BRIAN Ó HEADHRA is the Gaelic Youth Development Officer for the Highland Region, but that is only one of his many roles, as KENNY MATHIESON discovered.

He arrived in Scotland in the mid-1990s when Anam (which means ‘soul’) decided that Edinburgh offered more opportunities to play and develop their music than their native patch. He married singer Fiona Mackenzie, one of the three sisters from Lewis who make up the band Mackenzie, and both moved to Skye to study Scottish Gaelic at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.
 

Music remains his first love (guitar is his principal instrument), and he still plays whenever the opportunity arises. He works with Mackenzie, performs regularly at Hootananny’s in Inverness (of which more in a moment), and is about to issue a CD of Scottish and Irish songs with the great Christine Primrose on his own Anam Music label.
 

After finishing the one year Gaelic course in Skye, he gravitated into the sphere of arts administration when he was apppointed to manage Taigh Dhonnchaidh Arts & Music Centre in Ness, on the Isle of Lewis. He and Fiona spent three years there, and the experience has stood him in good stead since he took over the prorgamming of Hootananny’s from Bruce MacGregor.
 

“In my experience it’s quite unusual to have someone who is both a musician and an administrator,” he suggested. “I was involved with some really interesting projects at Taigh Dhonnchaidh, and that experience has been useful in a number of ways what I’m doing now.
 

“Contacts are important in the music business, both with agents and promoters, and with musicians. I have a pretty good idea of what will go down well, and I know a lot of the musicians very well too. Otherwise, it can all be a bit too much a matter of guesswork.”
 

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