Review by Sue Wilson
MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards 2010
Perth Concert Hall, Perth, 4 December 2010
AFTER MUCH advance consternation about whether the show would or should go on, and if so what proportion of the audience and performers could get there, the 2010 Scots Trad Music Awards serendipitously coincided with a two-day relative respite in the weather – enough to see everyone safely home again before yet more snow arrived.
The scarcity of no-shows nonetheless entailed a good many heroically determined journeys – particularly, of course, from the Highlands and Islands – such that a shared sense of vindicated achievement pervaded the hall and presaged a similarly determined party, even before a single prize was awarded.
Since the inaugural awards in 2003, Na Trads – as they’re nowadays straplined by chief sponsors MG ALBA, who’ve televised the last three years’ events – have evolved into a richly distinctive, hugely enjoyable occasion on numerous levels. Apart from anything else, it’s the only time you’ll witness the Scottish folk scene en masse so thoroughly dressed up to the nines: best kilts and dickie-bows, serious frocks and killer heels everywhere you look.
Presenters Tony Kearney and Mary Ann Kennedy (photo © Louis De Carlo)
The addition of TV to the mix, complete with backdrop captioning and video footage of nominees, as well as expert bilingual MC-ing by Mary Ann Kennedy and Tony Kearney, has imposed an extra slickness on the production that likewise contradicts homespun or amateurish stereotypes. The aura of a proper, grown-up awards night isn’t just a matter of presentation, either: the Scots Trad accolades have steadily grown in credibility, status and media profile – the last, in particular, being the founding objective of organisers Hands Up for Trad – and are now both hotly contested and highly prized.
Another key ingredient in the whole affair is that all the main awards are decided by public vote, which on the one hand arguably adds to their value, but on the other makes them subject to a significant degree of caprice. Over the years, more and more nominees have cottoned on to the notion of lobbying for support, latterly facilitated by Facebook and the like. This levels the playing field to a degree, but there are still routine mutterings about winners being no more than the ones with the most online friends or biggest contacts book; about island block-votes and aggressive campaigning by younger contenders’ parents. In a good many cases, too, nominations and ultimate results appear to arise from a general feeling of recognition being due, rather than specifically on the basis of the preceding year’s achievements.
Orkney band The Chair in action at the awards (photo © Louis De Carlo)
The great thing is, though, that these wayward vagaries within the awards process now seem widely understood and accepted, as does the underlying premise that while the very concepts of competition or supremacy are of course highly questionable vis-à-vis traditional music, they’re an effective and worthwhile pretext for attracting publicity.
So while Na Trads today are certainly taken seriously enough, few if any among the 600-odd in attendance were taking them too seriously – other than as a great night out, a gathering of like-minded folk from a’ the airts, additionally enlivened by a dash of good-humoured rivalry. Balancing televisual glitz and formality with plenty of broad, even ribald comedy, it was also – and not unimportantly – an opportunity to feel very good indeed about the current state of Scottish music.
Highland and Island artists and initiatives scooped a substantial share of the honours from the outset, with powerhouse Orcadian band The Chair – expanded to a 13-piece with four extra fiddles and a double bass – kicking off the live entertainment in suitably majestic yet rambunctious style. Their two sets of tunes bookended an opening address from Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop, the party-political longueurs of whose spiel were rendered forgiveable by her announcement of £250,000 extra Scottish Government funding for traditional arts.
The trophies for Community Project of the Year, Event of the Year and Club of the Year were then collected in short order by the Orkney Traditional Music Project, Shetland Folk Festival and the Highland Accordion and Fiddle Club – with the last-mentioned body’s chairman, Fraser MacLean, delivering a hilariously deadpan acceptance speech, declaring himself “ecstatic” like a Highland version of the Rev I.M. Jolley.
Gaelic singer Darren Maclean from Skye (photo © Louis De Carlo)
It was then the turn of young Skye singer Darren MacLean to showcase his splendidly forthright yet lyrical voice in two Gaelic ballads that not only, as he observed, weren’t “actually depressing” but were “even slightly hopeful”. Among an exceptionally strong field, also including Rachel Walker and this year’s Mòd Gold Medallist, Joy Dunlop, MacLean later lost out on the Gaelic Singer of the Year title to Eilidh Mackenzie – a worthy winner given her recent track-record as an original songwriter, in addition to her vocal talents.
Further Gaelic victories included Album of the Year for Julie Fowlis’s second solo release Uam, and a special award for the BBC ALBA project Bliadhna nan Òran (Year of Gaelic Song), which has made hundreds of vintage Gaelic recordings available online, as well as broadcasting highlights from the archive throughout 2010. The legendary Gaelic singer Donald MacRae was among this year’s eight inductees to the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, along with the late Shetland fiddle saviour Tom Anderson, seminal song duo Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor, harp pioneer Alison Kinnaird, piper Gordon Duncan, pianist Pam Wilkie and singer Ray Fisher.
Another closely-run category – also with a strong Highland representation – was Composer of the Year, with James Ross, Fraser Fifield and the Findlay Napier/Nick Turner songwriting team eventually pipped by Lewis-born singer, songwriter and piper Iain Morrison, who has indeed had a tremendously creative 12 months, starting with his superb New Voices commission at Celtic Connections.
Oban High School Pipe Band and Ross-shire multi-instrumentalist Matheu Watson were similarly popular winners over stiff competition as Pipe Band of the Year and Up and Coming Artist of the Year, while Angus MacPhail and Andrew Stevenson, co-proprietors of Oban’s Skipinnish Ceilidh House, accepted the Venue of the Year prize with the announcement that their second such establishment will open next year in Fort William. Directly linked to the Skipinnish operation via MacPhail’s home turf of Tiree, Gordon Connell was rewarded for his decades of free accordion teaching on the island by being voted Music Tutor of the Year.
Of the main remaining titles, Instrumentalist of the Year went to bodhran ace Martin O’Neill – crowning his recent adventures touring with Stevie Wonder – Folk Band of the Year to Malinky, Scots Singer of the Year to veteran bothy balladeer Joe Aitken, and Live Act of the Year to the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. Besides paying tribute to a vital body of work, Aitken’s win affirmed that the Facebook generation don’t yet have it all their own way – the only lobbying involved, he said, being his mother chapping on neighbours’ doors around her sheltered housing complex.
The Grand Finale (photo © Louis De Carlo)
The prizegiving was punctuated with a genuinely sumptuous array of live performances, adding up to an impressively comprehensive snapshot/sampler of Scottish traditional and folk-based music today. The mighty Shetland rammy of Fullsceilidh Spelemannslag rounded off the show with joyous gusto to match its Orcadian opening, while treats in between ranged from Sheila Stewart’s spinetingling rendition of ‘Queen Among the Heather’ to the snappy, sparky flair of the Tom Orr Scottish Dance Band; the McCalmans’ side-splitting folked-up version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ to the bracing blast of the Vale of Atholl Junior Pipe Band.
And once The Chair returned to play out the night at the after-show shindig, a dance-floor packed with all generations and varieties of terpsichorean taste – from fully-fledged Dashing White Sergeants to plain old pogoing – presented another exceedingly happy capsule image.
© Sue Wilson, 2010
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