Image: Runrig’s final concert, ‘The Last Dance’ in Stirling, August 2018. Hic et nunc, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
A book-length study is needed to assess the role of Highland Gaelic-speaking rock music in shaping Scottish culture after the mid-century ‘folk revival’. New sounds from these groups, influenced by but not identifying as “folk” music, have fed a distinctive political strand of lyric into the Scottish music scene and inspired many bands founded after them. If someone competent in both Gaelic and Scots writes this book, here are three bands founded in the 70s and 80s that Soundyngs would hope to see featured in a compare-and-contrast fashion. The role of Irish music in the first-wave of this activity was also clearly important both in style and substance as a harbinger and co-runner; not discussed here, it has a large and generous literature already.
Scottish Highland rock is often wrapped up within the wider Scots-Irish “Celtic Rock” classification, which combines modern rock band style and instrumentation with melodic inflections, and sometimes instruments, drawn from Scots-Irish traditional music. The boundary between folk bands who happen to use a bit of rock style and rock bands whose melodies and instruments are a wee bit folky is quite porous: blending both styles into a unique sound is achieved differently by different groups. However, although there are connections between Scottish and Irish histories, there are also unique experiences that need to be teased out.
The term “Celtic Rock” is not completely uncontroversial. Alistair Mutch, amongst others, has written about Anglo-Scots bands like Jethro Tull, suggesting that ‘Celtic’ rock glides over the differences between different traditions and doesn’t acknowledge the relationship between these bands and the wider ‘British’ market (Mutch, 2007). Other writers have explored how ‘Celtic’ musical sounds feature widely in media to encode romantic ideas about misty Irish and Scottish ancient histories (Nugent, 2018) or to depict stereotypical identities (see the second part of Brownrigg, 2007). This is a political argument, as much about the politics of national identity in modern Scotland: what is, or isn’t, an authentic part of national culture. With contemporary history, musicians play on contested ground, entangled in future aspirations as much as expressing their own present-moment engagements with tradition.
The Highland bands discussed below, however, were real enough, and what they did changed the sonic reality of their times, making important contributions to modern Scottish identity using the folk/rock interface. The list isn’t comprehensive – that’s where we still need someone to write a book-length survey. Ironically, there IS a book about to be published this year that compares Runrig and Capercaillie… in German.
Runrig (1973-2018)
Originally from Skye, Runrig sang in both Scots and Gaelic, and listening to their songs, large-venue lowland audiences woke up to what Highland bands could offer. In both languages, their songs were notably political, channelling Highland radicalism in the 1980s when Scottish opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s form of conservatism was reflected by the popular music scene. Lead vocals were provided by Donnie Munro, and after 1997, Bruce Guthro, with siblings Rory and Calum MacDonald on songwriting, bass, and percussion; Malcolm Jones (guitar), Iain Bayne (drums) and Pete Wishard (keyboard) were also long-term players, with other names also in the mix. Their name reflects the traditional form of community land allocation in crofting communities: the run-rig system, which shares out more and less productive land between all local small-holders. See Tom Morton’s book in Further Reading for the story of the band from their origins to the height of their fame.
Capercaillie (1983- )
Sitting on the popular/folk rather than the rock and roll end of the line, this band nevertheless has supplied session musicians into the more assuredly rock scene. Founder members Donald Shaw (accordion) and Marc Duff (bodhran and whistles) were schoolmates. Adding in musicians from Oban (Joanie MacLachlan, Shaun Craig and Martin MacLeod) their fame gradually spread, taking wings to soar as vocalist Karen Matheson joined the mix. Recent projects include collaborations with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, while their songs have also featured on television shows and films.
Wolfstone (1989- )
Moving east, the founder members of this band were from the area north of Inverness. The band’s name is inspired by the ‘Wolf Stone’, a Pictish carved rock in Easter-Ross. For acousticians, a ‘wolf tone’ is also an unpredictable harmonic note generated by vibrations in the instrument. As their website says, “We are … a rock band from the Scottish Highlands who happen to use bagpipes, flutes and fiddles”. Fiddler Duncan Chisholm also has a notable career as a solo musician and composer and played for a time with Runrig. Stuart Eaglesham (vocals and guitar), Stevie Saint (pipes and whistles), Ross Hamilton (bass guitar), Sorren McLean and Gorden Turner (electric guitars) and Alan James (drummer) feature in the current line-up, although many other names have been in the mix, notably Orcadian songwriter Ivan Drever on guitar. Rock bagpipers Martyn Bennett and Gordon Duncan Song, inter alia, also made notable contributions to some albums. Song themes engage with Scottish histories of emigration, war and social injustice. An early-career gig saw them supporting Runrig at Loch Lomond in 1991, before quickly becoming the main stage event in their own right.
These and other bands and artists can be further surveyed by digging into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, maintained by Hands up for Trad.
Further Reading and Band Websites
- Hands Up for Trad ScottishTraditional Music Hall of Fame
- Capercaillie
- Runrig – site still maintained at May 2024
- Wolfstone – accessed 23/5/24
- Mark Brownrigg, ‘Hearing Place: Film Music, Geography and Ethnicity’, in International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3(3) (2007): 307-323. doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/macp.3.3.307_1
- Martin Cloonan, ‘Jock Rock? Putting Scotland into Scottish Popular Music’, in Made in Scotland (Routledge, 2023): 108-116
- Simon McKerrell and Gary West, (eds.), Understanding Scotland Musically: Folk, Tradition and Policy (London: Routlege, 2018) – see particularly Meghan McAvoy’s chapter, ‘Slaying the Tartan Monster: Hybridisation in recent Scottish Music’, 93-108
- Tom Morton, Going Home: The Runrig Story (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1991)
- Alistair Mutch, ‘National Identity and Popular Music: Questioning the ‘Celtic’, Scottish Studies Review 8, (2007): 116-129
- Simon Nugent, Celtic Music and Holywood Cinema: Representation, stereotype, and affect (London: Routledge, 2018)
- Martin Schröder, Das Revival der Traditionellen Gälischen Musik Schottland: Die Bands Runrig and Capercaillie (Transcript Verlag, June 2024)