Capercaillie’s contribution to Scottish music, as a group and as individuals, is immeasurable. No-one has done more to ensure that Gaelic song keeps abreast with contemporary musical developments or to show the world at large the beauty of the language and the vitality of the tradition that lie at their heart.
The group’s statistics and achievements underline the point: over one million albums sold worldwide; one gold and three silver albums earned in the UK; performances in over thirty countries; the first Gaelic Top 40 single; and the music provided for Hollywood movies and TV series.
Formed in 1983, when the original members were still at Oban High School, right from the start Capercaillie featured strength in depth. The sublime singing of Karen Matheson, the Mod silver pendant winner whom Sean Connery famously described as having “a throat that is surely touched by God”, gave the group an instantly recognisable, natural focus; and the instrumental team led by Donald Shaw – the all-Britain accordion champion at the age of sixteen – guaranteed energy, dexterity and excitement.
With a repertoire of songs that Karen learned from her family and Donald’s taste for musical and technological adventure – an early synthesiser was acquired after hearing keyboard master Joe Zawinul of jazz futurists Weather Report – Capercaillie set about turning centuries old material into the music of the moment.
They recorded their first album, Cascade, in 1984 and turned professional two years later. By this time, Charlie McKerron had added his brilliant fiddle skills and tune-writing alchemy to Marc Duff’s whistle and Donald’s accordion, and for the group’s first American tour in 1988, Donegal-born Manus Lunny replaced Sean Craig, adding his bouzouki and guitar drive to the engine room alongside John Saich’s grooving bass guitar.
Also by this time, Capercaillie had composed and recorded the music for The Blood is Strong, a Grampian TV/Channel Four series on the Gaelic Scots’ emigration to North America, the first step in a soundtrack career that includes an appearance in the film Rob Roy, which starred Jessica Lange and Liam Neason.
The 1990s brought further success and further adventures, including the arrival of piper and flautist supreme, Michael McGoldrick, concerts in Sao Paulo, Baghdad and the Sudan, a gold disc for their Delirium album and a hit single with Coisich a Ruin, a vibrant interpretation of a four hundred year old waulking song complete with African-influenced percussion. Capercaillie was now a world music group, with an international fan base and international collaborators, including Guinean vocal duo Hijas del Sol, and although incorporating musical styles such as funk, drum ‘n’ bass and hip hop, the group continued to honour the Gaelic and Scottish traditions above all else.
With the release of Roses and Tears, their seventeenth album, in 2008, Capercaillie marked twenty-five years of musical enquiry, fearless studio experiments and rollicking live performances – an odyssey that, among all their other triumphs, has seen them even manage to pay tribute to two Homers, the Greek philosopher and the Simpsons’ cartoon patriarch, in the one reel.
For more information visit www.capercaillie.co.uk/
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