The Hebridean Celtic Festival: Gael force to be reckoned with

"We were all so proud of ourselves and that was just such a major moment for all of us behind the festival."

MacLennan, director of the festival since 2001 and one of the group of ten enthusiasts who embarked – rashly, it must have seemed at the time – on a plan to establish a live music festival in the Western Isles, recalls that first festival in June 1996 which, as well as Spillane, featured the folk-rock band Wolfstone, Dougie MacLean, Iron Horse, Shooglenifty and Cape Breton visitors Natalie McMaster and Tracey Dares, who made a major impression – not least when fiddler McMaster moonwalked across the stage.

From that auspicious first event "HebCelt", as it is universally known, has established itself not only as a major date in the folk, roots and crossover music calendar, but also as one with a distinctive sense of place, community and culture. Music fans – an anticipated 16,500 of them – may be converging on the Hebridean metropolis from as far away as the United States, Canada and Australia, but the festival remains firmly rooted in its own community.

The 15th HebCelt, which opens today, combines such established Scottish folk names as Blazin' Fiddles, Breabach, Julie Fowlis, the Treacherous Orchestra and The Poozies with the Irish rockabilly and blues singer Imelda May, world music fusioneers the Afro-Celt Sound System (also celebrating their 15th birthday as a band), the gleeful folk-punk of Adrian Edmonson and The Bad Shepherds and high-powered West Virginian roots band The Fox Hunt. Veteran Celtic rock heroes Runrig take the main stage under the big blue tent for a closing Saturday concert which is already sold out.

There are many other smaller-scale concerts, not least tonight at the Stornoway arts centre, An Lanntair, where Sideadh a' Chuain – "Atlantic Blast" will mark both the festival's 15th birthday and the arts centre's 25th with a celebration of Lewis's rich piping traditions and their links with song and dance. Also at An Lanntair, on Saturday, singer-songwriter and piper Iain Morrison will reprise his Celtic Connections "New Voices" commission Ceol Mor.

Meanwhile a wealth of other events, from workshops to dances and family concerts, raises the dust in halls in and around Stornoway, while camans clash in Saturday's Hebridean Celtic Festival Shinty Challenge Cup.

It is the festival's rootedness in its community which is an essential element of its success, says MacLennan. "It couldn't happen without the tremendous support we get from the business community and the people who open their homes for all the visitors to stay.

"Also, a lot of people have ties with Stornoway and with the wider Outer Hebrides. There's a great nostalgia for those who are living away but who come back home for the festival, and it's become a focal point of the year in a way it didn't used to be.

"We were just a committee of dedicated people who were totally into music and wanted to do something special," she recalls. "The real motivating person at the time was Fiona Morrison. I took over as director in 2001, I think, but I've always been involved with the funding side of it and the programming."

This year's festival even has its own whisky bottling to mark its 15th anniversary – Spioraid na Feis (Spirit of the Festival), a 15-year-old Aberlour single malt, selected by a whisky-tasting panel which included Calum Macdonald, one of the song-writing MacDonald brothers of Runrig. The festival is also inaugurating its own "hall of fame" for those who have given memorable performances over the past 15 years, its first three inductees being Runrig, singer Julie Fowlis and the Peatbog Faeries.

So by way of raising a glass to HebCelt's 15th birthday, we asked the three hall of fame inductees for their views on what it is that sets HebCelt apart from other music festivals.

For Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis, there is a particular resonance about a festival where so many of the audience can actually join in her songs. She and her band are opening the Big Blue Tent on Friday night before Imelda May and the Treacherous Orchestra, "so it's an interesting line-up." (Babysitting arrangements will be in hand, as she and her husband and band member, Irish musician amon Doorley, have a six-and-a-half-month-old daughter.)

"I know I'm not from Lewis," says Fowlis, who spent her childhood on North Uist, "but I'm very proud that there's a festival of that stature in the Outer Hebrides that can attract international audiences and artists year on year, who love to come back. I'm also particularly glad that while HebCelt has a progressive outlook, at the same time it also supports local talent. Also a good number are Gaelic-language artists and that makes a big difference."

Fowlis has played the big tent – erected in front of the battlemented Victorian pile of Lews Castle – before, both with her own band, as well as with the group Dchas. "It's such a big, big stage and you feel really tiny walking out there to perform, but it's also a great buzz to get such a warm reaction from the audience."

One outfit who won't be at this year's festival for their hall of fame enshrining are The Peatbog Faeries, currently touring in Canada with their powerful, very 21st-century take on the tradition. They may be based in Skye, but, says their piper, Peter Morrison, they've regarded the Stornoway event as very much their home festival since they first played there in 1998.

"It's hard to believe that this is already the 15th year," says Morrison. "For us, HebCelt was the first festival in the Highlands for Celtic music that really had that big festival feeling. The dramatic setting, along with the thousands of people on a slight up-slope in front of the stage make it a great experience for a band.

"Also, being from Skye, the feeling of playing in front of your own people is fantastic.

"Each of the three times we've played has great memories for us, especially the year we played before Runrig. The atmosphere that evening was amazing. And while there we've also visited Callanish and Carloway broch, had a beach party with the other musicians, enjoyed sessions in hotels and simply made the most of our visits, even though we're from just across the Minch."

Iain Bayne, drummer with Runrig, whose Saturday night concert is already sold out, regards the ambience of HebCelt as the kind of thing the group "grew up with".

"This area was the band's stamping ground going way back, and when you come to it you feel that you're back home again. It's more than just a concert; it's friends, atmosphere, memories, all of these things."

Once upon a time it was village halls Runrig was playing on Lewis – "going out to Ness hall and back and getting stuck in at the spit-and-sawdust places, loading the van up at one o'clock in the morning …"

HebCelt, Bayne agrees, is a rather different scenario. "It's a very well run festival, for a start, and there is a camaraderie between the festival-goers. It's kind of unique, too, being so far out, and people have to make that journey to get to it, but the whole ambience is quite different to any other festival."

In a festival-goers' poll of outstanding performances over the past 15 years, Runrig's concert of five years ago was voted best performance in the Big Blue Marquee (Karen Matheson was voted best show at An Lanntair), and Bayne regards that 2005 gig as one of their best anywhere. "I know that Bruce Guthro, who's been singer with us for almost 12 years now, found it by far and away the best experience he ever had with the band. You do hundreds and hundreds of gigs, but HebCelt five years ago still stands head and shoulders above a lot of them. If we can recapture that on Saturday, we'll be a happy bunch of lads."

• The 15th Hebridean Celtic Festival runs from today until Saturday. For details see www.hebceltfest.com