The group grew from the formalised model of Gaelic choirs established by the Royal National Mod (Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail) in Oban, Scotland in 1892. Although there was no tradition of formal choirs in early Gaelic music, they became popular during the latter part of the Victorian era and have become a strong part of the continuing Gaelic music scene promoted by the Mod in Scotland, and in parts of North America where Scottish Gaelic immigration played a strong role in building the local culture (notably, Nova Scotia and other areas of Canada in the east, and Vancouver and Seattle in the west). They're a way of sharing the culture; not everyone can be a traditional Gaelic soloist, but many more people can sing as part of a choir. In Gaelic choirs, songs are still unaccompanied but are performed in four-part harmony (in the conventional vocal registers of Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass), with the complex, often crossed, rhythms that mark Gaelic music generally.

In Australia, Gaelic music has broadly only been preserved as tunes for the pipes. Although it has had a longer tenure among some folk singers (and the undeniable influence of Gaelic and Scottish music on Australian "bush" music has often been remarked upon), the advent of "world music" as a genre has seen some waning of the public's taste for Scottish and Irish music generally. In the Singers, we're committed to maintaining the focus and availability of Gaelic music, but as for how much success we'll see, only time will tell. In the meantime, we maintain our connection with the Gaidhealtachd and the Mod and its traditional choral style, while doing our best here to carve a niche for ourselves in multicultural or "world" folk music as a vocal performance group.

So we still sing in Gaelic, in unaccompanied four-part harmony, and we perform the traditional songs. For us, maintaining the living tradition is paramount.

In our performances, some numbers are sung as an ensemble, while others will be solos or include varying numbers of voices.

The songs themselves include rhythmically pulsing traditional work songs, the driving rhythms of the all-vocal dance music puirt-a-beul, wide-ranging folk ballads and heartbreaking laments. The variety of music is extraordinary.

We make frequent appearances at folk music events, not only Scottish ones.  We've sung at a range of functions, from the Harp Hotel in St Peters, Sydney, as opening acts for Dick Gaughan and Tony McManus, to the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes; from Kirking of the Tartan services at Roseville and live concerts in St Stephens, Macquarie Street to a Medieval Fair in Castle Hill. Our major annual event occurs at Old Government House in Parramatta Park, Sydney, co-mounted by the Singers and the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

It's an interesting challenge for low-impact ethnic groups such as ourselves in modern "multicultural" Australia, and -- the quality of our work aside -- we're having to work very hard to find opportunities to perform.

But we are undaunted.
We continue to establish a place for ourselves in events and contexts where we hadn't been heard or included before; our hopes are high for our ongoing success and an acknowledged place for Gaelic in Australian cultural heritage.

For details of further activities, please check our Events page.
We keep this current with coming gigs and other events.

Women wear a kilted skirt, black stockings and black shoes, a white blouse with lace jabot, and black waistcoat with silver buttons. Men wear a kilt and sporran, with kilt hose and black shoes, kilt jacket with silver buttons and a tartan tie.

Members of the Singers generally buy their own outfits, as they can be worn to events other than our performances, but for newcomers we recognise this can be a daunting thing and the outlay can be considerable, particularly for men. We do have a pool of clothing available for temporary loan to new members, so if you're interested in joining us, please don't be put off on this account.

For the men: yes, you do need to wear a kilt.

But what true Scot, whether by birth or at heart, would balk at such a thing ?!
And as for what you wear under it ... well, we'll not be discussing that in such a public forum as this !

While some Gaelic choirs in Scotland and North America, and in fact our friends in Melbourne, have adopted a standard tartan as their performing dress, we have chosen not to. Our Scottish-born or Scottish-descended Singers wear their own family tartans at our performances; those not of Scottish descent wear a tartan they feel an affinity for, or that of a spouse, partner, relative or friend.

However, we have adopted the MacKenzie tartan as a unifying standard.
We use it for decorations at performances and here on our website.

This is in acknowledgement of our friend Robin MacKenzie-Hunter, native of Stoer in Sutherland, who began the Singers in Sydney in 1982 and was our leader, Choirmaster and inspiration until his retirement at the end of 2003.

Well firstly, that sort of thing happens all the time. Human pride, I guess.
(The ancient Greeks might have called it hubris.)

But that's not really why our name came about.

Originally, we were called The Sydney Gaelic Singers, which was fair enough, and represented us well. But in 1992 we made our first visit to compete at the Royal National Mod, in Oban in western Scotland. It's an expensive business, taking two dozen people to the other side of the planet for several weeks, and taking on the fearsome uphill slope of the Australian currency exchange rate. So we sought corporate sponsorship.

Bluntly, no-one would help us out as we were then named, because it was felt we were marking ourselves as swimmers in a very tiny pond. The name, they all said, would have to change. Added to that, frequent visitors to the Mod at that time were singers from the town of Sydney in Nova Scotia, Canada -- it was all too potentially difficult and confusing.

So bowing to the inevitable -- gracefully, of course -- and in recognition of the fact that at the time we were the only Gaelic choir in Australia, we became Còisir Ghàidhlig Astràilianach, which translates to English as The Australian Gaelic Choir, or in more modern terms, The Australian Gaelic Singers. And since we are an incorporated body, it was all done by legal paperwork.
And so it has remained.

Nowadays, we aren't the only Gaelic choir in Australia, which, as Gaelic becomes more popular here, is a great thing to be able to say. Please do visit our good friends at The Scottish Gaelic Society of Victoria.

So why aren't we also named after the State we're in ?
Well, our Victorian friends happen also to be in name-conflict with other friends of ours, another Gaelic choir, Guth nan Eilean, in Victoria in Canada, so the naming issue seems to be a bit of a British Commonwealth minefield.

But frankly, the name of the State to our south is simple and elegant, and fits easily into a group's name. Since we find ourselves situated in New South Wales, one of the most awkwardly-named geographical regions in cartographical history -- whatever language you're speaking -- we're not about to adopt the name of the State as part of our own name.

Most people think Gaelic itself is hard enough to pronounce, without compounding the problem in that way, thanks very much.

We rehearse on Thursday nights from 7:30 to 10:00 pm.
As of February 2008, our venue is the Argyle Centre, 33 Blaxland Road, Ryde. There's plenty of parking, which is quite a luxury for us after 25 years of fighting for car spaces in inner-city Balmain !!

We have rehearsed in a church for most of the life of the group, and we sometimes sing at Church services, and especially Kirking of the Tartan services, as religious music has been a strong part of traditional Gaelic culture. But no, we are not a religious group.

You're welcome to visit a rehearsal, and see if you like what you hear. We ask only that people contact us before they come, so we can include your visit in our plans for the night and you can be sure rehearsal is taking place on the night you plan to visit.

We generally encourage potential new members to take a few weeks to decide if they feel comfortable with the music and the group and are something they are willing to spend their efforts on. We haven't in the past held formal auditions, but obviously we will also need to check out new potential members -- to assess their abilities to learn the material and hear if they contribute to our musicality.

Membership runs yearly, from one AGM in early February to the next, and we levy annual membership fees (currently $70) to help cover running costs, material, and rent of the venue.

We break for the Summer, from early December to early February, and have on occasion had another, shorter break in mid-Winter.

No. Most of our members, either by birth or by blood, feel some kinship with Scotland. But you don't have to have that physical connection to join us; you simply need to enjoy the music and want to sing it with us.

Though the language is specifically Scottish, the sentiments expressed in the songs and the human experiences they touch are universal.

Do you have to be able to sing ?

Well, yes. We're a vocal performing group, so a certain quality of sound and musicality is essential.

But don't let that put you off: many people are valuable members of singing groups who may not be comfortable or adept at singing as a soloist. The ability to read music is useful but not essential. We have procedures for learning material -- we don't require people to sight-sing. We sing in harmony, but that's an acquired skill, and we recognise it takes a little time to build. We'll help you.

So, you don't have to be a trained singer. If you can hold a tune or harmony part and enjoy singing, then please consider visiting us to see if we are a group you'd like to join.

Do you have to be able to speak Gaelic ?

No. Most of our singers don't, though some have some knowledge of Gaelic, or are in the process of learning. We teach the lyrics phonetically, and provide full translations of all material. In any language, native or learned, a basic understanding of the lyrics helps enormously, both in remembering and expressing their meaning, and in simply enjoying the activity of singing a song. Most of our members have found they've picked up some of the language as they go, simply from learning and singing the songs.

For those who are interested in learning spoken Gaelic, please also see below.

But for most people, Celtic simply means Irish.
Oh wait, so does Gaelic.
So: what's the difference, and what do they really mean ?

Let's tackle the Celtic bit first. We'll leave the Irish Question for the next section.

People talk about "Celtic" as if it was a single, well-documented culture that continues to this day. But the Celts were long ago, and were never actually a single unified people. They were a broad cultural group of tribal nations, unified if at all only by dialects of a language known to philologists as old Celtic, reasonably enough -- one branch of the direct descendants of the original Indo-European ur-language and a close cousin to Italic, the precursor of Latin.

The Celts appear to have arisen originally in what is now Eastern Europe, because they started migrating westwards from there from around 1200 BCE onwards. Their earliest (currently) known permanent settlement was near the village of Hallstatt in Austria -- hall being an element in Austrian placenames signifying salt deposits, the extraction of which was a technology developed by the Celts and which proved to be the basis of much of the enormous wealth they began to accumulate. Salt was such a valuable commodity in both food preparation and preservation, that it was highly prized and sought-after, and at many times through European history it's been given a greater value than gold. Ironwork, too, was brought to a high art by innovative Celtic smiths, who came to produce the best-wrought and finest grade metal in Iron-Age Europe. They developed a lucrative culture of trade with the Greeks, who called these people Keltoi (meaning "strangers"), thus giving birth to the name by which they're collectively known today.

The Celts absorbed art and technology from those they dealt with, primarily the Greeks and Etruscans, and from this mix the characteristic Celtic style of art came into being. By around 650 BCE they had developed a culture now known to archaeologists as the La Tene period, after the village in Switzerland where artifacts of this period were found. By this point they were technologically superior to any other group in Europe; during the Classical period of Greece and Rome, it was the Celts who predominated through all the lands north of the Alps. Their superior weaponry, which included swords and chariots, enabled them to mount successful military campaigns even against the mighty Greeks and Romans, and put the Celts in high demand as mercenaries, reinforcing the warrior culture at the heart of the Celtic self-image.

This image of the Celt was carried to the British Isles by a first wave of Celtic settlers, known to modern scholars as Goidelic or q-Celts (terms which will be explained in a moment). The date of their arrival in Britain is uncertain, though it could have been as early as 1200 BCE. Before the coming of the Romans, before the waves of invasion by the Germanic tribes and the Normans, much of Britain was Celtic.

The Romans, whose home city was sacked and plundered by the Celts in 390 BCE, knew them as Galli, perhaps the closest indication we have to what these people called themselves at the time. This same linguistic root recurs in many placenames that have come down to us for what remains of the Celtic world -- from Galatia in Turkey (where the nowadays-desolate Gallipoli, iconic to all Aussies, harkens back to a once-thriving city of the Gaels), to Galicia in Spain and the name of Gaul by which the Romans knew what is modern-day France.

As cultures evolve, so do languages. When a second wave of migrant Celts moved up through north-western France and into south-western Britain, some uncertain time prior to the Roman invasions, they had evolved a Celtic language with significant linguistic differences from the earlier British Celts. The glottal "q" sound of earlier Celtic words had devolved to a softer labial "p", and so the newer tongue is known to linguists as p-Celtic.

The differences can be demonstrated by, for example, the Indo-European ur-word ekvos, meaning horse. The q-Celts kept this word as equos, reflected in the modern Gaelic word for horse, each (pronounced regionally as either ekh or yakh); the p-Celtic tongue modified this to epos, as shown in the name of the early British horse-goddess Epona. Another example is that the q-Celt word for head, ceann, had by the time of the p-Celts become peann, and is quite possibly the source of part of the name of the famous hero and mythic figure, likely either Welsh or Breton, Artur Pendragon.

The newer p-Celts named themselves brython, a term that led the Romans to call them Britanni, and gave name to the Breton people of Brittany and the Britons of Britain. As a people, we know them as Brythonic Celts, and their modern homelands are Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.

Their arrival displaced the older q-Celts from much of the main land mass; both Celtic cultures were in turn displaced by successive waves of invasion from the east and south, by the races of people who added to the cultural mix and polyglot accreted language of modern English Britain. The Celts clung to the fringes of the land mass: the older Celts clung to their homelands in Scotland, Ireland and the Isles of Man. While the newer Celts have been termed Brythonic, the older Celts had come to know themselves as Gaels (to use the modern spelling), or Gaidheal in the Scottish Gaelic itself, from a root word that has led scholars to name them the Goidelic Celts.

So, all Gaels are Celts, but not all Celts are Gaels.

While Celtic-derived cultures still exist in Turkey, Spain, France, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland, only the last three are correctly termed Gaelic.

While Celtic-based cultures still exist to a greater or lesser degree in Turkey, Spain, France, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, only the last three are actually Gaelic.

So let's talk about the last three.

In the Isle of Man, the traditional language is known as Manx Gaelic, or more commonly, simply Manx. In Ireland, the Celtic tongue is also a form of Gaelic, or in its own terms Gaeilge (accents between Irish regions differ enormously, but in what is generally regarded as "standard" Irish, it is pronounced something like Gwillgeh); in modern times it tends to be known to those within Ireland as simply Irish, largely as a recognition of its status as the offical language of Ireland and its heritage as part of the Irish national identity, as distinct from the British or English. In many parts of the world outside Ireland, enthusiasts of the Irish culture tend rather to call the language Gaelic, and sometimes even Celtic, though the Irish tend not to use that term. Linguists generally go along with the term Irish, and use the term Gaelic to distinguish the language of the Scottish Highlands and Islands.

In Scotland, history has conspired to give us no less than three tongues that each lay claim in current times to being the Scottish national language: the Scottish dialect of English, the largely Germanic-derived Scots, and the Celtic-derived Gàidhlig. So the Scottish branch of Gaelic can't simply be called Scottish. To add to that, while evidence such as surviving names for villages and towns and geographical features shows that Gaelic was once spoken broadly across the whole country, right down to and past the border lands, it is no longer the ascendant language. In fact, it's fair (but disappointing) to say that most Scots have little knowledge of, or even interest in, this ancient tongue.

The three Gaelic languages have a common root in the Goidelic parent tongue known most commonly nowadays as Old Irish, a term which reflects the fact that, although the language was likely used widely in both Ireland and Scotland, and the Isle of Man that lies between the two, most of the existing written records and histories of the Gaelic culture have been found in Ireland. This is largely because Ireland was the centre of the churches and monasteries spawned by Celtic Christianity, the only organisations with the money, facilities and interest in preserving documents and artwork. The Book of Kells, for instance, was named as such because of where it was housed and identified in modern times, not because of where it was created; it is likely to have in fact originated in Scotland, and was moved to the Abbey at Kells, in County Meath in Ireland, for safe-keeping from the Viking invasions on the Scottish island of Iona, where the book is thought to have originated (at least, in part -- some of it may also have come from the monastery at Lindisfarne).

As far as we know, Gaelic was a solely verbal language until the coming of the clerics of the proselytic Christianity, who found their primary home in the Gaelic world when they came to Ireland from Wales. (It's an irony of Irish Celticism that their figurehead, St Patrick, was in fact Welsh, and thus not Gaelic at all.) Most of the records we have of Gaeldom come from the monks of Ireland, although it's worth noting that these were basically in Latin. The earliest dated writing in Gaelic that still exists is the Book of Deer, originally scribed in Latin on vellum in Scotland in c. 800 AD and then later annotated in Gaelic sometime around 1100 AD.

But the term Old Irish has largely skewed perceptions of Gaelic culture and its joint history. Most casual observers, and many academics, make an assumption (which then goes unquestioned) that the culture derived directly from the Irish specifically and that the lineage belongs solely to them; and that Celtic communities in Scotland, the Isle of Man and western England were at most outposts and not-so-important off-shoots. On the contrary: modern cultural anthropologists and historians are coming to see these communities collectively as one large, interactive and cross-fertilising culture, centred around (and in a sense united by) what we generally call in English the Irish Sea (in Gaelic, An Cuan Siar, the Western Ocean).

The modern Gaelic of both Ireland and Scotland descended from this "Old Irish", both having diverged from the root but each with its own claim to a direct lineage. It's a disappointing and clumsy oversimplification by some academics when they tend to view Old Irish and modern Irish as one central linear progression, and Manx and Scottish Gaelic as diversions or tangents. The Irish had influence on the Scottish Gaels, it's true, but the traffic was in both directions; the Gaelic spoken in nowadays Northern Ireland, for instance, is largely Scottish in origin, and in many ways Gaelic has more of a linear progression linguistically from Old Irish than modern Irish does.

In recognition of this common root that led to the three inter-related but perceptibly distinct cultures of Irish, Scottish and Manx Gaelic, centres of learning like the University of Glasgow are now referring to the source language as Medieval Gaelic. This recognises that it wasn't just Old Irish, but Old Scottish and Old Manx as well.

Modern Irish has been helped to survive in its homeland by being granted recognition as the first official language of Ireland (English is specifically acknowledged as the second official language). It has been adopted by the Irish education system and now at least one year of learning Irish is required of all students, a measure that has been controversial and which has received very mixed reviews: some critics feel its being compulsory exhausts the average Irish person's sympathy for and interest in the language, and may even emphasise the Irish language's irrelevance to the modern world and thus may actually help to speed its downfall. (The truth is, we don't actually have a reliable formula for keeping a language alive; it's far easier to deliberately extinguish a language or cultural group, as has been done thousands of times on this planet over the course of human history, than to consciously help it to thrive. You can't positively legislate personal expression or innate cultural identity.)

In Scotland, the story has been less positive: although the tide appears to be turning, Gaelic has not yet received recognition as an official language of either Scotland specifically or Britain in general -- if it's acknowledged at all, it's most commonly in terms of its potential as a tourist drawcard, which does tend to anchor it firmly in the "quaint and picturesque" category, and misses the point that a language is a means of human expression and communication, not a tourist attraction or performance art -- and the number of Gaelic's speakers has been severely diminished by a history of forced or desperate emigration from the Gaelic regions. Although Gaelic-medium education has been established in a few locations in very recent years, literally centuries of official disenfranchisement and marginalization of the Gaelic culture under English occupation, augmented by strict policies of English language-only education, have so withered the use of the language and depleted the numbers of Gaelic speakers that it is now frankly doubtful whether the language will survive. With the re-establishment of a Scottish Parliament, there is funding and attention for Gaelic, although it must compete for importance against the non-Gaelic Scots who, unlike the Irish, do not see value in Gaelic as a part of their own national identity.

For those of us in areas outside Scotland that have benefitted from Scottish migrants, Gaelic hasn't maintained a strong place in the mix as an essential quality of being Scottish. In Nova Scotia, a frequent destination for Gaels displaced during the infamous Highland Clearances, a Gaelic community has managed to establish itself and ... well, if not thrive, at least to cling on in a reasonably hardy manner. But in Australia and New Zealand, Scottish immigrants -- for all their relative numbers -- have tended over time to keep their heads down, merge with the established community and simply forge a life for themselves. Centuries of hard-fought survival in Scotland had taught them to be pragmatic, and when they found themselves in non-Gaelic environs, the language was allowed to slip away in favour of being included in the community as a whole. For the most part, for most people, Gaelic is no longer a part of the Scottish persona in this country.

Whereas the Irish ... well, the Irish are always the Irish. Loud, proud and self-promotional, they have maintained at least an essence of Gaelic-ness in the self-image of their nationality, even for those who don't speak any part of the language or whose ancestors never did, either.

It's not a surprise, then, that lay people tend to associate Celtic and Gaelic with the Irish, primarily or perhaps even solely.

But now at least you know that it's not the whole story.

The question of how many Gaelic speakers remain is controversial, with many disputing the figures or offering differing explanations of what they portend.

The Celtic languages are no different from hundreds of other minority languages on the face of this planet, in that their fortunes in the 20th century have all been dented by the coming of the Information Age and the pervasive and broadly erosive rise of English as a "global" language. The true scope of the impact of world-wide telecommunications on minority cultures really remains unknown at this point.

One sign that seems to give hope for human cultural diversity, though, is the increasing trend for disenchanted Westerners to seek out their "roots". Perhaps having a defined point of origin on this planet, or within the branches of the human family, is essential for the well-being of the human psyche.

Figures are generally not known for speakers of the Gaelic languages outside their homelands, and are hard to assess with anything more than mere speculation. What follows are figures that have been put forward by authorities, based on various census counts within the traditional territories of the Gael.

Gaelic
Recent figures suggest there are perhaps only 60,000 Gaelic speakers in Scotland, and additionally less than 1,000 remaining in Nova Scotia. It is estimated there are at most perhaps 70,000 Gaelic speakers and learners in total world-wide.
Contrast that with a reported 100,000 Scots speakers (a language group that also includes localised dialects called Lallans or Doric), mostly in Eastern Scotland, although roughly 10,000 of whom live in Ulster, and it's apparent how poor is the current state of health of Gaelic as a living language. The EC's Committee on Minority European Languages holds 100,000 native speakers in a concentrated community as a benchmark figure below which they denote a language as seriously endangered, and 50,000 as the number of native speakers below which a language cannot be expected to survive. On these figures, Gaelic is officially listed as endangered.

Manx
The Gaelic language of the Isle of Man -- an independent commonwealth of roughly 70,000 people with its own laws and parliament, that nonetheless forms part of the United Kingdom -- is officially recorded as extinct. It is thought there are currently no living people for whom Manx was their first language.
The language has begun to be taught in some Manx schools, however, and is reappearing in daily life among learners committed to its revival,, Manx has long been officially recognised and is in fact required by Manx law to be used for certain acts of Parliament and public events.

Irish
The figure frequently given by enthusiasts of the number of Irish speakers -- around 240,000 -- is highly contentious. Most critics point out that this generally includes the figures of Gaelic speakers from Scotland and the Isle of Man, on the assumption that these are merely dialects of the Irish language, and that in official censuses anywhere between 13% and 30% of the population claim to be Irish speakers, presumably on the basis of the one-year compulsory Irish language component in a general education, but do not use it on any level as a daily language. Even the most optimistic Irish advocates will admit that the number of actual speakers is likely nothing near that figure. Official population figures state 83,000 residents of the Gaeltacht, of whom only roughly 75% speak Irish.
Miranda Green, in her encyclopaedic The Celtic World, states her opinion that the number of active Irish speakers within Ireland is in fact fewer than the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland. The point here is not to be argumentative, but to try to gain an accurate perspective on the matter.
Though the full number can't be known, there are undoubtedly greater numbers of Irish speakers outside Ireland than Gaelic speakers outside Scotland. Again, the Irish language is more accepted abroad as part of the Irish identity than Gaelic is of the Scots'.

Brythonic languages
These have been broadly more successful at surviving than their Gaelic cousins -- largely for political and historical reasons rather than any inherent vitality or quality of the relative languages -- and they are mentioned here mostly by way of contrast. Though Cornish sadly became officially extinct in 1777, it has been partly revived by determined enthusiasts and there are currently roughly 2,000 speakers of it in Cornwall, over 1,000 of whom use it as part of their everyday dealings.
Breton has fared better; despite no official recognition (and frequent reports of official persecution by the French authorities, echoing the behaviour of the English throughout Britain and Ireland), there remains a stronghold of roughly 500,000 speakers in northern France, and small emigré communities, largely in the US.
In Britain, Welsh has been the real Celtic success-story. Though under seige in its homeland from English-speaking monoglot incomers, the Welsh-speaking community has held strong at around 520,000, with more than 100,000 of those being currently under the age of 15, and roughly 90% of the Welsh population expressing support for the importance of the language.

That's way beyond current Scottish Gaelic dreams of success !!

But some members have decided to learn the language for themselves.

The Singers have offered lessons in conversational Gaelic, open to all who might be interested. You don't have to be a member of the Singers to attend.

New classes will be resuming in a little while, later in 2008.
To register interest or learn more details, please enquire here about .