Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It shouldn’t even be up for debate, and yet every year we find ourselves wrestling with some sort of demon that openly states that the youth of today have no idea what the world is truly about and yet we applaud them when they put their minds together to create art. We warn them though that art doesn’t pay the bills, that they must know, in our words, stop the nonsense and buckle down, become useful to society, not to daydream about offering the world something more valuable than being yet another bean counter and person who says yes to everything the manager utters.
There needs to be a sea change, a moment in which we install positive reintroduction to altering the narrative, like the students of The National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music in Plockton who find a way to allow expression to be the voice of reason, to revise and amend our relationships, not just with the generation finding their feet now but with ourselves. We owe it them and each other to stop the praise of Capitalist venture and instead find ways to acknowledge the spiritual virtue of life, its essence, its fragile beauty.
The 19th annual CD from the students of the centre, the tremendously bold and riveting The Final Trawl, is a musical declaration of such a truth and as each scholar pays homage to life, what comes across is endeavour, passion, a glimpse at what we can have our children achieve when we don’t push them into being part of a system that will not care for them.
Across the two C.D.s moments of bliss, instants of beguilement, fill the air, and in tracks such as Stilton In The Caravan, David Robinson, The Fantastic Pie, The Skylark’s Pod, The Recue Bee, The Handshaker’s Joy and Mrs. MacRae, the students not only excel in their chosen pieces, they hold up the point of virtue and humility; passion breeds its own success, and in The Final Trawl, success is all over the net, in each and every student.
This shining example of allowing talent to be nurtured is to be admired and one that allows other’s gifts to be felt earnestly and with satisfaction.
Sgoil Chiuil na Gaidhealtachd’s The Final Trawl is out now and available to order from www.birnamcdshop.com.
Ian D. Hall