Ceòl nan Gàidheal

Ceòlas, a distillation of the Hebridean and Cape Breton cultural inheritances, is rooted within the Gaelic heartland of South Uist. The organisation focuses on performance and education that celebrates and promotes the Gaelic language, music and dance of the local community and the strong cultural links of the Gàidhealtachd diaspora.

Originally established as a summer school in 1996 with the aim of reintroducing aspects of Gaelic music and dance from the Nova Scotian Gàidhealtachd, the organisation has grown to deliver a year-round programme locally, nationally and internationally. Ceòlas aims to bring our island inheritance to wider audiences. The flagship event remains the summer school, taking place each year in the first week of July in Dalabrog, South Uist. Tuition in traditional music and dance, including Gaelic song, piping, fiddle, clàrsach, step-dance and reels, is offered along with Gaelic language. Scottish and Canadian tutors, many with familial ties to Uist, join local teachers and members of the community, representing a living Gaelic tradition and global diaspora. Summer school students learn songs, tunes and language in classes during the day, and then experience the natural, contextualised culture in village-hall dances and house cèilidhs by night.

Other festivals which seek to encourage Gaelic song, music and dance include ‘Fèis Chullaig’ at Hogmanay and ‘Moladh Uibhist’ in the springtime. ‘Moladh Uibhist’ is expressly a song festival, where sessions are taught by local tradition bearers who largely learned songs from previous generations aurally. Songs generally are situated in Uist or by Uist bards and are taught in the traditional style (known as ‘seann-nòs’ by the Mòd).

‘Moladh Uibhist’ was started in 2014 to disseminate the findings of a two-year European-funded research project examining European Oral Song Traditions (EOST). The multinational project, where Ceòlas worked with partner organisations from France, Finland and Estonia, sought to explore and document the living song traditions within minority-language communities and increase collaborative working. The results were staggering. In Uist alone, where three researchers carried out fieldwork over a three-month period, over 1,000 songs were identified. A couple hundred of those songs were previously unpublished. The Ceòlas portion of the project produced 2 CDs, 2 books, 1 poetry resource, still used in local schools, and numerous conference topics.

One further output was the establishment of a local Gaelic-medium singing group, ‘Guthan an Iar’. Comprised of both native Uist Gaels and Gaelic learners, the group learns and performs Gaelic songs with a tie to the island. Since its establishment in 2014, it has travelled to Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, singing at concerts, cèilidhs and festivals including the Fringe and Celtic Connections. Originally featuring on the EOST ‘Gaoth an Iar’ CD, the group also features on two further CDs from 2018.