Folk festivals are enjoying a resurgence in Scotland just now.
You could easily spend your summer dotting from one heather-purple beauty spot to another taking in line ups who are bringing trad back to the masses. Frankly, I recommend that you do. On the other side of the calendar, however, is a celebration that’s been the beating heart of Glasgow’s dark and rainy winter season for 30-odd years. When it started, Celtic Connections was small, local, and attracted the middle-aged target audience that (it pains me to say) I have become. Now it is a sprawling city-wide takeover, alive across dozens of venues, thousands of musicians, and tens of thousands of music-lovers of all kinds.
For those original punters it is both a ritual and a homecoming, but for a diverse wealth of new attendees Celtic Connections is a masterclass in tradition in evolution, as world music meets indie, meets rock, meets Americana, meets jazz and soul. Slipping through the cracks of old converted church walls and sweaty low-ceilinged pub back rooms, are riffs and reels and melodies that bring the Dear Green Place out to dance. Whether out for the evening or visiting for the fortnight, you’ll bump into many of the bouncing souls ensuring the chilly city takes its annual turn for the raucous.
Celtic Connections 2025, Opening Night. Credit Kris Kesiak
If any Scottish band proves that trad is trendy, it’s Trail West. There is an echo of the 70s Roller-mania in their head-banded fandom, as the young Gàidhealtachd pack out the Old Fruitmarket. For a band who look like a geography teacher to a man, they nevertheless command a vast audience who adoringly belt out each and every bagpipes-and-accordions ceilidh tune, whooping like it’s a chart-smashing banger. Only 5-years young as an outfit, their West Coast dance band energy has channelled a zeitgeist that makes Silly Wizard’s Queen of Argyll a legit sing-a-long.
46-years in, at the other end of their career, Oysterband are on the last Scottish date of their Long Long Goodbye tour, saying farewell at a standing venue tightly packed with the young at heart. For many of those in attendance, their defiant folk-punk storm of passionate protest has been the soundtrack of their whole lives. They are right, they are “old fellas”, but the sound is as full and warm-blooded as ever, as anthemic choruses swell the crowd, disco-ball turning, tears in eyes, fists aloft, belting out “as long as the room keeps swaying to and fro, as long as the band can play… I’m gonna stay at the shouting end of life”
When Celtic Connections goes to Oran Mor, the audience gets younger, a bit ‘Trendy Wendy’, and very ‘The 90s Called and Want Their Hairstyles Back’. It is a slight unexpected match with Fras and Cala: both fantastic modern Highland trad acts, who work the room with an energy that successfully distracts from the storm weather warning in force outside. Following in the footsteps of contemporary royalty such as Valtos and Elephant Sessions – who likewise kicked off their Celtic Connections association in this low-vaulted crypt – both bands have realised that what really sets off a set of pipe tunes is a wee EDM drum-and-bass inspired infusion, and a tremendous glitter jacket.
While 900 of the bearded elder Millennials are fostering their tinnitus at the QMU for album launch of former-Celtic Connections post-rock celebrities Mogwai, many of their contemporaries are in a muggy backroom for a spot of Welsh havoc with NoGood Boyo. The Hug and Pint audience are your original 90s moshers and ravers, who definitely now spend part of the weekend looking at paint at B&Q. With all the enthusiasm, but no longer quite the knees for a pop-up, this was exactly the gloriously barrelling mess you would expect from a band who’ve made a name for themselves singing anarchically about 18th century acid-tripping goats.
If we’ve hung out with the boy-band fans, the classic crowd, campus culture, and the midlifers on their night off from the wains, where was the alt-party? Well, if we are playing stereotyping audiences by venues, then the loud-print shirts, beanies, and oversized-glasses gang were at the Drygate Brewery. Of course they were. Drygate during Celtic Connections can be a funny sort of vibe: both ultra-cool, but also a bit serious for its own good. This is not the case for Sacred Paws, whose afro-pop is irresistibly upbeat, danceable, relatable, short, punchy and…. Just. So. Flipping. Joyful. From running jokes about flu recovery, to self-deprecating storytelling, to acknowledging musical colleagues beyond the standard shout-outs – the hometown duo are the kind of genuinely nice folks that you can’t stop grinning with. Railing in the face of the complexity of being a ‘grown-up’, they channel a lesson on how to avoid becoming jaded, and everyone’s here for it, dancing like eejits as if nobody’s watching. If there is one new album you should buy this Spring, make it Sacred Paws ‘Jump into Life’.
And we’re done for another year. Of course, Edinburgh captures the August visitors, packing out the International Festival and Fringe like a Royal Mile Disneyland, but it is beyond question that Glasgow has its cultural niche in the sharp dark music-filled air of Imbolc. Join us in 2026 if you can. And for those who are too impatient to await next winter (or looking for a festival where you won’t need your big coat), the Celtic Connections glitterati will swarm Rouken Glen park in June. Taking advantage of the long late midsummer twilight, they will be reeling at The Reeling (https://thereeling.com/) until the sun sets. Hope to see you there too!