Scotland's Gaelic revival is widely vaunted as a case of the cultural underdog fighting back. However, the young South Uist-based singer, songwriter, piper and guitarist Griogair Labhruidh believes it's being insidiously undermined from within by a version of the same artistic hierarchies that downgrade all vernacular cultures. The collection of original songs and tunes he has put together for this year's New Voices series, under the title Fear-ealaidh (an old word for a Gaelic poet or minstrel), is in part an attempt at redress.

"The type of Gaelic writing that got taken up in the 20th century tended to be very literary, very much led by people like Sorley MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith," he says. "But that's led to a real homogenisation in the way Gaelic is taught, as if it has to be better' than what was spoken on the croft, whereas Gaelic tradition has lots of different registers of language."

Labhruidh's particular interest lies in the long vein of topical, often humorous, even scurrilous songs and poems that once carried the news and gossip around Gaelic communities - a function of folk song common to most traditional cultures, from African griots to English broadside ballads. In his adoptive home of Uist, such material was associated with specific, highly evolved verse-forms and metres, some dating back to the 17th century, which today's Gaelic "establishment", Labhruidh says, tends to dismiss as little more than doggerel.

"But it was these village poets who really kept the language engaged with its community, at an everyday level," he insists. "Their language was usually informal, but these metres are often very complex, and they tackled deep, serious themes as well as the more satirical stuff."

Labhruidh's New Voices material features arrangements of fiddle, accordion, uilleann pipes and clarsach, as well as his own instruments, and has been written in accordance with this tradition. He's keen, to emphasise that it's no mere technical resurrection exercise. And so, he's seeking to reconnect Gaelic with contemporary concerns, addressing topics like the new Gaelic TV station and the price of petrol in the Western Isles.

"I first got into these songs just because they were so entertaining," he says. "In fact, I initially started writing them just to make my friends laugh."

Griogair Labhruidh plays the Strathclyde Suite, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, January 25