Capercaillie
Crafted majestically around the sensuous vocals of Karen Matheson, Capercaillie are Scotland's top folk band - and have been for over a decade.  They've done it the hard way, too, combining traditional credibility with commercial clout, in part through the Gaelic folk songs Matheson learned as a child from her grandmother.  The band - named after a grouse-like bird prevalent in the Scottish Highlands - have even experimented with hip hop styles in a long career that has repeatedly seen them taking risks - and quite often succeeding.  Anyone who achieves a hit single with a 400-year-old Gaelic waulking song as they did with Coisichin A Ruin in 1992 must be pretty special.  Recorded as the theme music for the TV show A Prince Among Islands (involving Prince Charles), it remains the only Scots Gaelic language song ever to make the Top 40.

Karen Matheson's family is from the isle of Barra and her childhood was littered with warming stories of island sing-songs giving her a deep empathy with Gaelic song.  Even now she says it feels more natural to her to sing, rather than contemporary songs in English, the traditional Gaelic taught her as a child by her grandmother, the traditional singer Elizabeth MacNeill).  Unfortunately she was raised in an era when children were brainwashed into believing that Gaelic culture was a bar to progress.  Karen was actively encouraged to lose her own culture.  "My mother and grandmother talked to each other in Gaelic at home and my mother couldn't understand why I wanted to learn Gaelic later. Now it's considered cool."

Capercaillie may have had something to do with the change of attitude.  Karen met her future husband and musical partner Donald Shaw (himself from a musical family - he was taught accordion as a child by his dad) at school in the village of Taynuilt, near Oban.  In their teens they formed a band and even made a low profile album as The Etives.  They formed Capercaillie in the early '80s with another school friend, Marc Duff, (recorder, whistle and bodhran) primarily as an instrumental group to play for local dances.  They issued their first album, Cascade, on their own Etive label in 1984.  The other originals were Joan McLachlon on fiddle, Martin Macleod on bass and fiddle and Shaun Craig on bouzouki and guitar, but they gradually departed after turning professional in 1985.  In their places came the superb fiddle player and writer Charlie McKerron, Anton Kirkpatrick on guitar and Donal Lunny's brother Manus on guitar, bouzouki and occasional vocals. 

In 1988 they were commissioned to write the music for The Blood Is Strong, a TV series about the history of Gaelic songs, the soundtrack of which went on to sell 100,000 and put them on the map nationally.  Although plagued by constant comparisons with Clannad, they gradually asserted themselves as one of the world's most respected Celtic bands, branching out from their Gaelic roots to embrace the poppier material of Donald Shaw. Donal Lunny produced their breakthrough album Sidewaulk; it was the occasion for their first performance of English language material, and it turned them into a major international attraction, making the US charts and winning an award in Japan.  Their 1991 album Delirium was a landmark fusion of traditional and contemporary material, and one of the tracks, Breisleach, featuring lyrics by the Edinburgh poet Aonghas MacNeacall, was chosen as the theme music to a Gaelic language TV soap opera, Machair.  It also marked the addition, for the first time, of a percussionist, Ronnie Goodman.  One of Shaw's original songs, Waiting For The Wheel To Turn, a protest about land abuse in western Scotland, embroiled the band in controversy.

That was nothing to the controversy inspired when they signed to a major label and started experimenting with drum machines and hip hop styles.  By their own admission it didn't completely work, but it was a further sign of their desire to keep challenging themselves and move the band into different areas.  Their cinematic musical career was to continue when they created the music for the 1995 film Rob Roy, and around the same time Karen Matheson took time out to make a solo album, while Charlie McKerron teamed up with Laura McKerron and John Saich to form an offshoot band, Big Sky, who produced an outstanding self-titled album of partly programmed atmospheric music.  There was a further break in 2000 when Karen and Donald Shaw had a baby son, Hector, but mother (and son) were soon back in the studio recording a new Capercaillie album, Nadurra - the current line-up features the ubiquitous Michael McGoldrick (flutes, whistle, uillean pipes), Ewen Vernal (bass) and James MacKintosh (drums) alongside Karen Matheson, Donald Shaw, Charlie McKerron and Manus Lunny.  They still represent the pinnacle of Scottish folk music.

This great Bio on Capercaillie was kindly provided by BBC Radio 2.  Check out the BBC Radio Website for many others ...