Band of Burns
Live from the Union Chapel
Own label
CELTIC Connections’ Burns Night guests this year are a troupe who have emerged from a series of informal Burns Night gigs in London over the past few years and who represent Ireland, England, Wales and Turkey as well as various parts of Scotland.
Twelve-strong and contributing vocals, various fretted and string instruments, flute, pipes and percussion, they celebrate the work of Burns and like-minded songwriters, including the late Irish-Cuban social commentator Richard Fariña, whose The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood features here and echoes Burns’ approach to putting new words to traditional melodies, in this case the Irish air My Lagan Love.
Drawn from bands including Afro Celts, Glasgow-based Danny Kyle award-winners, the Langan Band, and the high-energy Balkan-Greco-Turkish crew the Odd Beats, Band of Burns take few prisoners with their often raucous, partying dance tunes but are also capable of softer, more reflective moments.
Among the mostly well-known Burns songs featured, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose is read as a poem rather than sung and Now Westlin Winds follows Dick Gaughan’s classic tender arrangement while John Anderson, My Jo reels off on a turbo-charged, exotically dancing adventure.
ROB ADAMS
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here