FARA

How best to sum this evening up? Well… if I go-get my big bumper box marked ‘superlatives’, blow

the dust from its lid and shake the brimming contents out to flutter down like a ticker tape parade;

like glitter; like confetti over the Fara experience then that wouldn’t come close.

And I’ve never seen the Community Hall so loaded, even weel-kent faces of Crail, never before seen

at Folk Club ventured forth for the opening night of Fara’s 10 th anniversary tour.

They kick off with ‘Roses’… fiddles setting an almost minimalist like pulse then whoosh, as one, we’re

off, soaring kestrel like over the mountains and glens of the music’s landscape.

‘Fair Winds’, with its wonderful 3-part harmonies, is for Bessie Millie, the Stromness ‘weather witch’

who, on Brinkie’s Brae, for sixpence would ‘grant’ sailors fair seafaring winds. Of course, her words

were completely generic but sufficed to allay any mariner’s fears.

Hairs on the back of the neck stood up for ‘The Merry Dancers’, a homage to the Northern Lights.

Jeana on lead vox of course, but Catriona’s accompanying ‘ooos’ were remarkable. I’ve heard many

backing ‘ooos’ before but these were ethereal ‘ooos’, just like the shimmery Northern Lights. My

friend Peter - who knows about these things – with eyebrows raised skyward pronounced the piece

as ‘almost mystical’.

Burns’ ‘My Heart is in the Highlands’ touched with it’s beautiful 3-part harmonies and acapella

ending.

Mention must go to Joe South’s ‘Games People Play’. Pop, not trad. Pizzicato fiddles from Catriona

and Kristan set a funky vibe and set heads abop.

Seeing and hearing musicians of this calibre always makes me think this... it is as if the music is

playing the performers. It’s like Music itself manifests and takes over. The performers appear to be

responding effortlessly to something intangible. I know we’re talking about years of practice, about

collaboration and familiarity, about shared musical language but what is that synergy, that ‘whole is

more than the sum of the parts’? Aye, it’s almost mystical!

Words by Callum MacLeod, photos by Peter Salkeld