EIF: Routes to Roots

The Hub, 27/8/ 2026

 Routes to Roots, Catriona Price, El Guapo

Globetrotting Orcadian violinist, Catriona Price has parlayed her airmiles into a fully-fledged organisation, Routes to Roots, in partnership with Argentinian musicians, El Guapo. Their mission is to bring together artists from different cultures to create new music, while encouraging the musicians to draw on their own traditions. Doing that very thing they presented a joyous world ceilidh to a packed Hub.

The evening began with the Argentinian duo, Lohdóh, mysteriously dressed in white judo uniforms, invoking the Muse, before their percussion and stabbing guitar were joined by El Guapo, and Scottish pianist, Tom Gibb who were to form the backline for most of the gig. The musicians remained on stage for two pieces featuring Price, the first one of which, Venus as a Boy, prompted an outbreak of dancing in the gallery. The second, a setting of the Orkney poet and filmmaker, Margaret Tait’s Storms, featured stunning close harmonies from Price and Lohdóh’s Noelia Recalde, evoking not only the Northern Isles but the austere lines of New York composer, Carla Bley.

The first of three specially commissioned pieces, Daughters of the Deep, found Catriona Price and saxophonist Camilla George exploring common archetypes in folk tales from West Africa and Orkney. The piece began with long notes from a conch shell, joined by the violin underpinned by solid riffs from the rhythm section which broke out into a conga and drum duet, in turn prefacing a Latin groove which then jumped rhythmically across the Atlantic as musicians from Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab joined the fun. Orchestra Baobab were also at the heart of one of the other special commissions, a charming piece which featured a Spanish-Wolof dialogue  which ended in mutual understanding through the universal language of ‘la la la’.

In between the large ensemble pieces another Orcadian, songwriter, Kris Drever took to the stage with two of his best known numbers, If Wishes Were Horses, and Scapa Flow 1919, his song about the scuttling of the German fleet, while El Guapo were also given their own spot with the breezy Sing Along With Me and a pulsating number celebrating an incident involving the band being pursued for undisclosed reasons by the police in Miami.

Towards the end the floor was handed over to Orchestra Baobab, who backed by El Guapo laid down a groove for the ages to close an evening where every musician on stage looked like they were having a whale of a time. The audience too. Handled right, as here, cross-cultural collaborations can greatly exceed the sum of their parts and Catriona Price and her Argentinian compañeros are to be greatly congratulated on making that happen.

Photo credit: Don Toledo