EIF reviews: Ceilidh Trail | Mànran

MUSIC

Ceilidh Trail ****

The Hub

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Ceilidh Trail is the annual touring showcase providing professional development opportunities for the wealth of talent fostered by the Gaelic cultural development agency Fèis Rois. Accordingly, an impressive teenage line-up toting fiddles, keyboard, accordion and clarsach, opened with a pair of characterful contemporary tunes and the song Thug iad a Thung thu which, lamenting a departure, was sung by Anndra Cumming with mellow confidence. Their ranks – too many to name – were swelled considerably for further tunes which demonstrated the inclusive ethos of  Fèis Rois, including some relatively challenged players.

Two now well established alumni of the Ceilidh Trail, guitarist Innes White and Gaelic singer Mischa MacPherson delivered  a song from Barra, Macpherson’s singing finely poised, before launching into lively puirt à beul or mouth music.

Further young talent streamed on stage for lively instrumentals and songs, before another two notable fèis alumni, cousins harpist Rachel Newton and accordionist Mairearad Green, played a fine waltz composed by Green.

The entire compliment crowded the stage to perform a song by the pair, Anna Bhàn, honouring their great-great-grandmother’s involvement in resisting clearance on the Coigach peninsula – an appropriate symbol, perhaps, for how cultural despoliation has given way to regeneration engendered by the fèisan movement.

Jim Gilchrist

MUSIC

Mànran ***

The Hub

They may have been minus one of their two pipers, but  award-winning Highland folk-rock band Mànran still hit the ground running, quickly winning over a packed Hub and engendering  frequent handclapping participation as their nimble front line of singer-fiddler-piper Ewen Henderson and accordionist Gary Innes was backed by guitar, bass and pummelling drums.

They were very much in good-time-band mode, determinedly inciting a party atmosphere , although, considering the cosmopolitan audience, it seemed a shame they didn’t explain songs such as the ribald  Òran na Cloiche – “Song of the Stone”, about the retrieval of the Stone of Destiny and sung with gusto by Henderson.

In the midst of all this, Kim Carnie managed to sustain her winsomely delicate vocals in numbers such as the sprightly Briogais and other puirt à beul, the plaintive San Cristòbal and the catchy folk-pop of a new song, Annie, although lyrics, whether in Gaelic or in Engish, tended to be obscured by the consistently heavy beat.

Not that the audience were complaining, as the band worked up a funky strathspey, or the swirling jigs and reels of Parallels, Henderson’s pipes and Innes’s accordion tightly bound in a reedy yell above the unremitting beat.

Jim Gilchrist