Tradicals

VASHTI BUNYAN Written during a journey by horse-drawn wagon from London to Skye, Vashti Bunyan's first album Just Another Diamond Day was released in 1970 to mass indifference. Feeling a failure, she stopped making music, raised a family, and barely sang a note for more than 30 years. Yet as the decades passed, her unloved debut became regarded as a lost masterpiece, and Bunyan inspired a new generation of artists, notably Devendra Banhart. In 2005, she finally released her great second album, Lookaftering. Now in her early 60s and based in Edinburgh, Bunyan has just completed a series of shows in Japan, Australia and America, including an all-star "experimental folk" night at Carnegie Hall, organised by David Byrne.

Thanks to the presence on Diamond Day of members of Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, and a certain archaic and pastoral quality in the songs, Bunyan has always been thought of as a folk singer, although she has never considered herself as such.

"I think this is the music of a generation who inherently know that violence isn't the way to go," she says. "My generation had to figure it out and start a peace movement - this one just knows, lives, breathes and plays it. And listens."

KARINE POLWART Karine Polwart is one of Scotland's best contemporary songwriters. Originally from Stirlingshire, now in the Borders, Polwart is 36 and expecting her first child in June. She has a masters degree in philosophy and spent time working for Scottish Women's Aid, and it's easy to hear, listening to her recent album Scribbled In Chalk, how the world of ideas and the hard-knock life combine in her contemplative songs. Her material is often dark, but the melodies tend to be simple and uplifting, and she has a strong but gentle voice - Joni Mitchell with a Scots burr - with a touch more gladness than sadness in it.

Although steeped in tradition (she is currently recording an album of folk ballads as well as another of new material) Polwart has twice won Best Original Song at the BBC Folk Awards. Her song I'm Gonna Do It All, in particular, is taking on a life of its own with a number of primary schools in Britain and abroad adopting it as their anthem. She plans to work with school children in Clackmannanshire, using music to explore what they want out of life and what sort of world they want to live in. "Songs are great at raising issues and encouraging kids to talk," she says. "When you write a song, you have four or five minutes at the most to make an impact. But a good song lasts and leaves plenty room for people to ponder."

KING CREOSOTE & JAMES YORKSTON Though planning a return to his native Fife, James Yorkston lives in Edinburgh. Aided by guitar, mandolin, banjo and bouzouki, he writes in a cold room at the top of a spiral staircase in a large house dating from the 1500s. He has released three excellent albums of subtle, literate, beautifully sad music as, influenced by the novelists WG Sebald and Richard Brautigan as by the folk singers Anne Briggs and Lal Waterson.

"The songs have to mean something or else I'm just standing on stage and lying," he says. "I'm 35 and I'm not going to win any awards for the fullest head of hair, so in an image-obsessed media all I can do is be myself and be honest. I want the songs to have some emotion. I don't just want them to be words that rhyme. For me, lyrics are more important than the melody. They are the heart of the song."

As a world view that's hard to knock, and would do well as a manifesto for The Fence Collective, a group of like-minded musicians based on the Fife coast; Yorkston is a member and 40-year-old Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, its founder and governing spirit. He has released 33 albums, the most successful of which was his most recent, KC Rules Okay, in which an accordion saw some heavy use and the writing was a winning mix of knees-up couthiness and downbeat wit, revealing Anderson as a hybrid of Cole Porter, Morrissey and Jimmy Shand.

"I tend to stick to writing about tragic/comic things that happened to me," he says. "I think that's very indicative of this area of Scotland. People don't get involved in the big picture. A lot of the mentality is you look after your own and make the most of what you've got. So I would never write about fishing disasters because I don't have any experience of that. I only have what I experience day-to-day, and that's this small town life. I'm very East Neuk."

ALASDAIR ROBERTS The Amber Gatherers, the fourth solo record by 29 year old Alasdair Roberts, was released in January and immediately established itself as a contender for album of the year. A lighter take on the sparse narratives he is known for, it's a clutch of strong melodies and extraordinary lyrics, all sung in a beautiful keening Scots voice. "Pop music made by people who don't really understand what pop music is," is his own summation.

Originally from Callander, now in Glasgow, Roberts is not concerned with chronicling the modern urban world in which he lives. As a songwriter he looks to the past, to nature and to folklore. His lyrics are a landscape in which wyverns are bound, kings wade out of the sea, and waxwings die singing in a canyon of echoes. "I would be useless at writing overt political or social commentary songs," he explains. "But I feel that the mythic and metaphysical realms are mine to roam in."

Roberts admires the poems of TS Eliot and Seamus Heaney, but is mostly influenced by ancient British folk ballads, which often deal with violent death, illicit sex and the supernatural. He has recorded two albums of this material and is planning a third.

He first became exposed to this music through his late father, Alan, who had been part of the folk scene in Glasgow during the Sixties. Roberts learned the 17th-century song The False Bride from his father, starting an obsessive interest in those old ballads.

"I like the songs and on a certain level am also troubled and depressed by them," he says. "And so I have to confront them head-on to deal with that feeling."

LUCKY LUKE Seven-piece Lucky Luke are a Fairport Convention for the 21st century. They formed in Glasgow after guitarist Simon Shaw quit V-Twin, dismayed by their lack of fiddles, and set about putting together his own folk-rock group. The first recruit was Morag Wilson ("Falkirk's hottest librarian") on harmonium, followed in due course by lead vocalist Lucy Sweet, headhunted from another band because she sings like Steeleye Span's Maddy Prior. "That's kind of an accident because I always wanted to sound rock," she says. "Like a lot of people of our generation, I was encouraged to despise folk music because it was really lame." Nevertheless she became a convert and in 2005 Lucky Luke put out their acclaimed debut album Patrick The Survivor. They recently recorded an excellent second LP, provisionally titled Jackie, which is awaiting release. A major American record company is interested in signing them, and in May they will record a new single produced by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. "We just trundle along," says Sweet, "like an old broken-down car."

MIKE HERON & GEORGIA SEDDON In 1968, as one half of Edinburgh's The Incredible String Band, Mike Heron released The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, one of the great albums of the psychedelic era. Now Heron makes music with his daughter Georgia Seddon, a 21-year-old student at Newcastle University, majoring in piano. The pair have played shows together, and an album is being discussed, but the first fruit of their collaboration is Song For Irena, with lyrics by the novelist John Burnside, on Ballads Of The Book.

Heron, 64, is modest about his place as the godfather of psychedelic folk, but it's arguable that the String Band are more relevant now than at any point since their commercial peak, with Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom citing them as an influence.

"It was an exploring era in the Sixties and people were rebelling from the boring pop stuff into folk and blues and world music," says Heron. "You couldn't sit down and listen to Buddy Holly and pass the joint around. So we tried to make the kind of music we felt was missing from our lives, that fitted with the hippy lifestyle."

JULIE FOWLIS & JENNA REID As the singer and fiddler in the highly regarded band Dòchas, Julie Fowlis and Jenna Reid have toured the world. Their solo careers are also in the ascendant.

Fowlis hails from North Uist, growing up speaking Gaelic and English and immersed in a ceilidh culture where singing and playing came as naturally as breathing. Her music is beguiling, beautiful and accessible, which is why she is tipped to cross over to the mainstream.

Now resident in Dingwall, she drew heavily on the music of North Uist when choosing material for her forthcoming album, Cuilidh. "Nearly all the songs are from the island," she says. "I decided I would try to sing songs from home. It's fascinating to go back and speak to older folk and learn songs from them direct. That's a tradition that has almost died out and I am fortunate to be able to do that."

Most of this material has been recorded commercially for the first time, hence the English translation of the album title - a treasury. The songs deal with family and community, love, loss and landscape. "A couple of them tell of an elopement, very famous within the island, that happened a hundred years ago. It would now be a classic love triangle storyline on any soap opera on the television."

Fowlis also knows that singing in Gaelic, especially when your songs get played on national radio, is on some level an act of conservation. "I am aware that I am singing in a language that is in a very fragile state and is very much under threat," she says, "and if I can do even the tiniest amount towards helping keep it alive then I would be very happy."

Originally from Shetland, which turns out brilliant fiddlers like Tunnock's turn out tea cakes, Jenna Reid has been in Glasgow for almost a decade, having arrived at 17 to study for a degree in traditional Scottish music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Living in Quarff, south of Lerwick, she started to learn the fiddle at the age of nine. In Shetland, fiddle tuition is free, the local council being keen to keep alive the proud musical tradition of the islands. She learned to play on an instrument made in 1813, discovered in her granny's loft, which she continues to use to this day.

Reid recorded her first album in her early teens, as part of the band Filska. Two years ago she released her debut solo album, With Silver And All, which saw her acclaimed as among the best fiddlers of her generation, and her new album will be released in November. She is really psyched.

"When I am playing it feels like I'm doing exactly what I should be, exactly what I'm here for," she says. "I'm writing a lot more now, and I feel really in the zone and inspired. I'm excited about what's to come in the future."

JOHN MCCUSKER & KRIS DREVER Originally from Bothwell, John McCusker studied classical violin from the age of seven, but was always more drawn to folk (blame the Dubliners records he heard at home) and aged 16 joined legendary Scottish folkies the Battlefield Band. "So instead of going to the posh, prestigious Royal Academy I got in a Transit van and travelled the world for 11 years with people with beards."

Now 33, he has a fair claim to being the busiest man in Scottish folk, and not just because he is constantly in demand as a touring and session musician. Last year he produced albums by Roddy Woomble and Eddi Reader, will soon start work on the new Kate Rusby record and plans to produce the first solo album by Radiohead's Phil Selway. He is also about to record Under One Sky, a large-scale composition - premiered recently at Celtic Connections - for which he roped in such diverse figures as the Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis and ex-Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. Well connected? He's a one-man Google.

McCusker also produced Black Water, the terrific debut solo album from Kris Drever, the Orcadian multi-instrumentalist and singer who recently won the Horizon Award - effectively best newcomer - at the BBC Folk awards. Drever's deep resonant voice (he rates Dick Gaughan and Tom Waits) belies the fact that he is only 28; Eddi Reader has described him as one of the best singers she has ever heard. Now living in Edinburgh, he also performs as part of the trio Lau.

Despite the inevitable teenage flirtation with heavy metal, Drever was born to play folk music; he is the son of Ivan Drever of the Celtic rock band Wolfstone, and his mother also sings and plays piano. In Orkney, he says, musicianship is valued highly and virtuosity regarded as a kind of magic. "All I really want is to get better at playing the guitar, singing and writing," he declares, "and make a significant contribution to my country's music."

RODDY WOOMBLE As lead singer with Idlewild, Roddy Woomble, 30, has been prominent on Scotland's rock scene for over a decade. However in recent years, following an epiphany while going through his parents record collection, he has fallen in love with folk. "It just sounds more truthful to me than a lot of other music," he says. "An accordion and a violin together just gets straight to the point." In 2006 he released his debut solo album, My Secret Is My Silence, made in collaboration with some people included in this feature - John McCusker, Karine Polwart, and Foxface's Michael Angus. He is planning to work with Kris Drever too.

Ballads of the Book was Woomble's brainchild, and Idlewild's contribution is The Weight Of Years, based on a poem by Edwin Morgan. "The album covers everything from alcoholism to meditations on death to having fun in the fields," Woomble laughs. "All the Scottish touchstones."

Idlewild release their new album tomorrow, a return to a rock sound, but Woomble's affair with folk seems set to continue - the poet Rody Gorman is keen to involve him in an album of Bob Dylan songs translated into Gaelic. Tangled Up In Bludh, anyone?