Gaelic rapper creates new hip hop soundtrack for bus journey through the Highlands

It is a journey leading through some of Scotland’s most iconic and windswept landscapes.

A car travels along the A82 in Glencoe in the Highlands. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

But now an alternative soundtrack has been created for the road through Fort William, Glencoe and Rannoch Moor – thanks to a rising star of Glasgow's hip hop scene.

Gaelic rapper and performance poet Hammy Sgith has come up with a “Detroit House-inspired take” on Scottish traditional music in the latest of a series of short films he has worked on.

The piece from Sgith, who was born in Glasgow but brought up in the Black Isle, explores issues of identity and alienation from the Highlands, and also reflects his growing interest in using the Gaelic language language in his music, poetry and film projects.

But the film, Rachamaid, which will be officially launched next month, is also intended to provoke new reflections “on what it means to be from Scotland” and the debate over efforts to secure the future of Gaelic, which Sgith is currently studying in Glasgow.

Rachamaid - which Sgith sees as the total opposite of a traditional VisitScotland promo for the Highlands - has been commissioned by the Glasgow-based arts organisation Cryptic as part of Sonic Bites, a weekly “sensory series of audiovisual appetisers” which have been produced in lockdown this year.

The new film has been announced months after Sgith worked with the National Theatre of Scotland on a new Gaelic language short film as part of its acclaimed Scenes for Survival series, which also featured the actors Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Tam Dean Burn, Jack Lowden, Elaine C Smith, Maureen Beattie and Morven Christie.

Sgith, 24, said: “I’ve been into hip hop since I was a teenager and I’ve been writing my own poems since I was a wee boy.

Hammy Sgìth's interest in Gaelic and his relationship with Gaelic have inspired his film Rachamaid.

“But when I was younger I didn’t even think Scottish people were allowed to rap. A big influence on me was Louie from the band Hector Bizerk, who became a bit of a mentor to me when I was in a play he wrote.

"The big breakthrough came for me when I started really using Gaelic in my writing about a year and a half ago. It just felt good, it felt real and it felt unique. I’ve realised that Gaelic is very much a linguistic identity. To be a Gael is just about speaking Gaelic to me.

"I decided to go to college in Glasgow to study Gaelic properly. When I wake in the morning now, I close my eyes and try to write some lines. Once I’ve got them formed in my head, I sit down at my computer and make a tune.

“For this new piece, I had in my head those VisitScotland adverts that they film with drones in the Highlands.

Hammy Sgìth's interest in Gaelic and his relationship with Gaelic have inspired his film Rachamaid.

"But I wanted to make a film about Scotland from the perspective of the people on the bus, the impact of the Highland Clearances, the reliance of the economy in the Highlands on tourism, how Scotland punches above its weight culturally and how much of that is about Gaelic.

"The film is also an expression of who I was when I was growing up in the Highlands, who I was when I moved back to Glasgow and who I am now. I think it’s also a view of the Highlands that doesn’t really get represented.”

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