Perth Concert Hall, 3 December 2011

HIGHLANDS and Islands artists once again featured prominently among the winners in this year’s ninth Scots Trad Music Awards.

THE event was attended by around 900 movers, shakers and supporters of Scottish folk music in all its manifestations, who made another mighty night of it in Perth.

Coinciding with the start of the Christmas season, it’s the prime annual occasion to see how well the folk community can scrub up when they’ve a mind too, with the glad rags and gravity-defying shoes out in glorious force: not for nothing did one of the musicians in attendance describe it as the scene’s “office party”.

Manran took the Album of the Year award

With some notable exceptions, the 2011 honours list was also striking for its youthful age profile. The specific Up and Coming Artist of the Year prize went to Rura, rounding off a memorable year for the Highland five-piece, which began with their winning a Danny Kyle Open Stage Awards at Celtic Connections.

Other young victors included Mànran, who scooped Album of the Year for their self-titled debut release; their Lewis-born lead vocalist, Norrie MacIver (Gaelic Singer of the Year); the Robert Nairn Celidh Band (Dance Band of the Year), fronted by the twenty-something Acharacle button accordionist, and Tiree-rooted folk-rockers Skerryvore (Live Act of the Year).

Organisers of the contrastingly veteran Orkney Folk Festival, on the other hand, received the best possible boost ahead of their 30^th gathering in 2012, when they were named as Event of the Year, and the Blazin’ in Beauly fiddle school, which recently reached the 10-year mark, was voted Community Project of the Year.

The 16 main prize categories are decided by public vote, with polling numbers this year attaining a record high of nearly 100,000, and are complemented by a number of additional accolades, selected by an expert panel.

The Services to Gaelic Music award went to the landmark Tobar an Dualchais/Kist O’Riches project, with Fèisean nan Gàidheal’s Arthur Cormack collecting the Hamish Henderson Services to Traditional Music trophy, while such iconic Highland figures as dance-band leader Bobby MacLeod and Islay Gaelic singer Donald M. MacLeod were inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Bert Jansch, Alasdair Fraser and the Tannahill Weavers.

Interspersed with the prize-giving were over a dozen brief performances, mostly from previous award winners, and reflecting the full breadth of style and activity represented by the various categories – as well as the wealth of potential contenders even besides the four nominees in each.

Both Paul McKenna and Alistair Ogilvy, for instance – the first performing with his band, the second joining Cathy Anna MacPhee in a beautiful Scots/Gaelic duet on Auld Lang Syne – are surely in the running for the Scots Singer title in the future.

MacPhee, for her part, would equally merit the Gaelic Singer prize pretty much any year, and having also sung solo earlier on, additionally brought the house down with a mocked-up Oscars-style acceptance speech, thanking everyone in sight despite her lack of a nomination this time.

Skerryvore kept the after-event party going

Another showstopper came after Cathy Watt, the widow of recently-departed Fife singer-songwriter John Watt, had accepted his induction into the Hall of Fame, when Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes joined forces on an uproarious rendition of his anthem, Fife’s Got Everything.

With Skerryvore keeping the dancefloor busy at the after-party until 3am, and the tunes reportedly continuing at a local hostelry until sunrise, the occasion certainly produced a lot of sore heads next day, but the pain was mitigated by unanimous satisfaction that another year of Scottish folk music’s achievements had been well and truly celebrated.

BBC Alba will broadcast coverage of the event tonight [Monday 5 December] on 10pm; repeated Friday [9 December] at 9pm.

© Sue Wilson, 2011

Links

• MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards
• Sue Wilson