Catherine-Ann MacPhee - The First Gaelic Albums

The First Gaelic Albums

Ian Green from Greentrax Records heard her at a festival in Dingwall and offered a recording contract. Like her subsequent albums, all of the songs on "Cànan Nan Gaidheal" (The Language of the Gael) (1987) are in Gaelic, and most are traditional. One of the songs is by the Gaelic-speaking folk-rock group Runrig. Her voice is a powerful alto with exceptionally clear diction. The backing musicians include Tony Cuffe and William Jackson, both from the group Ossian. Her second album contains a bewildering range of pop and New Age influences including drum machine, harp and bass guitar. It was probably the first time that "waulking songs" (work songs for women finishing tweed cloth) were treated this way. The Mrs Ackyroyd Band is a loose association of singers who record perform comic parodies of folk music. In 1987 they undertook their only non-comic project, a song-cycle called "The Stones of Callanish". MacPhee sang two of the songs on it.