band of marvellous, expressive singers at centre stage on the first night. Before the stramash of the next few nights we were given a meadow of fine songs, each song a rare orchid in that place and somehow the territory of this Festival was established with pride, depth, feeling, and doesn’t Gaelic make the world feel like a small place?

If English is the language of computing, then Gaelic in all its forms is the language of humanity. This was grace before the feed, and to invert and paraphrase in badly translated Irish, a few words from an old Donegal air: they gave us the east, they gave us the west, they gave us the sun…

Today this writer is off to see Mary Jane Lamond lead a workshop at An Lanntair, then this evening more Gaelic song in that same place, and a trip to the marquee. The sun is blazing.

But a note of caution…I heard the latest CD from The Waterboys yesterday. Oh dear. The big fellar has gone back to his roots, and no they don’t seem to be in Tir nan og, but in a sixth form commonroom. To this writer, the CD it is a sorry amalgam of dirge-like self-indulgence with all the spiritual lift of an ill-fitted cheesecloth bra.

Maybe, after all the fine words, The Waterboys in their present format are not best fitted to a Friday night ceilidh in a festival marquee. This is the big gig and it could, of course, if the band take their audience with them, be the gig of the century. Alternatively, it could be a mismatch  running on two left feet, at least one of which has had a fair bit to drink. This writer will be there to witness the fall out…or the glory. It will be memorable, either way.

© Peter Urpeth, 2003