PETER URPETH conjures up the unique atmosphere of one of the leading folk and traditional music occasions of the year, the HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL on Lewis.

THERE IS MORE to the Heb Celtic Festival than the usual marquee-d, hedonistic stramash that summer festivals have become known for. This festival does centre on the now familiar illuminated canvas pleasure dome, of the type which houses all such events, but we must not forget that there are also the small gigs, the 50-seaters held in the air-less art centres and techy warehouses on the outskirts of our minuscule conurbation.
 

Last year, it seemed as though, unknown to the organisers, it was to be a summer of love. On the first night of the festival I made for An Lanntair and heard a concert by Mongolian throat singer Tserendevra. This giant musician whose physical music seems to encapsulate a constellation of emotions so far removed from our own sphere and yet accessible and knowable, performed for maybe two hours. He sang of mountains and lakes and deserts and finished his set with a love song - dedicated to a horse.
 

The following night I went back to the gallery for another small, intimate event, a gig by one of Gaeldom’s foremost traditional singers, Christine Primrose.
 

Being a Gaelic music gig the tone was in part reflective, if not melancholic, ripe with all the emotions that one would expect from a culture trapped by the sea in its own company. Christine finished the gig with a local love song - dedicated to a boat.
 

The next morning, I made for a workshop and it was back into the company of Tserendevra. A large crowd, ranging from children to pensioners, filled the gallery’s small space and were led through a series of vowel-quashing, consonant compressing throat muscle exercises.
 

In my own case, a love song to the hoarse was my only output, but the experience, mixed as it was with yoga-type warm-up exercises, was uplifting, eye-opening, expansive. I left and went to Safeway to finish the week’s shopping. C’est la vie in a world where such sweet charms, such exotic fruits matter so much to the local populace, myself included, who cherish what this festival brings us. Not so much a festival as a world-music box scheme in which every year a basket of raw goodness is delivered to our shores, fresh from the Earth.
 

The year before I recall being captivated by the hushed mesmeric music of Maggie Macinnes and her clarsach as she sang nearly twenty verses of a Gaelic prayer to the Virgin Mary. It was the pure stuff, no doubt, and it silenced a large crowd.

We will all remember Runrig. Not that I concur with the many who think that their Canadian frontman is a spot on The Guv’nor himself, Donnie Munro. But anthems are anthems, and the crowd were ready for that heady stadium thump. The place bulged as the snare pounded; bulged with sweaty ringside spirituality and we were all boozy chums, some in colours, others bare at the torso; it was peculiarly nostalgic event, a kind of end of term party.

And marquees will always be marquees. Speakers and lights. Barriers and thick-cored wire belted in rubber. The potent blend of aromas – trampled grass, booze, more grass, marquee cloth, rope, generator oil and fresh rain, patchouli, gutted fish, the harbour, mud (sometimes even the music stinks).

People are dancing on the grass and mud, people who you see every day at work in banks and the Co-op, hotel receptionists, Calmac stewards, teachers, officers of every kind, louts and liggers, fish gutters, a Priest, a coterie of elected representatives in shirts and ties and print dresses; the young, the younger, all under the ribbed vault of canvas, all less formal than usual.

Couples sitting on a low grass bank near-by getting a break in cold air from the humidity of enjoyment. Goths snogging under birch trees. The empty castle sulks in the background - they should turn it into a derelict asylum, more potent that way than being a derelict relic of feudalism. Midges. Gaelic. Angels on violins, soldiers on bag pipes.

“Hello Cove! What’s Fresh?”

“Nothing at all.”

Stop and listen for a second, hold back the music. The flow is riverrun with jigs and reels, the rhythm as old as oar music. Is Salmon a box player or a harpist? Seal plays mouthie.

In four days the music lays bare her soul: narcissistic, Dionysian, Atlantic. Whatever ‘Celtic’ means in the title of this festival, if it does mean anything with regard to the various traditional musics of the presumed ‘Celtic’ regions, it is probably something akin to the relationship between Tikka Masala and real Indian food.

A kind of perfected hybrid that even the locals take to and love and assimilate and incorporate and devour as though it were their own. And that is our feast. These few short days and nights are our summer. Live it and love it - bring the horse, bring the boat, come alone, but don’t miss it. It is midsummer hogmanay.
 
 
This year’s festival runs from 16-19 July 2003 in Stornoway.

Peter Urpeth is a Contributing Editor to the Arts Journal.