A journey home...

CHRISTINE PRIMROSE is one of the great voices in traditional Gaelic singing. PETER URPETH looks at Christine’s contribution, and welcomes a new recording with Brian Ó hEadhra

AN TURAS, the latest release on the Anam Label featuring label proprietor Brian Ó hEadhra and Christine Primrose, is a meeting not only of two fine traditional singers and musicians, but two strands of the Gaelic culture - the Irish and the Scottish.
 

The CD, claims the sleeve note, is designed around the informal format of a house ceilidh, and the two lead performers are joined by Fiona Mackenzie when the chorus needs a fuller sound than just a single voice.
 

In general terms the songs chosen by both performers are well-known classics from the tradition, and all are performed with a real depth of feeling. Personally speaking, Brian's voice has been something of a revelation to me since he came to Lewis to take a stint at the helm of Ness art centre, Taigh Dhonnchaidh.
 

In that role he served to animate a considerable amount of music within the community, often letting his own skills remain in the shadows. Of course, his musicianship was known to a wide audience through the band Anam, and it is clear that he knows this stuff from the inside. Like Christine, he knows what it is that makes a fine traditional singer - understatement, letting the song sing itself and breathe its own words.
 

On this CD his voice glides through the magnificently melismatic sean-nós refrains. For Christine, too, this is a far more informal and intimate setting than her previous CD. The disc includes a range of great songs from the tradition, both in its north and south Hebridean incarnations, with the likes of ‘Seathan’ (an ancient song with its roots in the very ancient Irish connections of Mingulay and Barra), and ‘An Till Mi Tuilleadh a Leòdhas’, by Uilleam MacCoinnich, the great Bard Baile of Point and, after emigration, Fort William, Ontario.
 

‘Seathan’ is a song of journeying and longing, and the fact that it has become more widely known and sung in recent years is not only something to do with Flora McNeill’s marvellous exposition of its verses, but also to the fact that there is definitely a growing reawakening of contacts between the two cultures.
 

Small at present, certainly, but profound enough in its own right to be a point of hope. Perhaps the troubled times Gaelic has experienced could face a brighter future by exploiting this aspect of the culture with vigour and commitment. The two singers make a good partnership, and remind us all that the music they approach from different latitudes, is, essentially, the same music.
 

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