SOUNDS OF SCOTLAND: The five-member band has been winning hearts, and prizes, all over the world. Right: TALENTED: Mohamed al-Saegh, the Qatari artiste, has won multiple prizes in art and music in the region.  Photos by Umer Nangiana


By Umer Nangiana


Classic bagpipes played with a combination of flute, fiddle and whistle — there is just no better retreat from the often noisy modern day life than traditional Scottish folk music. Those who were fortunate to be amongst the audience of the brilliant Breabach, a contemporary folk music band from Scotland, at Al Rayyan Theatre the other day would solemnly testify to it.
The five-member band of multi-instrumentalist musicians demonstrated why the centuries-old traditional Gaelic and Celtic music still has a great audience worldwide. Rendering her melodious voice to Hi Ho Ro Tha Mi Duillich, a Gaelic song, the only female member of the band and violinist Megan Henderson came clear with the theme of the tune: nostalgia.
The slow-paced song made the almost-packed house sit up and join Megan in chorus, even if most of them did not understand the language. This rendition of folk music had rhythmically followed a fast-paced tune, Monday Night at Riccardo’s before giving way to a combination of instrumental and vocal melodies.
Megan would go on to perform the traditional foot stomping on the tunes of a high-energy song, The Old Hill, right at the head of her band of musicians to end the hour-long performance on a high note.
Mohamed al-Saegh, the young Qatari musician and artiste, completed the evening with his melodious tunes played on a traditional flute-like instrument.
The band chose to sing most of the tunes from their hit 2013 album Urlar.       
“Urlar is a Gaelic word which means ground or foundation and it is particularly relevant to the bagpipe music because the urlar is like the first movement about bagpipe piece. It is like the ground foundation movement that the rest of the music is built upon,” James Lindsay, the band member who plays double bass, tells Community during an interview session with the musicians organised by the British Council.
The British Council, with support from the Scottish government, brought the Breabach to Doha as part of the British Festival 2015 celebrations.
The band is proud of its foundation in their country’s roots and Lindsay says the album Urlar was more relevant to them because it contains music that comes from their home, their roots.
“We took music from those areas (Gaelic) but we also wrote music that is influenced by the areas so it is quite an important album to make for us personally,” he adds.
Often described as the new faces of Scottish traditional music, their career as a band has already seen Breabach voted ‘Best Group’ and ‘Best Live Act’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards as well as being nominated twice as ‘Best Band’ at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
“People like the diversity of our music. We play traditional Scottish music, but we merge that with contemporary style and people enjoy that and they enjoy the liveliness of our music,” alludes the double bass player.
He says people like to dance to their music yet they have more “slower moments” with Gaelic songs as well as instrumentals.
“We use some very old music, especially some very old pipe music and Gaelic songs, but we also write our own music so it is a mixture of the old and the new but we try to write within the tradition. We do not do any hip-hop or anything like that, but at the same time, we do not stick entirely to the ancient ways of performance,” Calum MacCrimmon, the piper, quips.
“We try to work really hard on orchestrating the music with the instruments that we have. So our bagpipes are very loud, but we don’t use them for the entire concert. We use singing and violin and chords and we try to make the show move and sway and to go from very loud to the very soft,” he says, gesturing.
Breabach unites the thrilling talents of Calum MacCrimmon; Ewan Robertson on guitar/vocals); James Mackenzie on pipes/flute/whistles; Megan Henderson on fiddle/vocals/step dance; and James Lindsay on double bass.
Ever since launching their careers as winners of an Open Stage Award at Celtic Connections 2005, Breabach’s star has risen steeply. The musicians say the band was formed in one room at “somebody’s house just like that one day.”
“It took us a while to get things really turning because we, may be, were not as ambitious at the start as we became,” says MacCrimmon. “I think once we started to perform more we became hungry. Things have changed a lot over the years and they are still changing,” he reckons.
The pipe player says they have been lucky to travel the world and visit places like Doha and to present their music as well as learn from musicians out here as well.
Even though everybody lives in the same city, that is, Glasgow, none of them is from it. They are from different parts of Scotland and have different music backgrounds as well. Glasgow, they say, is an amazing place for traditional Scottish music.
People have been going to Glasgow to study but also just to play in the bars. There is a lot of music happening every night so it is an amazing culture, suggests MacCrimmon.
Breabach saw a steady growth since its formation a decade ago and the band members are certain there was no particular turning point where suddenly everything fell into place for them.
“I think it has been growing and changing for many years. We have been together for over 10 years so we are not a new band and I think one of the reasons that we have found success is our mutual respect for tradition, but also that we are composers and want to try and continue that tradition,” emphasises MacCrimmon.
Originally the band had four members till Lindsay, the double bass player, joined them five years ago. And Lindsay says he has thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The folk music has a great audience all over the world and he has enjoyed travelling to places and playing folk music.
“I think the audience is big and it is growing all the time. It is a very vibrant scene worldwide,” points out Lindsay. He reasons that perhaps, in an age where technology and popular music that comes through the radio all the time can disillusion some people, they are looking for a kind of more roots-related thing.
“We want to go back to more acoustic music and may be music that connects with the past slightly and to get away from the modern life a lot of time,” he says.
Talking about the British folk music scene, the band members conclude that it was quite a melting pot, representing different styles of music from different places in different languages.
James Mackenzie, the pipe player, finds it hard to define British folk music as one thing. “We are quite lucky that we do concerts all around the UK but I would say we are definitely rooted in the Scottish folk music and Scottish traditional music which is very different to British folk music.”
“There is essentially no such thing as British folk music because the folk music is so old that it is more of a tribal thing. It is more of an ancient culture. So Welsh, Irish, Scottish and the English and the different areas within those countries have different music and through folk music in Britain, they all have this very different sound,” MacCrimmon interjects.
Ewan Roberston, the guitarist and vocalist of the band, felt playing together with Qatar’s Mohamed al Saegh was an amazing experience.
“We are familiar with the Arabic music because we have the past experience of coming to Middle East to work with a band in Jordan. We enjoy exploring links between all sorts of music and traditional Qatari music is no different,” concludes the musician.