THE HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL continues to go from strength to strength, with 2011’s line-up headed by the all-conquering KT Tunstall.

HAVING just been nominated as Best Large Festival in the forthcoming Scottish Event Awards – for its record-breaking 15th outing last year – the festival is substantially augmented by the addition of a second main-arena stage.

The latter development, launched under the banner of this year’s Scotland’s Islands programme – but intended as a permanent expansion – doubles at a stroke the number of acts performing at the tented festival enclosure in Lews Castle grounds, while broadening out the event’s heretofore folk-based programming (in the f-word’s conventional and/or Celtic sense) to encompass that hard-to-define but increasingly popular genre known as nu-folk.

Heb Celt headliner K T Tunstall

“I’m always wary of labels,” says Heb Celt co-founder and director Caroline Maclennan, who has watched its audience grow from 1200 at the inaugural festival, back in 1996, to 2010’s biggest-ever crowd of 17,000. “We’ve always interpreted ‘Celtic’ in as wide a sense as possible, to cover all its aspects, in both a traditional and a contemporary sense. Wanting the second stage to have a slightly different feel is really just an extension of that, reflecting the way the music’s developed – whether you call it nu-folk, or indie-folk or whatever, a lot of really good bands have emerged in that direction, who I think will go down well with our audience. I’ve never really had any hard and fast programming criteria, it’s more of a gut thing: just what feels right for this place.”

Underlining the point, the Scotland’s Islands stage mixes and matches both Celtic and trad-based fare, from the likes of Rura, Skye-derived fusioneers Niteworks, Orkney duo Saltfishforty and Shetland supergroup Fullsceilidh Spelemannslag, with more indie-oriented outfits including Woodenbox With a Fistful of Fivers, Ahab, Kitty the Lion, The Boy Who Trapped the Sun and Open Day Rotation – the last two both being native Lewis acts.

Stornoway set to play Stornoway

Similarly, over at the main stage, rising nu-folk star Rachel Sermanni and Oxford folk-pop combo Stornoway (a band surely self-destined to face their namesake home crowd at the Heb Celt) share the bill with Tunstall, plus Eddi Reader, the Peatbog Faeries, Dàimh, Mànran and the new Brian Finnegan/Aidan O’Rourke project Kan.

While the preponderance and variety of Scottish music at this year’s festival is testament to the roots scene’s countrywide health, the proportion of more immediately home-grown talent (Dàimh and Mànran also feature Lewis-born singers) highlights the pride of place given to Gaelic and Hebridean music since the event’s inception. There’s more in this vein, too, along at the An Lanntair arts centre, where Wednesday night’s opening concert teams up three young Gaelic singers, Darren MacLean, Jenna Cumming and Linda MacLeod, drawing respectively on the traditions of Skye, Harris and South Uist, with a crack instrumental squad, in a specially-devised programme on the Scotland’s Islands theme.

Saturday’s Pipes & Strings concert, meanwhile, incorporates a musical tribute to the late great Duncan Johnstone, a celebrated champion of island piping styles, performed by an ensemble including one of his best-known ex-pupils, Roddy MacLeod MBE, plus Glenuig brothers Iain and Allan MacDonald, with a string orchestra. Contemporary bluegrass combo Innes & Present Company, flying in from Brisbane to perform the previous day, are fronted by the expat son of renowned Barra singer Roddy Campbell, neatly exemplifying both the islands’ rich diasporan history and the Heb Celt’s homecoming motif, while the next generation parade their talents on Wednesday afternoon in a concert by South Uist’s Fèis Tìr a’ Mhurain youth music project.

Caroline Maclennan

“We’ve always seen the festival as an opportunity to showcase local music alongside international acts,” Maclennan says. “It implicitly makes the point that our artists and our culture are of the same world-class stature as anything we might bring in.” It’s also a key element in the festival’s distinctive identity and atmosphere; the sense that it’s evolved organically from the place where it happens, rather than being some transplanted concept dreamed up by marketing types elsewhere.

“Gaelic is very much part of what makes the islands special, and music is a really inclusive, engaging way to get that across to visitors who don’t speak it,” says Ian Fordham, director of the Tourism Hebrides development project, and proprietor of the Broad Bay guest house outside Stornoway – who himself moved to Lewis after first attending the Heb Celt in 2001. “Hearing it in this context very literally helps to bring the language alive.”

The festival’s unique ambience is further reinforced by the fact that over half its audience come from within the Western Isles, and that it’s become such a potent spur for island “exiles” all over the world to come back and visit. “Also because it’s happening in a small town, which really intensifies the buzz, I think that sense of place and community plays a big part in attracting people from elsewhere,” Maclennan continues. “It’s like an extension of traditional Highland hospitality: artists and audience both feel really welcomed by the locals.”

Over the years, too, the event has successfully consolidated its indigenous foundations by appealing across the generations: “Developing our family audience has been a key priority from the start, and it’s great nowadays to see the young folk from ten or 15 years ago coming along with their own kids, and the teenagers all desperate to get hold of the latest festival hoodies.”

The Heb Celt’s economic spin-offs have also played a significant role in making island life more sustainable: now established as easily the busiest week in the whole Western Isles calendar, it’s become a focal point for scheduling other events, including the Lewis Highland Games and the Sail Hebrides maritime festival, the latter complemented this year by a visit from some of the Tall Ships fleet.

Manran get nautical

As far back as 2004, the resulting additional cash injection into local coffers was estimated at £1.5 million – a figure that will surely have risen steeply when assessed by another study this year. The wider changes in Stornoway and Lewis life since 1996 are equally plain to see, from increased licensing hours and Sunday ferries to the vibrant artistic hub that is the new An Lanntair, custom-built and opened in 2005. And while the Heb Celt obviously can’t claim sole credit for these developments, it’s hard to imagine them having happened without it.

The Hebridean Celtic Festival runs from 13-16 July 2011.

© Sue Wilson, 2011

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• Hebridean Celtic Festival 2011
• Sue Wilson