Celtic Connections Festival

Boy! What a festival! Glasgow is a truely amazing city with fantastic venues - and rather a lot of venues per capita in comparison with London me thinks. The best one by far was The Old Fruit market. Amazing! On the musical front, I think the Scots have got it nailed when it comes to appreciation of their traditional music. Never have I seen so many young trad bands that can really play, and can really rock out! And the audience numbers and appreciation was astounding! My favourite moment was at a gig seeing Braebach (fronted by 2 pipers) at a packed venue the size of the Forum (600) - one of the pipers put down his instrument and started step dancing and the crowd went wild! This is a young "trendy" crowd too I think this appreciation of trad music is down to the fact that music education is darn good up there, getting young musicians to play trad instruments in schools. The sessions at the festival club was populated mostly by teenagers, the looks of which in london you would doubt knew how to play the accordion or fiddle etc.. how do we cultivate a similar thing down here? How do we get over the stigma associated with the term "folk"? With our own rich traditions on our doorstep, how do we stop young musicians looking to american bling for inspiration, and get more to realise the strength of our own traditional music?  The Scots have truely proved that traditional tunes on traditional instruments can rock out, and have mass appeal, and at the same time be played with the highest quality of musicianship. We need to start doing the same down here! joe buirski