“WHEN you’re playing with musicians from
other cultures, the first thing is to honour each other’s tradition,” the Scottish piper Ross Ainslie tells
Uncut
on a not-entirelyreliable phone connection from a remote rehearsal room under a blanket of winter snow somewhere in the Highlands. “You can’t just hash things together if you want it to be believable. You explore common ground but you remain true to your own roots.”
This month, Ainslie will put the principle to the test at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival in an ambitious concert which seeks to join the dots between three disparate traditions: the griot heritage of West Africa, the vernacular music of North America and the ancient songs, jigs and reels of Gaelic folk music. From Scotland, along with Ainslie, will come the young Gaelic singers Jenna Cumming and Kim Carnie; the Appalachian banjo player Dirk Powell and the Grammy-nominated zydeco fiddler and accordionist Cedric Watson will provide the