Last year we celebrated 25 years of Gaelic Song in Sydney.  Of course Gaelic Song has been here much, much longer than that!

Members of this group are often asked why we want to sing in a language that so few people today recognize as having any relevance to Scotland, let alone to Australia.  But we are acutely aware of the connection our music has to the land in which it originated.  My favourite ‘fact’ when trying to establish the credentials of Gaelic in Australia, a sad but sometimes necessary task, is the one that tells that the first newspaper to be published in this new country in a language other than English was in fact An Teachdaire Gaidhealach, "The Gaelic Messenger", which was first published in Scottish Gaelic in Tasmania in the 1840s (after transplanting here from Glasgow).

A quick delve into the early history of European settlement of this nation sees a very strong Gaelic influence in many areas of our formative history and in the family trees of many Aussies.  You don’t need to look far to find the connections.

Knowing that we have a tenuous, fingertip grasp on an endangered language and art form here in Australia, often diluted and far from its source, we hope to protect and regenerate it with care and regard.  However those of us who have been exposed to or become involved in and familiar with this music are simply captivated by the sheer joy and beauty of it.  It is a totally distinctive form of expression, remaining just as vital today as it ever was.  For us the appeal is timeless and our enthusiasm abundant.

Some of us find this music to be a living link to the stories of our people and their history but for many of us it is just a response to the melodies, harmonies and rhythms, sometimes the intellectual challenge and stimulation of making words out of apparently impossible groups of letters.  There are as many reasons for enjoying the material and being drawn into the power of the songs as there are people singing them.  Sometimes the music just chooses you, as Ishbel MacAskill once told our musical director Bran Mac Eachaidh.

Gaelic language and music are linked in a way few of us here in Australia can understand.  Like all music it can be felt as a vibrant living expression of something within and for Gaels everywhere life and music are inextricably bound.  So the repertoire continues to expand today with the art of song making still strong.  The genre continues growing and developing with new songs that chronicle life and sentiments in our own time.  The old songs however still hold their own place because that is the way of the Gael, the continuation of an ancient oral tradition which remains as a tribute to the makers of songs from the past who continue to be remembered.  Connecting to the stories and people of the past is the way of the Gael.

The joy of singing together still stirs the blood and connects us at an inexplicable level.

We just love it.

Perhaps these words written by us in 2005 for our original choral version of Highland Cathedral will give you an idea of who we are:

Gone are the days of claymore, broadsword and woad;
Gone is the world that shaped the olden ways.
Travel we now along a changing road,
lit by a fire that burns from ancient days.

Still in our pulse the music sings its strain;
Still in our blood flows our ancestral pride;
Children of Scotland we at heart remain,
linked by the wash of sea, the ceaseless tide.

Time moves on but the land remains,
the mountains in mist, skies swept by rains;
Each life gone is a strand in time, each thread woven into now.

Strong is the spirit that has travelled the earth;
Strong is the drive to find a place to be;
Gifts of the past we know are ours by birth,
Strong is the clan that shares our history.

Gifts of the past we know are ours by birth,
Strong is the clan that shares our history.