FIDDLES & FOLK

by G W Lockhart

Luath Press, #7.95

A freeborn man of the travelling people was once summoned by the BBC in London to add authenticity to a folk music programme. Faced with a lonely evening in a posh hotel room, he took his melodeon out on the streets to busk - which illegal activity resulted in him spending the night in rather less plush accommodation instead.

With the promise of this and other tales, Wallace Lockhart lures the reader through what the sub-title boldly trumpets as ''a celebration of the re-emergence of Scotland's musical heritage'', and what Lockhart's introduction describes more modestly as a look at ''how some individuals and groups have come to the fore''.

Take the author's word for it because this is a gentle progress, couthie even. When Lockhart writes of meetings with his

chosen figures, he evokes congenial evenings spent chatting by the fire, glass of malt to hand.

Thus he gathered from Hamish Henderson his tale about the arrested busker and Sheena Wellington's admission of a similar fate for jettisoning her Harris Academy blazer to join the Holy Loch protests.

An indefatigable song collector, writer, and catalyst, Henderson is arguably the definitive choice to follow an introduction to Scots song, and Welling-

ton, through championing the tradition on Arts Council committee, on stage, record, radio, and newspaper page alike, has earned her chapter.

Lockhart also profiles, as well as bigger names like Dougie Maclean and Brian McNeill, lesser-known but none the less deserving causes including that quiet preserver of east coast song, Jim Reid.

He slips in interesting facts - I'd somehow assumed that guitars were a relatively recent feature of Scottish life, yet they were stock items in Edinburgh music shops 200 years ago, and his fiddle section, if somewhat curtailed, is good on history and anecdote.

Ultimately, though, the book's conservatism and selectivity disappoints. It takes little account of the phenomenal and accelerating interest in traditional music among young people. Of the plethora of musicians, singers, and groups who have come to prominence in the 1990s, few are featured other than in passing. And compared to the generous surveys of Strathspey & Reel societies and Accordion & Fiddle clubs, Gaelic music's significance and vast wealth are meag-rely served.

Lockhart may also want to have a word with his editor, whose first three photo choices - an Irish whistler, a Northumberland group, and an Irish band, hardly illustrate the book's subject matter to best effect.