A lifetime of devotion to the performance and promotion of Gaelic music and song is to be marked on Saturday 27th October at a special Ceilidh for Kenna Campbell in Glasgow. The event, a collaboration between the Glasgow Gaelic Arts organisation, An Lòchran and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) will be held at the Academy. The concert is the final event in the first ever Fèis RSAMD taking place between October 21 and 27. The artistes will be waiving their fees and all proceeds will go to charities of Kenna’s choosing.

Strathclyde University lecturer, Boyd Robertson, Chair of An Lòchran commented ‘Kenna has given signal service in sustaining and developing the Gaelic language and culture and it is appropriate that her seminal influence as a tradition bearer and transmitter is recognised and highlighted in the year that she celebrates her 70th birthday. It is very fitting that the programme for the ceilidh will be largely sustained by talented young performers she has tutored and that the choir from Glasgow Gaelic School will be among them as she was a leading light in the successful campaign to establish Gaelic-medium education in Glasgow.’

Brian McNeill, Head of the Department of Scottish Music at the RSAMD said ‘This promises to be a wonderful evening of Gaelic music and song and a richly deserved tribute to a lady who has not only performed with great distinction herself but has done so much to ensure that another generation has access to the riches of the culture. We at the Academy have seen at first hand the positive impact she has had on students on the BA Scottish Music course since its inception and we are delighted to join with An Lòchran in honouring her in this way.'

KENNA CAMPBELL (by Rob Adams & Mary Ann Kennedy)
As a singer, teacher, tradition-bearer, source of repertoire and campaigner on the language's behalf, Kenna Campbell has made an invaluable contribution to Gaelic song.

Her individual successes, including the Gold Medal at the 1959 National Mod and her acclaimed CD, ‘Guth a Shnìomhas’ on Macmeanmna Records, have been matched by her nourishment and development of natural talent, not least in the case of her daughters, Mary Ann and Wilma Kennedy.

She is often remembered as the voice that moved a nation with her poignant rendition of the 23rd Psalm at the funeral of the late leader of the Labour Party, John Smith. That performance of her own setting of the psalm was broadcast worldwide, and was later chosen by the now Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, as one of his ‘Desert Island Discs’.

Kenna was born into a crofting family in the township of Greepe on the Isle of Skye on July 21, 1937. The whole family were 'songaholics' as she herself describes them. Her father, whose own father and brother played the pipes, was a great singer and Gaelic song was a feature of everyday life, being a particularly useful accompaniment to chores such as bringing the cattle home or churning butter - a good-going reel would help to turn the handle until the arm became tired and the reel became more of a slow air.

Kenna’s earliest memory of singing to an audience is as a four-year-old, hiding behind the kitchen curtains. Later, aged six, she sang for Dame Flora MacLeod at Dunvegan Hall, and as she grew up she enjoyed ceilidhing around the neighbours and listening to John MacLean, a local shepherd who often visited to share songs and talk about the stories behind them.

On leaving school, Kenna studied for her diploma in primary school teaching at Jordanhill College in Glasgow and made this her career, latterly becoming headteacher of Newhills School in Easterhouse for children with special needs.

Song remained her passion, however. She took classical singing lessons privately and sang with her older sister Mary, recording several times for the BBC and appearing on Scottish Television’s Jigtime. She also formed a group, ‘Na h-Eilthirich’ – or The Exiles – which comprised her brother Seumas, sister Ann, and guitarist Ian Young from Kintail.

Although semi-professional, ‘Na h-Eilthirich’ toured Ireland and France as well as performing throughout Scotland, broadcasting regularly and releasing an LP.

In the lead-up to Glasgow’s year as the European City of Culture in 1990, Kenna was determined that Gaelic would play some part in the celebrations. She formed Bannal, a seven-strong group of women concentrating on waulking songs.

Despite busy lives, the group have remained together and in 2006, they entered into the DVD age by including, with their second CD, Bho Dhòrn gu Dòrn, a film pitting themselves and the process of shrinking the cloth by hand against today’s machine equivalents. The ladies won.

Kenna has been in at the beginning of many of the significant developments of Gaelic language and culture in 20th Century Scotland. She taught at the first ever Fèis in Barra in 1981, was an early trustee of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College in Skye, and one of the first members of Comann na Gàidhlig.

One of her proudest achievements however, was as a tenacious and diplomatic advocate within the campaign in Glasgow that saw the establishment of the first-ever Gaelic-medium primary education provision in the city in 1986, at Sir John Maxwell Primary School. The campaign continues to this day with the recent opening of the Gaelic School in Glasgow.

In 1996, Kenna was invited to join the staff on the Royal Academy of Music and Drama’s BA course in Scottish music. Her depth of knowledge and motivational powers have helped to nurture exciting young Gaelic singing talents including Rachel Walker and James Graham, the Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year 2004.

Kenna, who has sung as far afield as Cape Breton and North Carolina, is never happier than when singing. She loves learning new songs and sharing old ones and she was thrilled to tour the Highlands for the 2006 Blas festival with Mary Ann, Wilma and Kenna’s niece, Maggie Macdonald, as part of Clan, a fitting family-based vehicle for her rich legacy of song.

In December 2006, she was inducted into the Scots Trad Music Hall of Fame.

And she makes good pancakes, according to Skipinnish’s Angus MacPhail.

RSAMD Concert Hall, Glasgow
Saturday 27 October @ 7.30pm
Tickets from RSAMD box office on 0141 332 5057 - £12/£10

Mary Ann Kennedy | Wilma Kennedy | Seumas Campbell | Maggie MacDonald | Arthur Cormack | Mairi MacInnes | Calum Ross I James Graham | Catriona Watt | Rachel Walker | Skipinnish | Allan MacDonald | Bannal
Members of Back of the Moon and Bodega, James Ross, Lauren MacColl, Maeve MacKinnon and many others.
Compère: John Carmichael