Top Scotch

Full Tilt Kilts: Championship bagpipers arrive from across North America.

A look at the best of the Scottish Games music.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Scotland gave us golf, men throwing 175-pound tree trunks and food cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. As the 43rd Annual Monterey Scottish Games and Celtic Festival demonstrates every summer, it also gave us great music.

This year Tempest will deliver a high-energy mix of Scottish, Irish and Scandinavian folk and rock music. 1916, meanwhile, blends bagpipes, bass guitar and drums into an original sound. Amy Krupski on the harp, accompanied by vocalist Shannon Miller, summons delicate and soothing tones from her strings.

Seamus Kennedy will draw some of the biggest crowds with his multitude of talents. A singer, dancer, comedian and all-around entertainer, he is also a songwriter and author hailing from Ireland with a guitar painted like his native land’s flag. He wears a kilt, coaxes audience members into jigs and spares no one from his jokes. His humor traverses topics ranging from beer to seizures; he may take a break from his set to “answer his cell phone,” which is actually his flask.

He also has a serious side, shown when he sings ballads such as the traditional Scottish anthem “Scotland the Brave.” These lyrics remind us that the festival is about keeping Scottish culture and tradition alive in Monterey County. “Far off in sunlit places, sad are the Scottish faces,” he signs, “yearning to feel the kiss of sweet Scottish rain.”

It’s a filling amount of music – but if isn’t satisfying enough, there’s always haggis. No Scottish festival would be complete without Scotland’s unofficial national dish: sheep parts mixed with onion, oatmeal and spices, and stuffed in the stomach of a sheep and then simmered in water. Nowadays folks tend to cook the mixture in an external casing, but the dish retains its nutty texture and meaty good flavor – not unlike the performing Scottish and Celtic musicians.