Various venues, Shetland, 27-30 April 2006

The Saw Doctors.

A certain English newspaper recently described Shetland as “the most depressing place in the British isles”. It’s certainly not a label that anyone attending the islands’ legendary annual folk festival would recognise. Even the weather smiled on this year’s 26th bacchanal, with a rare settled spell of sunshine extending throughout the weekend.

Eighteen concerts over four days, in both the main town of Lerwick and local halls as far afield as Unst, the UK’s northernmost inhabited island, were almost entirely sold out, adding up to around 5,000 tickets in total – a pretty impressive strike-rate for a population of 20,000.

Many have attempted over the years to analyse what it is that sets Shetland apart from other festivals. The host community’s gargantuan appetite for a spree is one salient factor: evenings that begin with a 7.30pm concert routinely continue – via the nightly post-gig Festival Club, then on to parties in local homes – for at least twelve hours, often longer, as definitions of day and night become somewhat surreally elastic.

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Whatever the precise secrets of the recipe, Shetland rates among the world’s most highly prized gigs for musicians in the know.

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With its rich indigenous fiddle tradition – and some seriously long winter nights to occupy – Shetland culture is also, of course, a famously musical one. Thanks to the quantity and calibre of local performers, busily trading tunes and styles with top-rank visiting professionals, the festival’s after-hours sessions frequently outclass the scheduled gigs for sheer musical magic. Not that the gigs aren’t excellent, too, but the heights of inspiration achieved ad hoc, in corners of the Festival Club or around kitchen tables – as when Irish accordion legend Seamus Begley settled in at the club for a good three hours on Saturday night, jamming with a succession of other headliners including Americana virtuoso Tim O’Brien – can border on the miraculous.

Another defining feature is the fact that, due to Shetland’s unique municipal financing – the legacy of North Sea oil – economic regeneration and boosting tourism don’t dominate the festival’s priorities, unlike most such events in far-flung places. Up here, flying in the likes of Elana James, Bob Dylan’s current fiddler of choice, and the Estonian roots/fusion sextet Vägilased, to play for 150 people in Unst, is regarded more as a form of social (or cultural) service. Some visiting punters do make the trip each year, but the time and expense involved, with a twelve-hour ferry crossing from Aberdeen, keeps their numbers relatively small. By far the majority of tickets are bought by locals, many of whom take a week’s holiday at festival time, the better to gorge themselves to the full on a cornucopia of music and merrymaking.

Whatever the precise secrets of the recipe, Shetland rates among the world’s most highly prized gigs for musicians in the know. O’Brien, for instance, who recently won a Grammy for his latest album Fiddler’s Green, was back for his second trip, accompanied this time by most of his family – his sons Jackson and Joel and singer sister Mollie, her husband Rich Moore and daughter Lucy – plus banjo ace Danny Barnes, serving up a gourmet stew of bluegrass, Appalachian, old-timey and gospel flavours. Irish good-time rockers the Saw Doctors, Slovakian singing fraternity the Brothers Zamiskovci and top UK cajun outfit the Flatville Aces were also on return visits, all earning a hearty welcome back – meanwhile collectively exemplifying the breadth and diversity of Shetland’s programming.

First-time visitors included the aforementioned Elana James, who won an ecstatic reception from Shetland’s singularly fiddle-loving audiences with her sizzling Western swing and gypsy-jazz workouts, flanked by the equally prodigious talents of bassist Beau Sample and guitarist Luke Hill, with all three alternating memorably on vocals. The fiddle-led supergroup Session A9 also took on the locals at their own game – and achieved a more than amicable draw – while Seamus Begley’s duo partnership with the astonishing guitar talents of Tim Edey saw both men playing further out of their skins each night.

As with the O’Brien and Zamiskovci clans, sibling harmony emerged as something of a mini-theme through this year’s programme. Singer-guitarist Findlay Napier and his brother Hamish, on vocals, flute and piano, comprise half of young traditional firebrands Back of the Moon, who amply lived up to their Band of the Year accolade from the last Scots Trad Music Awards with a string of vivacious, powerful performances. The brother/sister duo Finniston, currently creating something of a buzz in Glasgow music circles, additionally boasted a local family connection, their mum being a Shetlander, and made a strong impression with their simple but beguiling acoustic pop.

After three frenetic days of musicians shuttling hither and thither around the islands, the festival rounds off every year on the Sunday night with the annual Shetland institution known as a foy, which roughly translates as a gala or feast, and here involves all fifteen visiting acts playing for fifteen minutes in each of three Lerwick venues. Especially after several marathon nights already, it’s a positively epic gig, usually running to over five hours – but although there might be a good few sleepy faces among the crowd by the end, you sure won’t see many depressed ones.

© Sue Wilson, 2006

LInk

• Shetland Folk Festival