Voices: Celtic Connections

A singer and percussionist from Senegal shares the stage with the first Scottish traditional group to add African elements to Scottish trad, a singer from Norway joins forces with a fiddler from Inverness and a guitarist from England to form a hot trio , and to host a night of exploration of the crossings among musics of Scotland and Scandinavia, two Scots Gaelic singers sit in to sing with a Latin/Scottish fusion band, a singer from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides offers original music in Gaelic about why Scots Gaelic should remain a living language, an American country star shares songs of her Appalachian background, and another offers songs from Texas, Cape Breton fiddlers joins with fiddle players from Scotland on tunes from both countries, a progressive bluegrass band heats up the night with folk, blues, and hot string band work, three singers share songs of change in a quiet listening room, pipe bands play in the concert hall, rising stars from across Scotland take a chance to be chosen as opening acts for next year’s festival as they play a series of free concerts, people learn how to play pipes, fiddle, and whistles, and improve e their skills at song writing and harmony singing, there are three sold out concerts of Robert Burns music, and a twelve hour marathon of Burns songs, and far into the early morning at the after hours festival club the music and the craic -- the conversation -- goes on and on, This is Glasgow in January. This is Celtic Connections, Europe’s premiere winter music festival, and a major event in the worldwide Celtic music scene.

The festival continues through the first of February, and even after it’s done many of the events, and programs about them, will be available on line. Good places to check for these include

from the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/music/celticconnections/2009/tvradio/

information from the festival’s official site http://www.celticconnections.com/tvandradio

from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow http://www.celticmusicradio.net/

from the national network of Ireland -- click on the tab that says music http://www.rte.ie/

You'll find music content from many genres and plenty of other music fans at Gather Essentials: Music. For more of Kerry Dexter's Voices columns, look here. It's published on Thursdays.

Kerry Dexter, Music Correspondent Kerry's credits include VH1, CMT, the folk music magazine Dirty Linen, Strings, The Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas, and The MusicHound Guides. She also writes about the arts and creative practice at Music Road and contributes to Fred Bals' Series of Tubes.