The Highland Line: in celebration of the Blas Festival

As part of Highland Homecoming, this year's Blas Festival will also welcome some of the world's strongest athletes who will be attending the Scottish Masters championship at the Northern Meeting Park.

It all started 10 years ago because of the Highland Council's desire to create something that would match the vitality of Cape Breton's Celtic Colours festival, following a visit by council representatives to Nova Scotia in 2002 . It has grown embracing communities across the Highlands in a way no other cultural or artistic programme does.

Today (Friday Sept 5) alone there will events in Inverness, Roy Bridge in Brae Lochaber, Flodigarry on Skye, Golspie and Strathy in Sutherland, Boat of Garten on the River Spey and Dunoon on Argyll's Clyde coast.

Tomorrow it's Inverness again plus Invergarry, Portree, Bunnessan on Mull, Torridon in Wester Ross, Wick and finally Cromarty on the Black Isle. Your blogger is playing a very small part at the last mentioned event.

Meanwhile some of the performers will be going into schools and hospitals over the coming week .

The full version of the film An Drochaid/The Bridge Rising, about the Skye Bridge campaign is being shown followed Q and A session with its director Robbie Fraser (this is where yours truly comes in, a musical role having been firmly refused) and a concert/dance with the group Hò-rò.

There's something quite fitting about the film being shown as part of the Blas festival. One of the prominent members of the SKAT (Skye and Kyle Against Tolls) campaign was Arthur Cormack, who is Chief Executive of Blas festival organisers Fèisean nan Gàidheal. He was one of the hundreds who refused to pay their bridge tolls.

Indeed Arthur's commitment to the ultimately successful SKAT cause earned him a couple of nights in the police cells, along with Skye Councillor Drew Millar. Some see this as an important event in the fight with the forces of law and order over the tolls. A crowd of about 100 gathered in Portree to protest at their arrest.

This was in June 1997, just after Labour returned to power with a manifesto commitment to remove tolls in the shortest practical timescale. That was to take another seven years, but the tolls did go.

Arthur Cormack hasn't made a habit of breaking the law. For the most part his life has been about a commitment to Gaelic development . This includes his building up of Fèisean nan Gàidheal as one of the most respected arts organisations in Scotland; and his place as one of four founders of Macmeanmna, a well established Gaelic music production company. He chaired Bòrd na Gàidhlig , the organisation created by the Gaelic Language Act of 2005 to plan Gaelic's revival, and also served on the Scottish Arts Council.

In the Highlands and Islands, however, he is best known as a much-loved Gaelic singer (with a trademark stance of hands firmly in pockets) who will travel any distance to entertain, often for charitable causes. In 1983, he won the gold medal at the National Mod.

He once told the Herald that it was through his music that he was drawn to the Gaelic cause. "We didn't speak Gaelic in the house when I was young. My father was a Gaelic speaker but my mother isn't. When I began singing at mods, I found it curious that I was singing in another language for the purpose of these competitions. It was through school that I really started to take an interest, though, due to the quality of teachers who taught Gaelic in Portree. They gave us so much and allowed me to begin to appreciate the importance of music in Gaelic culture."

As a consequence Portree High School is due a debt of gratitude because Arthur Cormack's contribution to modern Scottish life has simply been enormous. The 10th Blas Festival, a genuine cultural celebration, should be viewed as recognition of what he has done.