Bringing Gaelic Song to the Fore

NORTHINGS caught up with Arthur Cormack during CLIAR’s recent short tour of the Highlands and Islands, likely to be their last until the summer of 2007, for reasons explained below. The band have recently launched the first bi-lingual version of their website, and we also caught up with the latest state of play at Fèisean nan Gàidheal and the Blas festival.
 

NORTHINGS: Arthur, given that Cliar is a Gaelic song band, why have you waited until now to make the Cliar website a bi-lingual one?

ARTHUR CORMACK: When we thought it through it seemed a bit daft that we hadn’t done that already. I think the website is quite an important resource now. We had a reasonable site before, but we decided that since we were going to renew it, we wanted to do it as a bi-lingual site, which is important for us.

One factor at the time we did our original site was there were not that many people out there who could do Gaelic web sites, so it was really a practical issue as much as anything. This time we swithered for a while on whether we should have side-by-side English and Gaelic content like the Blas site, or separate sections within the site. It’s hard to know which is the best way to do it, but in the end we opted for two self-contained sections within the site.

Clair has been primarily a Gaelic song band, and there were lots of songs out there that no one else was singing

N: The band have just been out and about in the region, but we understand there will now be a bit of an enforced break while Ingrid Henderson becomes a mum?

AC: She is due in March, and we actually had some dates blocked off for then, and were joking on the website that we would need to take plenty of towels and hot water! Actually, of course, we have had to reschedule them, so we probably won’t do much now until June or thereabouts. It’s great news for Ingrid and Iain [MacFarlane, her husband and fiddler with Blazin’ Fiddles]. She plays quite a bit with Anne Martin, and I’m sure she can pick up some tips from Anne on the ins and outs of taking the wee one on the road!

N: There is a good biography of the band on the new website for anyone who wants to delve into the history, but can you clarify if the current incarnation actually got together at the behest of the Highland Festival in 1999, in the manner of Blazin’ Fiddles, or did it just work out that those were the first gigs?

AC: It just happened that those were the first gigs. Mary Ann [Kennedy] and myself had been in an earlier version of the band, and we had been talking about doing something for a while. We had gotten together four or five months before the festival, and it just happened that those were the first gigs we did. Mind you, I have to say that I think the Highland Festival did do a lot for traditional music. Blazin’ Fiddles came directly out of it, and you can also think of the big shows that they did, including the one we were involved in, ‘Lasair Dhè’.

N: Why did you decide to get together again at that point?

AC: We had toured the western isles in the early 90s with an earlier version of the group, and did some education work and so on, and by 1999 we felt that it was the right time for a Gaelic song band. Song has been the focus of the band, really, although we have always had the instrumentalists as well, and they are very much part of it.

It has been primarily a Gaelic song band, though, and there were lots of songs out there that no one else was singing. Bands would include the odd waulking song or whatever in their set, but there was a whole swathe of meaty songs that nobody was touching, and we wanted to start to address that. There are still thousands of them out there.

It was also an opportunity for the three singers, myself, Mary Ann and Maggie MacDonald, to work together and develop the harmony singing side of it as well, rather than just the solo voice.

N: The singers all have strong connections with the Isle of Skye – is that reflected in the repertorie?

AC: I suppose there was a bit of extra emphasis on Skye songs, but it was never meant to be exclusive. We all have broad tastes, and I love songs from Lewis or whatever as much as I do Skye ones. There are certain technical issues with singing a song from Lewis, say, where the language is a wee bit different and you have to change the way you speak Gaelic to accord with the rhymes or the way the song is written, so that comes into it as well, but we have looked across the board, and we have sung songs from quite a broad range of sources.

N: And as you mentioned, there is no shortage of them out there.

AC: Absolutely not, and so much of it doesn’t get heard at all. When I was in my early 20s, Dr Alastair MacLean, who was Sorley MacLean’s brother, passed on to me a collection of songs that he had gathered up over many years. I still have that, and there are hundreds of songs in there waiting to be heard. Maybe when I retire I’ll have time to get round to them!

N: The band has always had a guitarist, originally Chaz Stewart and then Ross Martin, and a keyboard player, originally Blair Douglas and now Ingrid, but more recently you made a switch from fiddle to whistles and pipes. Why was that?

AC: It was really because we couldn’t pin down a fiddler who wasn’t too busy in another band. We had Bruce MacGregor for three or four years, and he defined the instrumental sound of the band in the beginning, then we had Allan Henderson and Gabe McVarish, but neither was able to commit to it. It’s not as though we work all the time, but like most bands with members who do lots of things, we work in blocks of time, and they tended to coincide with the other stuff that the fiddlers were doing.

We decided than that we would look at some other instrument that might work for us, and we were thinking in terms of whistles more than pipes, and that has worked well for us. And of course, we also have clarsach with both Ingrid and Mary Ann.

N: You brought in Hector Henderson on whistles and pipes – is he related to Ingrid and Allan?

AC: He is, yes. His father, Alastair Henderson, was a well known box player and piper from Acharacle, and his grandfather was a piper as well.

N: Switching to one of your other roles, 2007 looks set to be a big year for the Blas festival.

AC: I think we are quite happy with the way it is going. It was always a bit of a gamble, and we are happy with the way it is paying off. We almost doubled ticket sales in 2006, and we are getting a good percentage figure for tickets sold for each gig. The Promoters Arts Network seem quite happy with the way it is going as well, and that is crucial – we are very dependent on them to make it work. There is still a lot to do, and we are hoping it will be even more special for 2007, with Inverness coming into the equation.

N: You have already announced that the festival will be launched at the Runrig gig at Loch Ness in July, but are there any special plans for the 2007 programme that you can reveal at this stage?

AC: We have invited some Highland musicians to come forward with ideas for a new commission, and we will be reviving ‘Harvest’, which is the big piece that Donald Shaw did with lots of youngsters from the Fèisean at Celtic Connections a couple of years ago. We’ll be doing a couple of performances of that.

We had been talking to Runrig about doing something in Blas, but we couldn’t work out dates, and a possible venue was also an issue with Eden Court closed. When they decided to do the Loch Ness event, they gave us the chance to get involved.

We will use their concert at Loch Ness as an official launch of the festival, and we are booking some of the support acts for that occasion, but the Blas festival itself will open on 31 August and run through the first week in September as usual.

We’re taking part in a promotion exercise with Highland 2007 and a couple of other festivals from the Highlands and Islands at the Showcase Scotland event at Celtic Connections in January, and we’ll also be represented at a rugby international at Murrayfield in March, so we’re hoping it will be a higher profile this year.

N: You are also the director of Fèisean nan Gàidheal. Tell us about the new book you are publishing to mark the 25th anniversary of the original Fèis in Barra in 1981.

AC: We are actually launching the book at the Scots Trad Music Awards in Fort William on Saturday [1 December], looking back on the first 25 years of the Fèisean movement. Kate Martin, who is now famous for the waltz that Blair Douglas dedicated to her, was one of the founders of Fèis Rois and Fèis Lochaber, has put together the book along with Cailean MacLean, and it’s basically people talking about their involvement with it, and what it has meant to them.

Looking back on that 25 years you can see how much has been achieved and how much the whole movement has grown and developed, and we wanted to celebrate that fact. It’s been a great success, which is why we decided to do the book.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2006

Links

• Cliar
• Fèisean nan Gàidheal
• Blas Festival