Skye Gathering Hall, Portree, 27 March 2004

THE DICTIONARY definition of the Gaelic word Beolach is “lively youth”, and that was a very good description of this concert in the Skye Gathering Hall, organised by MnE, with Gilleasbuig Ferguson as Fear an Taighe. The concert was a showcase for the Feis Organisation, the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music (Plockton) and the RSAMD, and was the culmination of a month’s work to record a new Gaelic music TV series, to be aired in the summer.

Young people from all three of these organisations were selected to participate in the project, and came together for individual and joint weekend workshops in Fort William, Plockton and Portree. Each group was asked to nominate a professional musician with whom they would like to work. The Feis chose Charlie McKerron of Capercaillie, the RSAMD selected Donald Shaw from the same band, and Plockton worked with Rory Campbell of Nusa and the Old Blind Dogs.

This impressive threesome also participated in the concert, performing alongside their own group of young people. They obviously enjoyed working with the students, happy to take a back seat and let the emerging talents take the spotlight.

We were treated to a selection of 18 of the 41 items recorded for the TV series, including foot-tapping accordion and guitar tunes, rollicking sets of puirt a beul, mixed instrumental sets and stunning songs accompanied by the clarsach. As the concert was also being recorded for Radio nan Gaidheal, we were given second helpings of some of the sets when they had to be rerecorded after a technical hitch or two, but nobody in the packed audience was complaining.

The young people had been working very hard all week in Portree, and were bound to be a bit tired in the stressful environment of TV cameras focussing on their every wrong note or broken string, but this was not evident in their performances. Some of the students participating are already well on the road to a career in traditional music and many have been performing for years, while some of the students appeared more comfortable than others in terms of stage presence and presentation.

The enthusiasm from the Feis students was very infectious, and they were obviously enjoying themselves tremendously – a testament to the hard work done by Feisean nan Gaidheal over the years to encourage our traditional musicians of the future.

The talent evident on stage provided a wonderful evening of entertainment, despite the inevitable hitches that go with a radio recording, and it was very clear that the future of our traditional music culture is safe in the hands of these exceptionally gifted youngsters.

It would be unfair to pick out individual names as every set had something special to recommend it, but we shall definitely be hearing a lot more from many of those involved in the project. Donald Shaw, Charlie McKerron and Rory Campbell had better watch out – these youngsters are fast catching up with them!

The series will be aired in the summer on BBC2 and broadcast on Radio nan Gaidheal

© Fiona MacKenzie, 2004