Scotland's Folk Oscars move online - and launch award for best online performer

For the first time since they were founded in 2003, the MG Trad Awards will take place online this year. Jim Gilchrist talks to Simon Thoumrie, founder and creative director of Hands Up for Trad, the organisation behind the awards, and finds out what’s changing and what’s staying the same

Alistair Heather and Mary Ann Kennedy will present this year's awards

When I first started writing about folk music for this newspaper, what seems like several geological epochs ago, the concept of a glitzy folk awards ceremony would have seemed beyond fantasy. Since 2003, however, the traditional music scene’s big night out, the Scots Trad Music Awards, has been packing ’em in, an exuberant annual showcase for the best of Scotland’s traditional and related music and song.

This year, however, as with performance arts everywhere in the shadow of Covid, the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards, originally planned for a return to Dundee’s Caird Hall, will be broadcast once again by BBC Alba, but with no live audience.

The “Folk Oscars” – “Na Trads” as they’re known in Gaelic – will be screened from 9pm on 12 December, with pre-recorded performances by such notables as Gaelic singer Karen Matheson, accordionist Phil Cunningham, instrumental trio Project Smok and north-east balladeer Iona Fyfe.

The 2020 awards, recognising the vital contributions of education and community involvement as well as performance, emerge from an unimaginably difficult year, as acknowledged by Murdo MacSween, communications manager at the awards’ prime sponsor, MG Alba: “We’ve seen fantastic collaborations and innovation, all reaching audiences in ever more unique and inspiring ways.”

The awards bash is just part of the weekend’s celebrations. Leading up to it, between 1pm and 9pm, BBC Alba will broadcast live music from the likes of the Kinnaris Quintet, the Paul McKenna Band and the duo of Ryan Young and Jenn Butterworth, presented by singer-songwriter Findlay Napier, while the awards will be followed by a DJ set from Innes Strachan of Niteworks.

The previous evening, the 11th, sees the latest inductees into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame announced for the first time on BBC Alba, in a programme presented by Gaelic singer (and BBC weather presenter) Joy Dunlop. The show will include performances from the inductees, who include the band Old Blind Dogs, singer Jim Malcolm, piper and academic Gary West and Gaelic singer Margaret Stewart (recorded in Lewis with the accompanying band in Glasgow).

The awards ceremony itself will be compered by Gaelic musician and broadcaster Mary Ann Kennedy, joined this year by the Angus-based writer and Scots language champion Alistair Heather as, for the first time, the show is presented in Scots as well as in Gaelic and English.

Absent from the stage this year will be the sparkling footwear of Simon Thoumire, concertina wizard and founder and creative director of Hands Up for Trad, the organisation behind the awards. Thoumire, however, is delighted that the event is still taking place despite all: “I’m really chuffed that something is happening, because it would have been so easy just not to have anything,” he says. “We’ve tried to have categories that reflect the past year, so we missed out obvious things like ‘best live act’ but instead have got ‘best online performance’ and ‘best trad video’.”

Despite lockdown, the ever-industrious Thoumire has remained busy, organising online activities including the ongoing performance streaming of the Hands Up for Trad Music Club and Joy Dunlop’s “Meet the Sponsors” videos in the run-up to the awards night.

The way musicians have been forced to embrace online performance has been transformative, Thoumire agrees. “Even when we get back to physicality, we’ll continue with all the online stuff, because it’s easy for people to be part of and is instantly world-wide. When we do the Hands Up for Trad Music Club, there are people watching from California, Argentina and Australia, which is amazing.”

At the same time, he admits, he is yearning for a return to that nurturing grass-roots cornerstone of the trad music scene, the informal session. “You can just about play along with somebody online, but that’s about it: all the fun and sense of community in playing together just isn’t there.”

For full details and times of the Scots Trad Awards and Hall of Fame inductions on BBC Alba on 11 and 12 December, see www.scotstradmusicawards.com

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