Voices of the World was the title of Thursday night’s show at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. It couldn’t have been more appropriate. After the Grace, Hewat and Polwarth trio (Corrina Hewat also acted as Mc), solo singer Mairi Smith, the Bulgarian women’s choir Angelite and the Aberfeldy Gaelic choir directed by Margaret Bennett it fell on to us, Fiamma Fumana and the Choir of Mondine di Novi, to finish it. The show has been good right from the start, thanks to the serene beauty of Gaelic singing, the mysterious harmonies of the Bulgarian girls and Margaret’s Elegiac notes (she touched my heart singing a slow song written for her son Martyn, very great piper and dj, our friend and our rather unorthodox muse: he would be 37 if Hodgkin’s lymphoma had not taken him away three years ago). But when the Mondine set foot on the stage something happened: firstly they sing loud, with a sonic pressure that comes straight from pre-microphonic times and makes them the Who of folk choirs (”volume is power”, indeed): and then we came onstage, with our drum grooves and our instruments, to get the people up and dancing. It ended up in a big party.

MUCH later in the evening, in the hotel’s club, the party was still raging on. The ladies stormed a circle of chairs and sofas and started singing like there was no tomorrow, and there was no way to get them to go to bed. Some fans gave them a copule of bottles of whisky, with they took in stride with the elàn that comes with experience (while getting Paolo, normally a good drinker, seriously drunk) between a rice weeding song and a partisan rebel one. Passers by would stop, clustering in a small crowd, and could not believe it. And neither could I, really: a glance at Diva’s wonderful 84 years, still the most powerful contralto in the choir, who was having the time of her life singing at 4 in the morning in a Glasgow hotel, was enough to tell me that something was happening here. I could feel the pride of being there, and the love that bonds us, grandmothers, mothers and daughters (and sons). And I realized that, depite all the limitations (mine especially, as a musician and composer) we have something to tell the world, we have a good story to pass on and our own little note to add to the great song of planet Earth. Forwards!

Artistic director Donald Shaw and his people at Celtic Connections have called a press conference and gone live with the 2008 website. What a lineup! Flook, Steve Earle, k.d. lang, Liam Clancy, Mercedes Peòn (we crossed path at Folkwoods, in Holland), Solas, old glories Moving Hearts, Eliza Carthy, Peatbog Fairies, Le Vent du Nord, Michelle Shocked, Bill Wyman (BILL WYMAN?), Capercailie, Trilok Gurtu… And yes, we are there too, in the Voices of the world together with theBulgarian Women’s Choir Angelite. No Uncle Earl, though: their place - quite appropriately with the rest of the night’s lineup, I think - has been taken by the Aberfeldy Gaelic Choir, conducted on this occasion by Margaret Bennett, high-ranking vocalist and mother of our much-missed Martyn. Gulp. We really must be super-ready for that.

Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium - Festival website

GREAT NEWS! Frusion’s Ian Smith called me to announce that Celtic Connections has booked our show for the 31st of January 2008, with Mondine and all! We are still waiting on the details (press conference is on Wednesday next week), and the same night the website will launch, but it appears they are setting up a “Voices of the world” night with us, the Bulgarian Women’s Choir (not sure which one) and American girls Uncle Earl. The whole thing should take place in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall… the ladies will be delighted, especially Agnes, the Scottish Rice Weeder, a Glaswegian…