Gig review: Blas: The Jacobites

Published on Monday 6 September 2010 20:33

BLAS: THE JACOBITES **** CULLODEN BATTLEFIELD VISITOR CENTRE

Given the venue, it seems less than appropriate to describe this specially-created Blas festival show, comprising Gaelic songs and music from the years 1745-6, as a celebration. The quality of the performance, though, with a chronological linking narrative, was certainly cause for celebration, and its emotional potency, commemorating both the human and the cultural impact of Jacobitism's fate, was emphasised by the setting.

The programme was researched, compiled and scripted by the brilliant young Aviemore pianist Mhairi Hall, in consultation with renowned scholar and singer Margaret Bennett, who doubled as narrator and vocalist. Sharing the songs were two more leading Gaelic exponents, Rachel Walker and Fiona J Mackenzie, while fiddler Duncan Chisholm teamed exquisitely with Hall on instrumental duties.

Leaving aside the majority of Jacobite music written well after the events it invokes, Hall had selected contemporary material, from upbeat, optimistic ballads and marches anticipating the rising to heartrending laments for slain menfolk and for Gaeldom's decimated way of life.

Especially in this latter vein, the musicians' expressive eloquence, with the battlefield right outside, seemed to telescope time both backwards and forwards, lending these long-ago sufferings a vivid immediacy, and amplifying their resonance amidst current conflicts.

At the same time, Bennett's evocatively delivered script was a model of historical accuracy, balance and unsentimentality, sharing with the show overall an understated subtlety that rendered it all the more affecting, allied to a format and content that would readily and deservedly transfer elsewhere for further performances.