The Gaelic word Blas means taste, flavour or relish but from the beginning of September with the launch of the new Blas Festival it will also begin to equate with top quality traditional music in peoples’ minds.

The Festival which is due to kick off on the 2nd September with concerts in such diverse places as Staffin, Ullapool, Lairg and Glenfinnan and over the following week or so Blas events will be held in upwards of 30 other venues throughout the Highlands. A common feature of all the events scheduled in the Blas Festival will be their quality. Top class acts from within the Highlands such as Dàimh and Dòchas, Cliar and Session A9 will appear during the festival. So also will acts from complementary cultures such as Cape Breton and Ireland, the Barra MacNeils from the former and from the latter, Seumas Begley and Jim Murray. Most heartening perhaps, will be the appearance during the Festival of so many young exponents of singing, fiddling, piping and the clàrsach. Among them will be Jenna Cumming, a hugely talented Gaelic singer from Inverness, Lauren MacColl, an exciting fiddle player from the Black Isle, and Katie MacKenzie whose voice and clàrsach playing has attracted much favourable comment. And of course the Fèis movement will be represented in the shape of Cèilidh Trailers from four Highland Fèisean.

Blas came about as a result of an initiative by Highland Council to create a new festival for the Highlands which would match the vibrancy of Cape Breton’s annual Celtic Colours Festival. At an early stage Fèisean nan Gàidheal were contracted to work with others to deliver this festival. Fèisean nan Gàidheal’s Director, Arthur Cormack said: “Following a number of successful pilot events in November 2004, the first full-blown Blas Festival will take place between the 2nd and the 10th of September. This year it will concentrate in five parts of the Highland Council area namely, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Lochaber and Skye & Lochalsh. In coming years the Festival will be developed to take in other parts of the Highlands. Plans to extend and develop the Festival are being geared towards 2007 when the area hosts the Scottish Year of Highland Culture and we hope that Blas will have a significant role in helping to bring this special year to fruition.”

Though the programme for this year’s Blas Festival is varied and diverse all the acts appearing are consistent with the stated objectives of the Festival. Blas aims to celebrate and strengthen traditional Highland music and to promote Gaelic. Involving young people from the area is another of its principal goals as is to include acts from other countries whose cultures are similar to our own. The Festival also seeks to involve community groups as active partners though, for example, promoting events in their locality and is working in partnership with the Promoters Arts Network (PAN). And, perhaps most importantly, Blas is to be innovative and engender excitement.

Much of the task of achieving these objectives has fallen on the Blas Steering Group, made up of representatives of interested parties, and particularly on Brian Ó hEadhra, an Inverness-based musician and cultural development worker, who has been the Festival’s Artistic Co-ordinator of Blas. He has relished the challenge of bringing together an attractive programme of vents for next month’s inaugural festival.

“The last few months have been pretty frenetic but it has all been worthwhile since I believe we put together what has the makings of a really cracking Festival of which the Highlands will be proud. We got considerable help and co-operation from PAN promoters, local Fèisean and other community groups throughout the area in setting up this year’s programme. Clearly we want to build on this sort of involvement to make sure that Blas will continue to be a community festival.”

Those interested in more detailed information on the Festival should pick up Blas brochures, 75,000 of which have been distributed throughout the Highlands and elsewhere or check out the website on www.blas-festival.com Tickets for individual events are available from the local promoters or online at www.thebooth.co.uk