IT’S long been customary at folk gigs for the performers, approaching the end of their set, to thank those involved in staging the event – organisers, sound engineers, venue staff and so on. Perhaps only at the Shetland Folk Festival, though, will you hear gratitude particularly expressed to “the ladies who made the fish pie for our dinner”: the speaker being Irish banjo ace Gerry O’Connor, thanking those stalwarts of the local hall committee in Cunningsburgh, ten miles south of Lerwick, which hosted one of seven concerts on this year’s opening night.

The entire four-day festival comprised 28 main shows in total – almost all of them sold out, packed with a primarily local audience. Over a third took place outside Lerwick, covering Shetland from northernmost Unst to southernmost Fair Isle, plus two more of its outer islands, as well as the length and breadth of the archipelago’s mainland.

Braebach shone on the final night

With many of the featured artists having already travelled thousands of miles to reach Lerwick, off the overnight Aberdeen ferry on Thursday morning – from as far afield as Louisiana, Missouri and Quebec – these outlying gigs entailed further journeys, by road and sea, of up to five hours each way. All this is enabled by an organisational framework, honed over the festival’s 30-year lifespan, which would put many professionally managed events to shame (Shetland’s shindig being wholly volunteer-run), and which helped see it crowned as Event of the Year at last December’s Scots Trad Music Awards.

With the out-of-town gigs, the usual routine is that the PA van sets off to arrive around 2pm, for the crew to rig the hall before the musicians’ bus rolls up two hours later, carrying four or five acts per concert. Each of them soundchecks while the stalwart ladies do their stuff in the kitchen, then everyone sits down to eat at 6 o’clock, ahead of showtime at 7.30 sharp. These multiple logistical miracles were worked an extra couple of times this year, with the Unst and Fair Isle performances added as part of 2011’s Scotland’s Islands promotion – of which more later.

Back in the beautifully appointed Cunningsburgh Public Hall, meanwhile, a strong Irish presence on the bill, in the shape of The Oonagh Derby Band and O’Connor’s duo with bodhran player and singer Gino Lupari, proved even more pervasive than it first appeared. First to take the stage was Rothesay-born singer-songwriter Rosanna O’Byrne, now living in Shetland but self-evidently of Hibernian extraction, though she lent her affectingly raw yet honeyed vocals to a set of mainly country-folk material.

Armagh-born Derby herself, backed here by O’Connor, Lupari, guitarist Gerard Thompson, bassist Nicky Scott and Cormac O’Kane on keyboards, comes from a long line of traditional singers, a heritage acknowledged in her compellingly hushed, fragile opening rendition of “She Moved Through The Fair”. The ensuing punchy, bluesy “Sick, Sore and Tired”, however, proved more representative of her largely self-penned material, which also drew on jazz, Americana and pop influences, occasionally straying towards MOR, Mary Black-ish territory but showcasing a tremendous voice, variously reminiscent of Mary Chapin Carpenter and early Tina Turner. Derby won extra points, too, for the brave feat of pulling off a Sugababes cover at a folk festival, her huskily seductive version of “About You Now” also being surely the first to feature tremolo banjo accompaniment.

O’Connor and Lupari – both established Shetland favourites from previous visits with Four Men and a Dog – then reappeared, joined again by Thompson on guitar. With this line-up replicating the instrumentation of O’Connor’s regular trio, his extraordinary facility on tenor banjo formed the centrepiece of their set, holding the entire audience, from pre-schoolers to pensioners, utterly rapt with its synthesis of dazzling, multi-layered intricacy and formidable propulsive drive. Besides his similarly virtuosic bodhran work (and hilarious comic asides), Lupari contributed a fine vocal performance on “Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden”, as learned from Tim O’Brien, while O’Connor switched to fiddle for the dreamily graceful old-time waltz “Song for PJ”.

Extending the Irish connection into its American diaspora, the young Louisiana family quartet L’Angelus were not only fresh from touring the Emerald Isle, but also trace part of their lineage back there, a link commemorated in a bittersweet self-penned ballad, “The Waltz of St Cecilia” and a gorgeously harmonised old Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision”. The four elder Rees siblings (there are four more at home) who make up the band – Katie, Paige, Stephen and Johnny – between them play fiddle, accordion, guitar, bass, saxophone and drums, with the first three also sharing lead vocal duties.

Though still only in their 20s, they’ve been performing together for 15 years, their mother being a professional singer who took them on tour from an early age. The result was a jaw-dropping breadth and maturity of musicianship that made them one of the weekend’s biggest hits, from the sisters’ bewitchingly dulcet, Alison Krauss-like vocals to Stephen’s showstopper, “Genevieve”, a wilfully hammed-up “swamp pop” number in which he seemed to be channelling Elvis, Tom Jones and James Brown all at once. Their native cajun sounds were only one element of a repertoire encompassing country, pop, blues, folk and even ska flavours, delivered with a polish and pizzazz that mark them out for major success.

Even the festival’s first ever Polish visitors, the Silesian seven-piece Beltaine, included Irish elements in their intriguing Celtic/east European mix. Fiddle, whistle, bombarde, Galician bagpipes, accordion, bouzouki, tablas, bodhran, guitar and bass all featured among their dozen-plus instruments, plus vocals, liberally souped-up with pedal effects and electronic samples. An array of trancey groove-based soundscapes often brought Shooglenifty and the Peatbog Faeries to mind, albeit without quite the same multi-layered interactive finesse – though this is a significantly newer band – but with plenty of distinctive textures and juxtapositions, also revealing Breton, Turkish, gyspy and reggae influences.

Altogether a truly exemplary Shetland opening night: five high-quality acts, ranging up to exceptional, each very different from the others, each duly rewarded with both close audience attention and fervently sustained applause. For the performers – especially Shetland first-timers, and most of all for those sent off around the islands – Day 1 of this festival (having stumbled off the boat at 7am, following the previous night’s traditionally mammoth onboard session) can seem a very long day indeed, but then they have a gig like this and it’s immediately all worthwhile.

Eilidh Mackenzie (photo by Dougie Coulter, used with permission)

Undisputed winners of the weekend’s most-travelled prize, however, were the Scotland’s Islands posse, which first played in Lerwick on the Thursday, bringing together artists from the Western Isles (Gaelic singer-songwriter Eilidh Mackenzie, with her band), Orkney (Wrigley and the Reel) and Shetland itself (multi-instrumentalist whizzkid Ryan Couper, with visiting guitarist/accordionist Tim Edey).

After subsequent journeys spanning almost the longest distance it’s possible to go in Shetland, their odyssey culminated with them all merged into one band for Sunday’s Foy concerts back in town – these being three marathon shows, each featuring a quarter-hour slot slot by every visiting act (typically numbering around 15) and collectively representing another annual triumph of Swiss-watch organisation.

Long before that, though, it was off to Unst on Friday, a five-hour round trip to the topmost populated extreme of UK soil, including two inter-island ferry crossings both there and back. Not only, for many concerned, was this the ideal way and place to spend the day of a certain nuptial occasion, but weather-wise it was also a day of rare clemency – which, indeed, prevailed for the entire weekend: cloudlessly sunny, and minus the usual sharp-edged wind, so actually T-shirt warm.

In its burgeoning spring garb – daffodils only just past their peak up here, primroses and celandines in full bloom, marsh irises sprouting thickly – Shetland’s undulating, largely treeless landscape, continually encroached by glittering fjord-like fingers of ultramarine sea, was illumined in all its stark, understated beauty, complete with frolicking lambs and tiny Shetland foals.

As a soundtrack to the unfolding views, the tunes on the bus got started before we were halfway there – and later continued all the way back to Lerwick, by way of warm-up for the late-night melée of the Festival Club. On this particular trip, there was a particularly riotous 20-minute session on the car-deck of the second return ferry, when the Unst concert party converged with the one who’d been playing in Yell, the next island down.

Tunes included a suitably irreverent blast of “Here Comes the Bride”, segueing into “Marie’s Wedding”, after which piper Fred Morrison, one of the Yell squad, played his fellow passengers off the boat on foot, marching down the ramp past helplessly laughing crewmen, to be picked up at the roadside by their benignly tolerant coach-driver.

Between times, a gem of a concert at the 100-capacity North Unst Public Hall, in the township of Haroldswick, vividly highlighted the vitality of Scotland’s island cultures within its contemporary folk scene. As home ambassador, Couper was first up, not only exemplifying the rude health of Shetland’s famous fiddle tradition, but also parading his prodigious fingerpicking prowess on guitar, while Edey’s honorary-local status for the weekend – after several previous festival visits – and delighted high-wire sparring with his younger partner, underlined how and why these particular islands are such a magnet for the world’s top musicians.

In selecting material mainly from her two most recent Gaelic song-suites, Bel Canto and Saoghal Sona, Mackenzie – sensitively backed by Gordon Gunn on fiddle and mandolin, guitarist Christopher Marra and bassist Ged Grimes – delivered a vibrant demonstration of these compositions’ individual strengths. Their ambitious yet radiantly harmonious mingling of diverse musical styles enabled them easily to stand alone within a regular concert set, alongside such traditional fare as a spine-tingling a cappella 16th century lament.

Having recently released their first new album in a decade, Idiom, Orcadian twins Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley – who’ve had their hands somewhat full in the interim, building up their successful music school and session/performance space, The Reel, in Kirkwall – sounded ready and raring to be back on the live stage. The Reel in this latter context denoted their accompanists, guitarist Ian Mackay and accordionist Billy Peace, though as ever it was the sisters’ fiddle, guitar and piano work that supplied the performance’s central, scintillating dynamic, feinting and parrying and creatively goading one another to exquisite heights of artistry, in between playfully fuelling Orkney and Shetland’s traditional rivalry.

Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers (photo by Dougie Coulter, used with permission)

The trip down to Fair Isle, where the same bill was scheduled the next night, involves a two- or three-hour sea journey that even locals often baulk at, traversing as it does a meeting of the North Sea and the Atlantic within a 25-mile channel. The beneficent weather continued, however, and with tunes once again resounding from bus and boat throughout both legs of the journey, to distract from the ever-present tidal swell, even the worst sailors in the line-up arrived back on Sunday aglow and inspired, after an unforgettable night’s craic and hospitality with Britain’s remotest island community.

With no room aboard for extra passengers – even the festival committee rep for the gig had to double as crew to squeeze on – I headed firstly for Saturday night’s big show at the Clickimin Centre in Lerwick, whose vast main sports hall, kitted out with a correspondingly heavyweight PA system, offers an impressive contrast to those cosy rural venues.

Kicking things off in simultaneously local and exotic fashion were the home-grown, colourfully costumed Afro/Latin troupe Aestaewast, who combined salsa and samba drumming, African chant and dance, in a display of tremendous verve and gusto. They were followed by another of this year’s most popular festival debutants, St Louis combo Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three. Cooking up a superbly slick, technically top-notch blend of early jazz, jug-band, ragtime, Western swing and jump-jive sounds, seasoned with plenty of vintage grit and effervescent showmanship, their line-up featured resonator guitars, harmonica, washboard, upright bass and vocals, topped off with LaFarge’s powerhouse vocals and his bandmates’ tight, breezy harmonies.

A hard act to follow, for most musicians, but the aforementioned Fred Morrison seemed blithely unfazed, settling in with Steve Byrne on bouzouki and Matheu Watson on guitar to deliver a set of awesome authority, himself switching between Highland pipes, uilleann pipes and low whistle; between high-speed flights of pyrotechnic improvisation and potently articulated slower tunes.

Back in the centre of town, there was more red-blooded piping to the fore as Breabach rounded off the bill amid the very different but equally buoyant Saturday-night ambience of the Lerwick British Legion. With their second album, The Desperate Battle of the Birds, now a good year under their belts, and fifth member James Lindsay, on double bass, likewise well bedded in, the band’s arrangements and stagecraft were both precisely honed and supremely relaxed, their sound by turns thrillingly fiery and silkily delicate.

As well as the chance to see your favourite festival acts once more, Sunday night’s Foys let you sample those you’ve otherwise missed. One particular highlight in the latter category was a terrifically ebullient turn from Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, showcasing tracks from their imminent new album File Under Fiction, with Napier’s magnificent voice and character-driven roots/pop songcraft complemented by taut, blues’n’boogie-tinged arrangements.

Others included two bands from this year’s Scandinavian contingent: the quartet led by Danish fiddle maestro Harald Haugaard, also featuring the luminous, bell-like vocals of his wife Helene Blum, and Swedish/Norwegian instrumental quintet Sver, making a considerable impression on their UK debut with a dense, surging, muscular mesh of fiddle, Hardanger fiddle, viola, mandolin, accordion, guitar and percussion.

Having made the most of the weekend’s punishing nocturnal schedule – sessions at the Festival Club for the first few small hours, continuing in local kitchens and living-rooms until well into the next day – Sver also took top honours for the pithiest summing-up of their experiences. “We’d like to play this first set as a tribute to the Shetland Folk Festival,” they began. “We call it ‘Total Carnage’.”

© Sue Wilson, 2011

Links

• Shetland Folk Festival
• Dougie Coulter’s Shetland Festival Photostream

AMIDST today’s embarrassment of riches, it’s hard to recall just how small and straitened the folk scene was back in 1981. Two years into the first Thatcher government, folk song at least still rang out defiantly from the redoubts of trade unionism and the peace movement, while the folk club network was also staunchly dug in.

Chris Stout (Photo by Louis De Carlo)

In terms of mainstream profile, though, pretty much the whole folk category was in retreat, condemned by association with the 1960s and early 70s, while punk, post-punk, synth-pop and New Romanticism vied for popular supremacy.

Shetland, however, has been its own redoubt of traditional music across centuries of shifting cultural fortunes. And never more so than over the past three decades, for it was in 1981 – when the likes of Adam and the Ants, the Human League, Soft Cell, the Specials and the Police were topping the charts – that the islands first hosted their now world-renowned folk festival.

It’s not often that Davie Henderson – for whom this year’s 30th Shetland festival will be his 15th as programmer – is lost for words, but asked to name his all-time favourite highlights, he struggles vainly at first to sift through the memories: “That’s really, really difficult. There have just been so many great moments, so many amazing musicians, it’s very hard to pick ones that stand out beyond all the rest – plus there’s quite a few probably not fit for publication.”

Perhaps the ultimate festival legend, though, he eventually recalls, dates from 1988, when no less ultra-cool an eminence than Elvis Costello topped the bill.

“He and his wife had come off a cruise liner in Lerwick the year before,” Henderson explains. “Someone from the committee recognised him in a pub by the harbour, got chatting, and we ended up inviting him back to play the festival. He was brilliant, too, no superstar stuff whatsoever: he stayed in somebody’s house and played all the country halls just like everyone else.

“But before that, setting off to come up from Aberdeen, the ferry wasn’t going to sail because of a seamen’s strike. Everyone was already on board, all the festival musicians, so after various discussions Elvis and a few folk went ashore and spoke to the picket line, and eventually agreed that he’d play a benefit for the union on his way back, if they’d let the boat sail – so that’s what happened. I went back down for the gig myself: it was at the Music Hall, and most the other acts who’d been in Shetland played too, like a mini-festival in itself – all organised in the space of a week.”

As this suggests, the (in)famous Shetland Folk Festival spirit and atmosphere, which inspire such unique affection among those who’ve experienced them, were already well established by this point. In fact, most key elements of the festival’s distinctive template were in place right from the outset.

Not least among them is the formidable party stamina of its host community, which prompted the then 32-year-old Dick Gaughan – who headlined the inaugural event along with the late Sean Maguire, expat Scots song doyenne Jean Redpath and a 14-year-old Kathryn Tickell – to declare; “This festival requires a government health warning – nobody sleeps.”

Transporting four nights’ worth of visiting musicians all the way to Lerwick (this year from as far afield as India, the US and Slovenia, plus Germany, France, Sweden, Ireland, England and Scotland) might seem challenge enough in itself, but perhaps the most crucial factor in creating the festival’s character and securing its success was its founders’ determination not to stop there.

Then as now, around half the concerts most nights take place in small rural halls, which over the years have literally spanned the islands’ length and breadth, from Unst to Fair Isle, Hillswick to Out Skerries.

Alison Brown

Not only does this make the event as accessible and inclusive as possible for the whole Shetland population – currently around 22,000, two-thirds of them outside Lerwick – but it gives the artists both a bigger and closer picture of the place; a taste of life well beyond the usual touring or tourist track.

It was at the Baltasound Hall in Unst, for instance – very nearly as far north as you can go on UK soil – that the Grammy-winning banjo player Alison Brown made her Shetland debut, rounding off the 1995 festival’s opening night, for a capacity audience of about 120.

After an outward journey that had begun with flights from Nashville to London, then London to Aberdeen, continued with the 14-hour crossing to Lerwick, and concluded with three hours more on a coach, via two inter-island ferries, her opening observation – “I think we’ve taken just about every mode of transport there is to get here” – was a model of graceful understatement. (She’s since been back twice for more.) Fellow Americana star Tim O’Brien is also a recurrent visitor, while other acts have made the trip from China, Australia, Russia, Quebec and Zimbabwe.

“One of the great things about the festival is that it’s never just been about folk music in any narrow sense,” points out Shetland journalist and broadcaster Mary Blance, a member of the original organising committee, who hasn’t missed a year in attendance since. “It’s always been about bringing in good music from all over. But alongside that, right from the start, it was also about giving a platform to our local musicians, so that visitors can see the strength of the scene we have here.”

As well as helping to spread the event’s reputation far and wide around the globe, these twin programming policies have seen a welter of fresh ideas and inspiration annually mainlined into that already fertile home-grown scene.

After each night’s main concerts – all featuring two or three Shetland acts among the line-up – another founding custom, still devoutly observed, is for everyone who’s able to congregate in the Festival Club, where musicians of whatever nationality or generation swap tunes and techniques until dawn, often making up a few new ones along the way.

“I vividly remember our first ever gig at the festival,” says Chris Stout of Fiddlers’ Bid – nowadays Shetland music’s leading contemporary champions – who has also played with Salsa Celtica, as well as leading his own jazz/folk quintet.

“I think it was 1992: I was about fifteen, and we played the Hamnavoe Hall in Burra. The band had got together at school, and cut our teeth playing coffee mornings and suchlike, but that was the first concert where we just got this amazing response from an audience, and it totally gave us the appetite for more. It was the first time we’d seen the after-hours side, too, at the club – getting to sit and have tunes with all these fantastic musicians, from all round the world, after watching them onstage: it was our first proper rock’n’roll experience.”

Even for a Fair Isle native, this might sound an unlikely teenage view of such a remotely situated, proudly homespun hootenanny, but anyone who’s been there will attest to a united insatiability for making music and making merry that leaves your average rock’n’roll spree equally far in the dust.

Hence the cornucopia of only-in-Shetland stories that has accrued since 1981. The year of the spontaneous street party starting at 6am, when whoever said “all back to mine” after the Festival Club proved to have far too small a house, but thankfully it was a beautiful morning, and one of that year’s acts had a mobile piano. . . (A police car stopped for a look after maybe a couple of hours, then cruised on by.)

Or the time that a certain guitarist, stumbling homeward to the southern edge of Lerwick, detoured to sit on the beach and watch the sunrise, only to be awoken some time later by a seal licking the drool from his mouth. . . Or when a certain stalwart after-party host received a fresh ostrich egg as a thank-you present on the last night/morning – from which several rounds of breakfast omelettes were promptly cooked, with a little help from a Black & Decker drill. . .

Yet another defining ingredient of Shetland’s festival recipe is that the vast majority of visiting artists are billeted in local homes rather than staying in hotels or B&Bs – this being just one element in the intricate, all-volunteer human framework that supports the event.

Besides the budgetary advantages, which translate into some of the best value ticket prices you’ll find anywhere, this too helps replace the customary barriers between performers and public, professional and unpaid participants, with a singularly conducive social Superglue. It’s also been the inception of numerous long-term friendships, which over the course of 29 festivals have facilitated hundreds of return visits from Shetland to far-flung former guests.

Figuring out the optimal compatibility between lists of musicians and volunteer hosts is just one small part of the fearsome logistical jigsaw that Henderson and his nine fellow festival committee members somehow piece together each year. His particular programming remit includes running-orders for 22 main concerts, plus workshops, schools visits and community performances, factoring in not only all transport, sound-check and catering requirements, but his own long-seasoned understanding of what works where.

“I’ve been involved in every festival – helping with stuff like stewarding and driving to begin with,” he says. “Then on the committee from 1990, and I started booking the artists five years after that. I’ve got a pretty good feel by now for how Shetland audiences work; which ones tend to like a more relaxed or a livelier night.”

Lau

The whole committee is also assembled to listen to every artist’s recordings that arrive for consideration, before Henderson replies individually to them all. Yet another instance of the festival’s many old-fashioned virtues – yet when assessing the multiple objectives involved in devising the bill each year, he’s crystal-clear as to his first priority.

“We have to keep the young people interested. The festival has to keep on being fresh and exciting for them, otherwise we’ll lose it: if it doesn’t move on, it dies.” With a line-up that includes three-times Radio 2 Folk Award-winners Lau, legendary Swedish trio Väsen, Orkney supergroup The Chair, Brooklyn neo-vintage starlets The Wiyos, and all-conquering kiddie superstars The Singing Kettle, Shetland’s 30th shindig looks every inch like a festival hitting its prime.

The 30th Shetland Folk Festival runs from 29 April to 2 May 2010.

© Sue Wilson, 2010

Links

• Shetland Folk Festival
• Sue Wilson

Julie Moncrieff

YOU KNOW that it’s folk festival time when on making your way home to Shetland you encounter fiddle players on the train from Edinburgh and large instrument-shaped bags at the check-in queue in Aberdeen airport.

So it was that I was back from an Easter trip just in time to for some springtime blue skies, the end of the daffodils and the 29th Shetland Folk Festival. Traditionally, most visiting acts arrive in Lerwick by sea. A wonderful assortment of unkent faces tumble off the boat with a host of instruments in tow.

They are already well initiated into Shetland hospitality by the Folk Festival committee members who leave Lerwick on Tuesday to travel overnight by boat to welcome the visitors in Aberdeen. The committee then travel up with them on the Wednesday night, arriving back on Thursday morning, the first day of the festival.

An afternoon trip to the Festival Club, hosted at Islesburgh Community Centre in Lerwick, for the opening concert reveals a general stir of excitement. There can be heard exotic languages and mysterious accents from Australian twangs to Scandinavian lilts.

Artistes have met their hosts (a special part of this festival being that the visiting acts are put up by local residents), wrist bands have been issued, introductions made and the first sips of brews from the Real Ale Bar have been imbued. The atmosphere is jolly and there is more than a sniff of anticipation in the air.

By Thursday evening everyone has settled in and concerts are in full swing across Shetland. They take place in various venues in Lerwick and in community halls from the south to the north and from the east to the west of the islands.

This year’s international acts came from many lands, including Denmark, Spain, Canada, Ireland, Finland and Australia. And, of course, there is a bulging bag of local artistes. All come together for seamless days and nights of music and just to “hae a spree”, as is said in Shetland.

One of this year’s headline acts were the ever popular Edinburgh ‘Acid Croft’ combo Shooglenifty who played on the Friday night in Lerwick’s Clickimin Leisure Centre. They were supported by Shetland’s Fullscelilidh Spelemannslag.

The local act was on first. Six fiddle players took centre stage to belt out some stonking tunes on their singing, swinging strings. The fiddles rang out against a crisp, rhythmic backbone of drums and hearty bass. All this accompanied by feverish mandolin, pacey guitar and earthy bodhran, creating a full-scale frenzy.

Sitting in the hall you could feel the tension of hundreds of toe-tapping revellers itching to boogie. A few tunes later and the dance floor head count went from nought to sixty in as many seconds. Soon it was packed and a sudden throbbing heat had filled the room.

There ensued a hurly, burly maelstrom of musical mischief with influences that seem to swoop in from Cape Breton, Eastern Europe and Ireland. Then in a final flash of bows, a sparkle of bouncing strings and to the clap of hundreds of hands they were gone.

With the audience well and truly warmed up Shooglenifty hit the stage. Angus Grant, the slinky-hipped fiddle player and front man, greeted the hall to hearty applause. This was much anticipated return to Shetland.

Throughout the set Grant prowled up and down the stage with devilish presence, snake-charming the audience with hearty reels and searing, soaring playing.

Quee McArthur’s bass lines mixed with James Mackintosh’s neat and meaty drums to provide a low end that hinted at everything from rock’n’roll to funk. But, however a piece began the band’s sound always meshed together into a distinctly Celtic twang as soon as the various melodic strings kicked in.

Mandolin player, Luke Plumb, performed with skill and control, appearing from a distance like a hatless Jay Kay wearing a Nick Cave frown. He cut a striking figure as he surveyed the audience in his fine, cream bell-bottomed suit.

It was a well-polished performance but there with a sense of tease, of something being held back, and perhaps that was the case. Several hours later Shooglenifty delivered a whirling dervish of a set in the less formal setting of the Festival Club.

The festival committee somehow have to create a programme that suits traditionalists and those with a wider sense of ‘folk’ alike, and each year has a different feel and balance.

But, there are some old festival favourites and this year saw the return of members of Old Rope String Band in their new incarnation as New Rope String Band. They were back in Shetland with a new line up after the untimely loss of Old Rope member, Joe Scurfield.

And, of course, the old and the new couldn’t fail to delight. They reduced several audiences to tears of laughter with their infectious brand of highly visual, theatrical playfulness and beautiful music. Tunes, laughter, nonsense and mischief all wrapped up in one act. Imaginative and a bit bonkers, marvellous!

Felpeyu have roots in the Asturia, Spain. They had the stage bulging at the seams with a splendid ensemble of instruments from flute and bodhran to bouzouki and Asturian bagpipes. It was their first time in Shetland but fine cultural links had already been forged.

Shetland’s puffins or Tammie Nories make their winter homes in the south of the Bay of Biscay we were told. Through ornithology and music, then, the act endeared themselves to the local and visiting audience alike. Their set fused earthy lyrics and hot, traditional Spanish beats with the occasional, exotic sniff of North Africa.

Dáimh, trailed as ‘the ultimate Scotland, Irish, Cape Breton, Californian band’ put on an energetic show stuffed with jigs and reels that was sharp, varied and rooted in several lands. This was traditional folk music at its boldest and best.

Toronto’s Madison Violet, were delightful and enchanting. Brenley MacEachern has an extraordinary, rich, crackly voice that shifts effortlessly into song. She can also somehow drop the rasp and deliver pure, angelic notes.

When combined with Lisa MacIsaac’s melodic, rootsy tones the duo create some enchanting harmonies and a most seductive performance. A fine dose of bluegrassy-folk set on a solid bed of good old fashioned singer-songwriting.

Of course there was much, much more. Here’s just a hint in a nutshell: Box Club somehow brilliantly pull-off the concept of ‘experimental accordion playing’, Hat Fitz brought his own brand of powerful, big-bearded blues all the way from Australia, Finland’s Frigg were super-lively and highly-infectious and there were luscious spoonfuls of singing throughout, ranging from Ireland’s Cara Dillon to Scotland’s Emily Sharp.

Local talent was well represented too. There was a special Shetland concert and regular late night slots at the Festival Club. The concert showcased a mix of the islands’ current crop of performers.

Lise Sinclair from Fair Isle combines singing with poetry, often setting Shetland poets’ words to song. Her extraordinary voice echoes back through time and generations. She weaves lyrics around legends and the land but also sings of things contemporary; of the wilderness she finds in the city or of war and loss in world conflict.

Aestaewast are Shetland’s Cuban/African drumming group and enthusiastically demonstrate Shetland’s wide cultural girth. Playful and confident, there were djembes, bongos and even African thumb pianos played inside gourds.

This was an ingeniously choreographed rhythmical frenzy. Their set culminated in a thumping dance-based crescendo that had the room bouncing along with a sea of red hot faces and irrepressible smiles.

Local singer Julie Moncrieff debuted as a front-woman and delivered some velvety, elegant country/rock/folk covers and traditional Shetland songs. Her band, formed of some of Shetland’s finest players, graced the stage in stylish garb. They seemed like inhabitants of some other-worldly jazz club. It was a strong, sensual first outing from a singer and band developing a unique sound.

The Festival Club hosts afternoon workshops and late night acts. There can be found special sessions by day and anything from fiddles and funk to locally distilled rock and downright dirty blues by night.

Huddles of musicians gather on the stairs and indeed any available space to conjure up tunes into the early hours. I would be truly surprised if a single moment could be found during the festival where there isn’t something being played somewhere by someone.

Visitors abounded this year. A group from London were surprised to find that good old fashioned hospitality still abounds in these parts. They were delighted to be offered a dram or two by a particularly cordial host at one of the informal parties that start only after the Festival Club closes. Any self-consciousness evaporated and they were soon enthusiastic participants in the impromptu musical hi-jinx that ensued.

The Shetland Folk Festival Committee (all volunteers), with a fine dollop of help from the local community, manage to bring together the formal with the informal, the traditional with the experimental and the ethereal with the deeply dastardly.

This year’s festival proves that Shetland continues to host what must surely be one of the hottest, most talent-stuffed and, at times, rockin’ folk festivals around.

Thanks to Dave Hammond for the pictures – see Associated Page link below.

© Karen Emslie, 2009

Links

• Shetland Folk Festival
• Dave Hammond

Associated Page

• Dave Hammond’s Shetland Folk Festival Gallery

Cara Dillon

WITH VIRTUALLY all of its 21 main programme concerts sold out – many within days of the box office opening – the 29th Shetland Folk Festival notched up yet another resounding success. Unusually, too, for a Scottish island festival, the vast bulk of those 5000-plus tickets were snapped up by local audiences, for whom the four-day event is primarily laid on. (Some of the islands’ crofters carefully time their spring lambing so it starts only once the festival’s over.)

Despite its worldwide renown, Shetland’s annual spree isn’t really aimed at attracting extra outside visitors – though there’s always a smattering in attendance, including some who make the long northward trip every year. But given this phenomenal level of home-grown support (from a total population of around 21,000), and that some of the village halls outwith Lerwick – where nearly half the concerts take place – hold only a hundred people, there simply isn’t the capacity for many more.

Thanks to its far-flung location, Shetland rarely features on touring itineraries, so the festival’s key programming objective is to pack in as much international and stylistic variety as possible. This year’s line-up was drawn from ten different countries across three continents, with most of the musicians shipped up on the same overnight ferry from Aberdeen, and calm seas ensuring that the customary warm-up session in the bar onboard continued well into the wee hours – resulting in some seriously bleary eyes on arrival in Lerwick at 7am.

Come that same night, though, there was no sign of boat-lag among the acts featured at Hamnavoe, on the south-west coast of Shetland’s main island – just a few miles, in fact, from the town referenced in the well-known tune ‘The Scalloway Lasses’, which featured in a typically tight, exhilarating set from Highland stalwarts Dàimh.

The other Scots on the bill were Box Club, with their wilfully unlikely four-accordion frontline, vigorously backed by guitar, double-bass and percussion, who once again proved just how far they’ve come since their debut gigs three years ago. Back then, the concept was arguably – and understandably – stronger than their actual sound, but now the latter has firmly resolved and integrated into something genuinely original and exciting, based on a vibrant foundation of original tunes, and confidently aligning all manner of influences – from Celtic to calypso, reggae to jazz – with a touch of self-mocking comedy.

Danish five-piece Zar, back by popular demand after their Shetland debut five years ago, once again went down a treat, mixing airily captivating vocals – pitched somewhere between Eddi Reader and Edie Brickell – with dynamic, imaginative instrumental work on twin fiddles, guitar, mandolin and double bass.

To say that Irish star Cara Dillon stole the show implies no discredit to these other bands – rather it’s a measure of just how stunning her performance was, buoyed by the kind of intent audience appreciation that singers dream about. Matching gorgeous honeyed sweetness with compelling emotional intensity and minutely nuanced phrasing, she re-minted such classics as ‘Black is the Colour’, ‘The Parting Glass’ and ‘P Stands for Paddy’ with spellbinding eloquence, while the self-penned title track from her latest album, Hill of Thieves, underlined her impressive development as a songwriter.

Expertly accompanied by husband Sam Lakeman (guitar/piano), James O’Grady (uilleann pipes/whistles) and Ed Boyd (guitar), she also took turns on both fiddle and penny whistle in a couple of tune sets, all served up with an abundance of unassuming charm.

Besides all the professional visiting acts, an additional highlight of this year’s programme was provided by the Nordic Tone project, instigated by the festival, which brought together 22 young musicians, aged 16-25, from Shetland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, to explore and build upon their common cultural ground during a week’s intensive rehearsal, culminating in a performance at Saturday’s biggest concert in Lerwick.

Featuring fiddles, accordions, cello, guitars, double bass, flute, percussion, vocals and the zither-like Finnish kantele, their lush, sophisticated, densely layered ensemble sound comprehensively belied the brevity of its preparation, imbued as it was with a polish and finesse that plenty of established bands would struggle to emulate.

Also reflecting Shetland’s vibrant Nordic heritage, later on the same night, were the Finnish/Norwegian seven-piece Frigg, another big hit of the weekend. Fronted by four dynamic fiddlers, they blended old and new tunes from their own traditions with the hoedown twang of bluegrass, and terrific musical verve with brilliantly extrovert showmanship. Representing the extended family of Celtic music, meanwhile, were the Asturian outfit Felpeyu, whose line-up of bagpipes, fiddle, accordion, bouzouki, guitar, bass and bodhran meshed in winningly bright, vivacious, richly coloured instrumentals, complemented by stirring contemporary songs.

As ever, too, the officially programmed gigs were only half of the Shetland festival story, the rest unfolding via late-night/early-morning sessions and parties at the Festival Club and in local homes, where the tunes flowed as freely as the craic, leaving vistors and locals alike, by the end, as inspired as they were exhausted.

© Sue Wilson, 2009

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• Shetland Folk Festival

Munnely Band. © Lieve Boussauw (www.b-lieve.be/)

A FEW YEARS ago, before she went solo, Karine Polwart came to the Shetland Folk Festival as lead singer with Malinky, an experience that directly inspired her song ‘Follow the Heron Home’, whose chorus – “By night and day, we’ll sport and we’ll play/And delight as the dawn dances over the bay” – brilliantly encapsulates the event’s uniquely hedonistic character.

Polwart’s opening line, too, “The back of the winter is broken”, further highlights another crucial element in all this nigh-on non-stop merrymaking, coinciding as it does, this far north, with the first real flush of spring – even as the daylight hours here already extend late into the evening, and the sun’s well up by the time the festival club turfs out at 5am. This year, the sun also shone from cloudless blue skies throughout almost the entire long weekend, making visitors and locals alike feel extra-specially blessed.

Polwart’s song found its own way home for the 28th Shetland festival, as performed by Shauna Mullin, the lead singer with Ireland’s David Munnelly Band, whose striking contralto voice – think Dolores Keane in her prime, but even deeper and richer – won her an All-Ireland title a few years back. (From Donegal, Mullin is Paddy Tunney’s grand-niece, so it’s obviously in the genes.)

Munnelly himself is a West Mayo accordionist with shoulders like an ox and a playing style of matching power – though capable, too, of great delicacy, as in his fluttery, feather-light accompaniment of Mullin’s singing. For the most part, though, the band’s instrumental sound – also featuring fiddler Daire Bracken, guitarist Paul Kelly, and Munnelly’s brother Kieran on flute and percussion, plus stepdancer Nic Gareiss – comprises a big, beefy romp back to Irish music’s dancehall days in 1920s America, conjuring shades of the Flanagan Brothers in jigs and reels vibrantly laced with ragtime, jazz and swing.

Compared with the eight-piece line-up I last saw at Celtic Connections, this streamlined touring version left some of the arrangements sounding a little depleted, but their attack, brio and feelgood energy nonetheless made them a popular hit of the weekend.

Also on the bill when I saw Munnelly’s band in Scalloway, Shetland’s ancient Viking capital – complete with dramatic ruined waterside castle – were acts from China, Croatia, Texas and Shetland itself, reflecting a festival that this year exceeded even its own customarily eclectic standards.

The Chinese delegation were called Hanggai, a Beijing-based six-piece whose members are all of Inner Mongolian birth or descent, and whose music is based around that region’s tradition of khoomei throat-singing – as popularised by Huun-Huur-Tu – along with tunes reflecting the rhythms of long horseback rides across the steppe.

These elements, with instrumentation including morinkhuur and tobshuur (respectively akin to a cello and a banjo, each with two strings) and modonchor (a vertically-played flute) were powerfully interwoven with guitar, electric bass, percussion and bare-knuckle rock stylings.

Given their own rich local music culture, centred as it is on fiddle tunes, and their distance from the beaten touring track for international acts, Shetland audiences are always particularly hungry for the exotic, and their amazement and delight at the extraordinary split-note sounds produced by two of Hanggai’s three singers, potently meshed with the soaring, anthemic tones of the third, saw the band taken comprehensively to the islanders’ hearts – and vice versa.

Their concerts became more of a love-fest with every passing night, and they were also well stuck into the late-night sessions back at the festival club, jamming and singing away both with Shetland musicians and other overseas visitors. This being Hanggai’s first ever UK visit, though – one undertaken entirely without state support, and exclusively to play Shetland – it’s somewhat mind-boggling to imagine the impressions they’re taking home. Shetland isn’t exactly typical of Britain at the best of times, and at festival time it’s another planet altogether. Hanggai will likely be spotted on the mainland before too long, however, with their first European album release, Flowers, due later this summer.

The young sextet Afion made up the Croatian contingent, merging soulful traditional love-songs and ballads with plenty of rhythmic invention and technical flair, if not quite enough overall assertion. The lone Texan was veteran singer-songwriter Katy Moffatt, a regular collaborator with both Tom Russell and Rosie Flores, whose sensuously seasoned voice draws on country, blues, gospel, jazz and rockabilly influences, in material that encompassed both wistful fragility and exhilarating ballsiness.

Completing the Scalloway line-up – which offered a particularly choice microcosm of the overall programme – was top local fiddler Bryan Gear, accompanied by a few friends on guitar, bass and piano, displaying his immaculate lyrical touch, exquisitely limpid tone and meticulous articulation to full advantage.

Apart from Hanggai, though, the biggest unanimous vote for musical highlight of the weekend was won by the young Danish fiddler Henrik Jansberg and his four-piece band, the latter variously juggling guitar, mandolin, banjo, nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle), double bass and cajon. A buoyant, expansive, densely-layered blend of Nordic, Celtic, jazz, rock, bluegrass, funk and classical flavours, their music bestrode the expressive gamut from understated elegance to raging red-blooded wildness, united by exceptionally classy playing all round. Look out for their aptly-titled new CD, Omnivor: it’s an absolute treat.

Highland champions the Peatbog Faeries were also on toweringly fine form for their big Friday-night show at Lerwick’s Clickimin Centre, before a sellout 850-strong crowd. Having a full 90-minute set at their disposal, the full nine-piece posse, including brass section, built up both sound and atmosphere with majestic implacability, led by Tom Salter’s blistering guitar work and Adam Sutherland’s pyrotechnic fiddle along with Peter Morrison’s pipes.

Other heroes of a more local variety were rising stars Breabach, whose twin pipes’n’fiddle attack won them a whole host of new friends as far away as the ultra-northerly isles of Yell and Fetlar, as they plied the festival’s extensive gig circuit outwith Lerwick, and the monumental Orkney octet The Chair, whose small-hours club set on Saturday night, decked out in full regalia of ludicrous wigs and weird costume masks, will linger in many minds as the weekend’s maddest image.

© Sue Wilson, 2008

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• Shetland Folk Festival

Boston four-piece Crooked Still.

SHETLAND is generally marketed to visitors as a remote haven of tranquillity, far removed from the hectic whirl of modern urban life. Come folk festival time each spring, however, this famed peace and quiet gives way to a hectic whirl of Shetland’s own, as squads of musicians are shuttled hither and thither throughout the islands, playing to packed houses wherever they go.

This year’s nineteen concerts – packed into three days rather than the usual four, as one of the two main Aberdeen ferries was in dry dock – took place as far afield as Burravoe in Yell, the archipelago’s second most northerly island, and on the tiny outpost of Skerries, a 40-minute sea crossing east from the Shetland mainland, home to fewer than 80 souls.

Most of Shetland’s festival artists arrive by boat, and the 12-hour overnight sail from Aberdeen – weather permitting – often turns into a major warm-up session. With flat-calm seas on this occasion, the amidships bar was abuzz with tunes from around the world until well into the wee hours.

It was thus a distinctly bleary-eyed motley crew that stumbled down the gangway at 7am next day – but Shetland offers no rest for the wicked, with all the acts as usual scheduled to play the opening concert, starting at 1pm sharp.

It’s this local combination of gargantuan musical appetites and boundless hospitality that underpins the event’s legendary international reputation

Just as well, too, given the level of befuddlement by now prevailing among the visitors, as they’re hustled onto a fleet of coaches and minibuses and dispatched off to their sound-checks for that evening, some just along the road, others to tiny village halls up-country.

Friday’s main event was the mighty double header of local heroes Fiddlers’ Bid and Irish heavyweights Four Men and a Dog, at the 800-seater Clickimin Centre in Lerwick.

Having first got together at the local Anderson High School back in 1991, Fiddlers’ Bid have grown up into Shetland’s foremost young musical ambassadors, with a repertoire almost exclusively comprised of indigenous material, whether retrieved from venerable collections, sourced from local composers or newly written by the band themselves.

Their four-fiddle frontline, powerfully backed with piano, clarsach, guitar and bass, forges one of the richest, headiest sounds on the folk scene today, and they brought it home in a manner that must have had every native heart in the hall nigh-on bursting with pride.

Particularly in recent years, “the Bid”, as they’re locally known, have learned to balance massed thrills and spills – based on their ability to play ridiculously fast – with an increasingly sophisticated focus on the panoply of colours, textures and dynamics available to them.

One minute they sounded like an exquisitely honed chamber ensemble, weaving radiant skeins of spine-tingling harmony; the next like some colossal rampaging beast, flyting fiddles and furious grooves chopping away at each other with superbly savage force.

Four Man and a Dog last played Shetland Folk Festival in 1993, an encounter still treasured in the memories of all those lucky enough to have experienced it. Since then, the erstwhile quartet have been rejoined by founder member Donal Murphy, adding his accordion to the already fearsome melodic firepower of Cathal Hayden on fiddle and Gerry O’Connor on banjo.

They operate on an occasional basis these days in between solo projects, taking on only such gigs as they really want to do. The result might be that their many devoted fans get to see them less often – but when they do, they’re guaranteed an electrifying show, and so it proved again here.

The fiddle/banjo and twin-fiddle duelling between Hayden and O’Connor was of such jaw-dropping intensity that each instruments’ strings were virtually smoking, vibrantly rounded out by Murphy’s quicksilver tones, which in turn led off a sparkling set of Sliabh Luachra polkas.

Mood and pace were deftly varied via Kevin Doherty’s sinewy, Americana-hued songs, including the catchily bittersweet “She’s On My Mind” and the slow-burn blues of “Maybe Tonight”. Another slower standout was O’Connor’s tune “Song For PJ”, a beautifully poignant old-time waltz inspired by his late father.

O’Connor was on double duty over the weekend, reappearing next night at the same venue alongside fellow Irish headliner Sharon Shannon, flanked by guitarist Jim Murray. With Shannon swapping between fiddle and whistle as well as her trademark button accordion, she and O’Connor spurred one another on to some truly awesome heights of musicianship, her playing’s unmistakable blend of sweetness, suppleness and strength dazzlingly dovetailed with his intricate, jewel-like picking.

Also on Saturday’s bill were sixteen young musicians from Shetland, the Highlands, Orkney and the Western Isles, brought together ahead of the festival courtesy of funding from Highland 2007.

All aged 13 or 14, they’d spent the week rehearsing with such tutors as Gaelic singer Alyth McCormack, Shetland fiddler Catriona Macdonald and multi-instrumentalist Anna Massie, in preparation for this showcase appearance.

Mostly performing in smaller sub-groups, they captivated the crowd with an arresting variety of vocal and instrumental medleys, distinguished not only by the participants’ precocious technical prowess, but their dauntless approach to demanding material and arrangements, including a brilliantly tricksy, Scandinavian-flavoured waltz penned by Macdonald especially for the occasion.

Next up were the hot young Boston four-piece Crooked Still, whose distinctive twist on bluegrass and other US folk styles has been taking the Americana scene by storm, thanks in large part to the flamboyant maverick presence of cellist Rushad Eggleston, whose growling percussive riffs weigh in alongside Gregory Liszt on banjo and Corey DiMario on double bass.

Stealing the show even from Eggleston, though, was lead singer Aoife O’Donovan, whose achingly pure honey-and-steel vocals cast an utterly beguiling spell.

With the festival’s concerts scattered as far and wide as they are, catching all the performers would be decidedly tricky if it weren’t for that Shetland institution known as a foy.

Translating as a gala or feast in the local dialect, the word here denotes three marathon final concerts on the Sunday night in Lerwick, with all fourteen visiting acts playing a short set at each venue during the evening.

It’s in this setting that the bold breadth and diversity of Shetland’s programming is best appreciated, this time ranging from the marvellously mellow yet gritty country-blues of solo singer-guitarist Ray Bonneville, to the eclectic roots/world/pop brew of Canadian five-piece The McDades.

Madcap Geordie outfit the Baghdaddies covered a dizzyingly wide stylistic spectrum all by themselves, splicing Balkan, Latin, reggae, ska and Middle Eastern influences with tremendous skill and theatrical verve.

From Slovenia, Terrafolk comprehensively demolished all language barriers with their mix of prodigious virtuosity and off-the-wall humour – culminating in a cherishable death-metal version of “You Are My Sunshine” – while the eight-piece Lazy Boy Chair, from just over the water in Orkney, did their bit for traditional inter-island rivalries with a terrifically tight, irresistibly feelgood set.

As well as the official concerts, Shetland’s festival is justly celebrated for its impromptu sessions, featuring both local and visiting musicians, which can be found taking place at almost any time of day or night over the weekend – in Lerwick’s pubs, at the nightly Festival Club or at parties in people’s homes, the last often continuing until well past breakfast-time.

It’s this local combination of gargantuan musical appetites and boundless hospitality that underpins the event’s legendary international reputation, and keeps bringing in the cream of the world’s musicians, year after year.

© Sue Wilson, 2007

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• Shetland Folk Festival

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.

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

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

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• Shetland Folk Festival

Jock Tamson's Bairns © Jock Tamsons Bairns

FROM YELL in the North to Fair Isle in the South, Shetland has been reeling to the sounds of the 24th folk festival. An eclectic and innovative programme of visiting and local artistes ensured that they and the sell-out audiences enjoyed four folk-filled days of concerts, workshops and sessions. Ah… the sessions. Islesburgh Community Centre in Lerwick serves as the festival club for the duration and many a musical tryst it’s seen over the years.

Almost a Eurovision Song Contest of Folk this year with Finland represented by their top fiddling folk ensemble Järvelä Pikkupelimannit (JPP), Norway sent Geitungan, a trio of young traditional players, with dancers that delighted audiences. Zar are a classically trained young Danish outfit who took a trick with their mellow jazzy style, great instrumentalists with a superb young singer. Asturias in Northern Spain is the home province of folk band Corquiéu, who featured the Asturian pipes and a fabulous flautist.

But on the weekend that they joined the European Union, Slovakian band, The Brothers Zamiszkovci were the surprise hit, winning over audiences wherever they appeared with four-part harmony and honest, naïve delivery of their ingenious music.

Hailing from the High Tatras the land-locked boys had never travelling on a plane before never mind having to face a fourteen-hour ferry journey. Not to mention subsequent ferries to the outlying island venues most days.

One notorious trip found them singing to the fishes. Nothing that a pint of vodka and lucozade can’t sort, allegedly. They finished off their festival with a Slovakian rending of She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountains delighted to get all the audiences singing to a chorus of Yo Yo Yuppe Yuppe Yo. Well… what the heck! It might be the in thing in the High Tatras.

American troubadour Chuck Brodsky entertained with his gently subversive songs that shine a light on the small-town life. And April Verch showed why she has twice been a Canadian champion. The dynamic step-dancing fiddle player delivered polished performances all weekend and genuine delight at being in Shetland showed, as she couldn’t stop grinning all weekend.

From Scotland we had crafty old masters, Jock Tamson’s Bairns, great to see them back. Sunhoney featured with stylish arrangements supplemented by sublime vocals from Michaela Rowan and Delta Croft Review gave a good time to add with their fusion of blues, jazz and folk.

The tongue-in-cheeky Kremlinaires were a musical Molatov of Russian and English musicians that burned bright all weekend. Several Shetlanders are now chanting mantra-like “Take me back to Belgrade I’m too young to marry.”   And The Real MaCaws with their brass and percussion served up a sassy mix that pleased the late night festival dance crowd.

Returning to the festival from Cape Breton was multi-instrumentalist JP Cormier and his pianist wife Hilda, thrilling Shetland audiences with their sheer virtuosity and endearing humour.

Shetlander Astrid Williamson (late of Goya Dress) also returned to her native islands and delivered up a set of soulful songs, sometimes hard for a solo artiste to win an audience if they are programmed between high-octane fiddle fuelled energy. Astrid shone however on Sunday at the Shetland Hotel.

Treating the crowd to a back-catalogue of self-penned songs. Highlights being Hosanna and Blood Horizon, title track of her last CD. This is the connoisseurs’ concert of the weekend, where festival faithful return annually to the afternoon event. Always melodious, mellow and mercifully short. Believe me, when you know you have the festival foy to follow which runs for at least five hours two hours of afternoon singing is but a blink.

The Festival Foy is the final ticketed event of the long, long weekend. It’s held over three venues in Lerwick when all the visiting acts get their fifteen minutes of fame as they are shuttled between the halls with no sound check, straight on stage for an average of three numbers then off to the next mini-bus. It sounds mad but it works, well most of the time at least!

As festivals go it was a fine one. Not earth-shattering but consistent high quality music. The sun shone and everything was good. Organiser Davie Henderson is already looking toward next year, the 25th Shetland Folk Festival and promising that there will be some special events to mark the quarter century. “Can’t wait” was the verdict from the tired but faithful at the UK’s furthest flung festival of folk.

© Jane Moncrieff, 2004