By David Francis, We are social animals, and of course we need to get along better, be mindful of our rights and those of others (‘once you have rights what are the life possibilities?’ asks the Scottish poet, Kenneth White), keep working on the crisis of our political arrangements, and improving our living conditions through … Continued

Guest blog by Donald Smith TRACS is a new collaboration between three representative Forums: the Traditional Music Forum, the Scottish Storytelling Forum and the newly formed Traditions of Dance Forum. It stands for Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland. In Gaelic that reads Ealain is Cultar Traidiseanta Alba, in Scots, Airts an Tradeetions Scotland.

Guest blog by Christine Martin Taigh na Teud /scotlandsmusic.com began publishing Scottish traditional music in 1985 in Tain, Ross- shire. We moved to the Isle of Skye in 1987. Here is the story of how the name originated:

In our last guest blog post, Clare Button wrote: ‘Traditional music must be nurtured by other soils as well as its own if it is to thrive, and there is little to equal the thrill when musicians from different cultures and traditions meet and spark off each other.’ This is exactly what happened a few … Continued

Guest blog by Clare Button Traditional music must be nurtured by other soils as well as its own if it is to thrive, and there is little to equal the thrill when musicians from different cultures and traditions meet and spark off each other.

Guest blog by Charlotte Murray The Easter spree of youth music events is just about over, and frankly we’re all exhausted! But what of the participants? When you’re organising any kind of event, one of the main things on your mind is ‘who’s all going to come?’ There are quite a lot of youth music … Continued

Guest blog by Ewan McVicar Hamish Henderson, Norman Buchan and Morris Blythman were the Big Three who brought the Scottish Folk Revival into life. Then they were joined by Arthur Argo. He started the Aberdeen Folk Club, created and ran the massively influential Chapbook magazine, wrote some tremendous newspaper articles and made crucial BBC radio … Continued

Guest blog by Paul Murray At the end of the Trad Talk conference on the 24th March 2012, I was invited to give a talk about my experiences in Radio, particularly with regard to my show in Fresh Air Student Radio, “Fresh Folk”. I made a reference to Radio 2 and their efforts to further … Continued

By David Francis If you’d like to have a go at a game of ‘Buzzword Bingo’ this blog might not be a bad place to begin. We’ll start with the current government’s aim of ‘creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through sustainable economic growth’. You can almost see … Continued

By David Francis This holiday I’ve been rooting around my old cassettes and LPs and dusting off some items that haven’t been heard for many the long day. Most of the folk/ trad items are from the mid 80s, round about the time that I really got the bug, and some of them were much … Continued