EVEN by its own cosmopolitan standards, Britain's furthest-flung folk festival cast its programming net particularly wide this year, with artists converging on Shetland from ten countries across four continents. Renowned as it is for its musical dive
rsity, however, the event is generally rather less celebrated for its weather – but here again, 2008 was to prove an exceptional year, with several straight days' balmy sunshine providing a pleasant change from the snow and gales at previous festivals.
Whatever the weather, there are certain key constants that characterise Shetland's annual springtime spree. One of these was exemplified this time out by members of the Chinese Mongolian band Hanggai, who were variously spotted, amid the late-night melee of the festival club, swapping tunes on their traditional tobshuur – akin to a two-string banjo – with local fingerpicker Gary Petersen, or joining in a rousing chorus of Oh Susanna with their extraordinary overtone throat-singing. Calling music a universal language always risks glibness, but if you want to see it in action (Hanggai, for instance, having only the barest collective smattering of English), there's no better place to come.
Much of the festival's unique character arises from its unique logistical set-up. While most concerts take place in Shetland's capital, Lerwick, around a third or so are scattered throughout the islands, with musicians ferried to community halls as far away as Yell and Fetlar in the north. Visiting artists are billeted not in hotels but with the 50 or so Lerwick residents who annually volunteer as hosts. Some end up communicating with their guests entirely in sign-language, or – given the festival's nocturnal schedule – via notes, but long friendships are often forged. At the gigs in country halls, local womenfolk are busy in the kitchens while the bands sound-check. In Fetlar – population around 60 – the cooks making mince and tatties had taken the day off from lambing.
Returning to the internationalist theme, the opening night's bill in Scalloway, Shetland's original Viking capital, included not only Hanggai but also the young Croatian sextet Afion, who blended up to four male and female voices with flute, double bass, 12-string guitar and percussion, in taut, tasteful arrangements of traditional Balkan songs. Lidija Dokuzovic's singing, in particular, highlighted the Ottoman elements of the region's rich and varied musical heritage.
Hanggai were formed four years ago in Beijing by the singer Yiliqi, who renounced his hard-rock roots after rediscovering khoomei, the style of overtone or split-note throat singing indigenous to his native Inner Mongolia. All six band members are ethnic Mongolians living in the Chinese capital, a traditional/modern, rural/urban hybrid reflected in an instrumental line-up that includes guitar, electric bass, banjo and jaw harp alongside the tobshuur, morinkhuur (a square-bodied two-string cello) and modonchor (a vertically played flute). A second khoomei singer featured alongside Yiliqi, while a third contributed a more melodic style from elsewhere in Mongolia. These otherworldly, hypnotically layered voices anchored a sound that blended the region's typical horseback rhythms with loping country basslines.
Measured by distance travelled alone, Hanggai were the undoubted toast of the festival, rendering audiences agog wherever they went. The band couldn't have expressed their reciprocal delight more transparently, despite the limited words at their disposal.
By Saturday night, wild tales from Yell and Fetlar were beginning to circulate back at the festival club: the quick tune backstage, after the mince and tatties, that spiralled until the musicians were dancing on dressing-room tables while the audience filed in; the quick tune on the quarter-hour ferry-ride back from Yell, which extended into a full-scale session, the boat idling at the dock until the players were persuaded to disembark. In the club itself, meanwhile, Orcadian eight-piece The Chair – back by popular demand after their debut last year – took the stage at 2:30am, decked out in frocks, rubber masks and daft wigs, for reasons best known to themselves.
"What a bloody festival, ladies and gentlemen," was Aussie singer-songwriter Rory Ellis's gobsmacked verdict. "Do you guys do this every year?" Ellis was another standout of 2008's line-up, wrapping shades of Satchmo, Springsteen, Tom Waits and Chris Smither in his epically rugged voice. Denmark's Henrik Jansberg Band were also a justly popular discovery, an all-instrumental quintet on fiddle, double bass, guitar, mandolin, nyckelharpa and cajon, stirring together Nordic, Celtic, American, jazz and rock flavours with brilliant vitality and panache. Scotland's own Peatbog Faeries rocked the Clickimin Centre to its foundations at Friday night's big gig, while the ever-sparkling Le Vent du Nord brought the joie de vivre of québécois party music to one of the world's most receptive, discerning and welcoming audiences.
The full article contains 817 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
