Algorithms reviving traditional Scottish music for the next generation
This does not take away from the achievement. Conversely, it highlights the dedication and loyalty of the Scottish rock band's fans.
As Gary Innes, BBC Scotland radio presenter and frontman of the popular trad band Mànran, puts it: 'They used their fan base to basically support them by buying physical CDs. I can guarantee most of them that actually bought the CD don't have a CD player but what they are doing is wanting to contribute to their favourite band.'
READ MORE: Skerryvore on 20 years, castle gigs, global fans and staying true to Scottish roots
Innes has proven the might of the modern trad music scene through his ambitious and hugely successful festivals: Hoolie in the Hydro, Lochaber Live and Lochaber: A Celebration.
What seems to be at the heart of this success is firstly the willingness to fuse the traditional with the modern, as he continues: 'When you're hearing bagpipes with synthesisers and you're going to a show and there's lasers and there's smoke machines and haze and strobe and all of a sudden you're like, 'well, this could be a dance festival.''
What also drives this success is his genuine desire to provide festivalgoers a valuable experience and honest connection to both Scottish traditions and each other.
He energetically explains: 'To me, everything in life is about having a connection and just being nice to people … to create memories for folk, I think, is a privilege.
'I realise that's probably quite a cliche thing to say but, in all honesty, it's just genuinely about trying to create events and memories and moments for people, because that's what it's doing for me too!'
Of course, this growth in the popularity of traditional music has not been driven by one man alone (though some may argue otherwise). Streaming, social media and other contemporary devices for music consumption have inevitably played their part in returning Scots to their roots.
Later this year, the former ceilidh band Trail West host their sell-out Trail West Fest, which features two nights at the Barrowlands in Glasgow. This band performs a mix of original songs and 'repackaged' traditional music reworked to have a modern sound.
Seonaidh MacIntyre, Trail West's bagpiper, guitarist and vocalist, claims that the band's reach would have been nearly impossible without their online presence. He says: 'The fact that you get that exposure – I mean, I don't think that we would be doing gigs in the Barrowlands, let alone selling out two nights, if it wasn't for that.'
Despite this, he still believes that live music is the best way to engage with fans and get music out there. He expands: 'I don't think we would be the same band without the live thing. Having a live presence, that's your kind of bread and butter if you're wanting to earn money from music because unless you break BIG time online, you're not gonna make that much from it.'
This growth may come at a price, however. The simple truth is that the more English and genre-infused the songs are, the greater reach they generally get. Many could argue this algorithm-driven production could make music less distinctive across all genres.
READ MORE: Scottish director's film set during Highland Clearances takes Cannes by storm
However, as Innes acknowledges: 'It does feel that maybe you take with one hand, giveth with the other slightly, because if you look at our streaming numbers for instance, they've exponentially raised in the last couple of years with more English material but with the more listeners they are indeed getting to listen to a more Gaelic content.'
For those who still fear that social and streaming services are diluting Scotland's music traditions, I challenge you to attend Hoolie in the Hydro 2025 where more than 10,000 young people will be bouncing up and down to Trail West blasting out the 300-year-old Macpherson's Rant – and still argue that algorithms aren't helping re-shape, revive and re-energise traditional Scottish music for the next generation.
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Scotsman
4 hours ago
- Scotsman
‘There's nothing I've regretted doing'. Succession's Brian Cox is back on stage
Brian Cox | Portrait: Mihaela Bodlovic The Dundonian actor talks about a life well lived as he return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade as Adam Smith in Fred Goodwin satire Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Brian Cox settles into a booth in the cafe at Dundee Rep, happy to be back in his home town for rehearsals and the launch of a new play, Make It Happen, a co-production by National Theatre of Scotland, Dundee Rep Theatre and Edinburgh International Festival, which heads to the capital next month. James Graham's (Sherwood, Dear England) satire stars the multiple-award winning Cox as the ghost of Adam Smith as he returns to the stage in Scotland for the first time in a decade. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Brian Cox during rehearsals at Dundee Rep for Make It Happen, which is staged as part of Edinburgh International Festival. | Portrait: Mihaela Bodlovic Directed by Andrew Panton, the fictionalised account follows the 'rise, fall and fail of the biggest bank in the world – The Royal Bank of Scotland', led by Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin, who steered the bank into collapse and put Scotland at the centre of the 2008 global financial crash. Cox is in great form and in his element on home turf, back at Dundee Rep where his career began as a teenager before he went on to star in the likes of Manhunter, Troy, X-Men 2, Braveheart, Titus Andronicus and Succession. Brian Cox with his Succession co-stars at the 2024 Emmy Awards. | Getty Images As he talks he mingles moments of mirth with exasperation and peppers the conversation with Dundonianisms like 'cundie' and 'plettie' and stories of his childhood and over 65 years in the acting business, which won hom a Primetime Emmy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and two Olivier Awards, as well as talking about his latest venture. 'Make It Happen is a tremendous play by James Graham, one of our very eminent playwrights,' says Cox. 'Make It Happen' is a phrase of Goodwin's James picked up on for the title and he's created an extraordinary vision. It's an ensemble play, and stylistic, so I'm recognisable as Adam Smith but it's not total period. I have elements - big collars and a wig with bunches, but it's illustrative.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Cox is delighted that Make it Happen sets the record straight about what he sees as the misrepresentation of Adam Smith, the 'founder of modern capitalism' by the likes of Fred Goodwin and Margaret Thatcher. 'I remember Thatcher kept misquoting Adam Smith and that always really annoyed me, so I suggested to James he should be in the play. It's very important to set it right about him. I do go and haunt Margaret Thatcher, so it's quite funny.' 'And also,' he says, warming to his theme, 'the economics book [The Wealth of Nations] is one book, but there's also Smith's first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which is actually the more important, because it puts everything in context. Smith describes himself as a moral philosopher, not an economist - that word didn't even exist - and he was given the name 'the father of economics'. He says if you don't read the other book, you can't understand this book!' 'So I thought it was potentially comic, and the idea that he comes back, James has taken it further. When Adam comes back to Edinburgh, he's not without his sense of acquiring and discovers John Lewis. He says 'I've become obsessed. I love it, under one roof, all this stuff, here, try this cream, my hands have never been so soft.'' Cox chuckles. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'So there's a whole other wonderful side of Smith which is deliciously comic. I come on quite late in the play, which is good from the point of view of the play because it's a real ensemble, and this is an incredible cast.' 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So it's a really interesting and necessary debate.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Brian Cox appears in Make It Happen, the story of the downfall of The Royal Bank of Scotland, led by Fred Goowdin. | xxx With its themes of wealth, ambition and avarice, Make It Happen has links to the role that made Cox a global household name as media oligarch Logan Roy in HBO hit Succession, for which he won a Golden Globe. 'Except I think Logan was at one time quite a socialist. I don't think that's how he ended up,' says Cox. 'He ended up creating a paper which was quite right wing. And he was concerned about his creation being passed on to one of his children and none of them could step up. It's about entitlement. We're seeing it now with oligarchies, with Elon Musk, with that clown who calls himself the President of the United States. We see it so evidently in these people who behave in this vigilante way. They think they can do anything. And Trump, well I won't even go there, it's just beyond the pale,' he says, words failing him before he rallies. 'It's interesting we live in a time where we want to embrace stupidity on a mass level. And we're seeing stupidity all the time. I mean what's happened in Gaza, what's happening in the Ukraine. The Ukraine's really worrying and we're not doing nearly enough about that to protect it. What we're doing in Gaza is becoming a genocide. There's no question about it. And I feel for it. I mean I know what Hamas did on October 7 is beyond the pale. It's unforgivable and they should be punished severely. But it's the kids, the bairns, I worry about. All these bairns that are being murdered. In the process of achieving what? And then you get the clown from Washington saying oh well it could be a big riviera resort. We've all gone totally crazy, you know?' Cox is always forthright about his opinions and shoots from the hip but refers it back to the play and his job as an actor. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This play addresses those issues in a sidelong way and it's funny and witty. Because it is about what happens when you give power to one person, like Fred Goodwin. 'My job is to get to the root of who people are and why. Because nobody is intrinsically bad. Go into a baby unit and they're all gorgeous. I love babies, toddlers. I think what we do to them is monstrous. We change them, make them into what they shouldn't be. Because it's conditioning that makes you the way you are, and how we condition our children is what's important, teaching them about love, relationships, sharing.' 'That's what the children from Succession suffer from, a belligerent, strong father who never really gave them love, so they've never been given a perspective on who they are. It's not Logan's fault, because he's also had demons to deal with. There's one scene where he goes swimming and we see scars on his back and it's never explained but shows he's been through something horrific, been brutalised, and that's what makes him behave in an off-hand and brutal manner. Brutalised children do not make good men because they carry that with them.' 'That's what's fascinating about my job, which is to look at why we're not evolved. Why do we make these decisions about what we should do with our lives.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For his part, Cox's own credo is 'live your life and understand and appreciate what's coming at you'. 'That's what I think the theatre is. For me, it's the one true church and its belief system is about human beings. How do we tick? What are our influences? What takes us down the wrong or right path?' 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He laughs. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I don't ask him to tell me to do this, although tempted, as I have more questions, including what is it with him and the word f***? He says it when he comes on stage in Make It Happen too. 'I do. I say 'where the f*** am I?' And Adam says 'Good God, I never used such language. I never used such blasphemy.' He chuckles. Unlike the brutalised men Cox talks about, in his autobiography Putting The Rabbit in the Hat he says after therapy as an adult he realised that despite a traumatic childhood where the death of his father through pancreatic cancer when he was eight plunged the family into poverty and his mother into illness, he was very much loved by his mother and the sisters and brother who cared for him. Does he think being loved is key to how we turn out? 'Yes. I do think care and love is the key. And we're so ignorant. We really don't know how to father or mother our kids. Or maybe we get a wee bit enlightened, but at the same time it's a massive improvisation because no two children are the same. I'm very lucky. My kids are pretty good, they're pretty special,' he says referring to his adult children from his second marriage and younger sons from his third to the actor Nicole Ansari-Cox, with whom he lives in Brooklyn, New York and London. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Brian Cox and his wife Nicole Ansari-Cox arrive for the 75th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in 2024. | AFP via Getty Images How do his offspring feel about having a dad who is famous? Are they used to it? 'They are. My oldest son who will be 55 on his birthday, and my daughter's going to be 48, they had it tough because I was a struggling actor. But I was married to a woman who was very smart with money. I mean that's why…' he says and falters. It's noticeable it's only when talking about his own wealth that Cox's customary eloquence fails him. 'I've always been like that about money,' he says. 'I don't want to know, because of what it did to my mum and dad.' So it's an emotionally fraught subject for him? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Yeah. It immediately puts me into a kind of… So the idea that I'm rich. I can't deal with that. I've always had a problem with it and money as a sign of success. I'm deeply suspicious of it.' But nowadays he must know he can just walk into a shop and buy whatever he wants without worrying? 'I can do that, but I'm still nervous about buying stuff. I mean I went into the House of Bruar and bought a load of stuff. Oh my god, it's my favourite place in Scotland! I could live there. I love it! So I went to the House of Bruar and bought these wonderful waistcoats,' he says, sounding a little like Adam Smith discovering John Lewis. He pats his waistcoat, dapper as ever. In fact he's arrived with three outfits as instructed for today's photo shoot. 'Yes, I was up ironing this morning', he says and smiles. 'Oh this is interesting, this is the weirdest thing of all. I love ironing. And I love darning. So I did the American version of Who Do You Think You Are [Finding Your Roots] and they said you're 88% Irish and 12% Scottish. I knew about the Irish side but discovered the Scottish side were all weavers from Fife, so I see where it comes from.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Always well turned out, but also these days noticeably trimmer… 'Yeah, I've lost weight because I'm on Ozempic. I'm diabetic. It's good because, god I'd eat anything! I do like food. But my eating has changed considerably. And it's good. Especially as I'm not getting any younger. ' He's 79, an age where he can look back on his childhood when he was out playing with his pals on the streets 'from dawn to dark', visiting all 21 of the city's then cinemas to watch the movies - 'my first love' - enjoying the thriving community around his dad's shop in the now demolished Wellgate warren of streets, a time when his life revolved around school, church and the cinema. Brian Cox at the The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim world premiere in London in 2024. | Getty Images Cox is also looking forward to making what he does in the years ahead count. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Of all the films, TV, theatre, radio he's done, of which is he most proud? 'I suppose I'm proudest of a film I did with Lindsay Anderson in the Seventies, [1975] an adaptation of a David Storey play called In Celebration, and Alan Bates and Jimmy Bolam played my brothers. It was a beautiful script. And Titus Andronicus at Stratford in the Eighties, was really important for me. And I enjoyed playing Churchill, because I thought I got that right. It's a character performance. The other thing I'm very proud of is a film called The Escapist, which I did in 2008 and produced as well, with Rupert Wyatt. 'I've enjoyed myself, you know. There's nothing I've regretted doing. Je ne regrette rien. I don't go in for regrets. When I commit, I commit.' Looking ahead, there's the release of his directorial debut with Glenrothan, a film set in Scotland, in which he also stars with Alan Cumming as his brother. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I made my first film in Scotland last year, working with an all Scottish crew and cast and I realised how much talent's here and doesn't get acknowledged. I think I'm only acknowledged because I'm a Dundonian and not a Glaswegian or from Edinburgh so we're like a rare beast you only see on certain occasions. So I exploit that for all it's worth,' he laughs. There's also the third Super Troopers film, US comedies about a highway patrol unit in which he steals the show as an exasperated police boss. 'I did the first in 1999 and had a great time and they're very gifted and I think it's very important to help young directors so I said I'd do that. And maybe another couple of movies. And I've got the tour.' 'The tour' is All About Me!, a UK and Ireland 18-date talking tour In October where Cox shares memories and anecdotes and takes audience questions, which includes dates in Edinburgh and Dundee. 'It should be a lot of fun.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Cox shows no sign of letting up, despite all his success, awards, financial and emotional security. So what is it that motivates him to keep going? 'Well, you know, I just like the job!' CREDIT: Make It Happen, Dundee Rep Theatre until Saturday 26 July and Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, 30 July to 9 August. Tickets,
Daily Record
5 hours ago
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Netflix viewers rush to watch 'compelling' reboot of classic Scottish crime series
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Scottish Sun
6 hours ago
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Donald Trump breaks his silence after landing in Prestwick as he hails Scottish celebrity
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