Diary of a Shopkeeper, 28th June

With echoes of the last ovation still resounding, and the St Magnus Festival banners coming down for the 50th time, another festival is already about to start. Running from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th, the Water Sound Bluegrass and Roots Festival, takes place in Burray, on the football pitch to be exact. Now in its second year, it bills itself as the UK’s most northerly bluegrass festival.

The world’s most northerly seems to be Ruotsinpyhtää Bluegrass Rendezvous, 100km east of Helsinki, at a latitude of 60.527N, a couple degrees north of Burray. The Russian border is a banjo’s throw away. Our Scandinavian cousins have a keen interest in bluegrass, with several festivals taking place across Norway and Sweden as well as Finland, but Ruotsinpyhtää is one of the oldest, having been founded in 1988. Their website includes an unusual description of their programme, saying it will, ‘once again this summer feature a great selection of the most sincere acoustic music from this side of the Appalachian Mountains.’

Sincere acoustic music! What a strange but wonderful description. Music that comes from a place of genuine personal expression. As opposed to what? Easy: as opposed to music that comes from a desire to please an algorithm or an accountant. Not that I’ve got anything against accountants. Some of my best friends are accountants. But their influence on musical creation is not a benign one. It might begin with the noble ideal of making some money for its creators but it ends with the oceans of AI-generated fake music that increasingly fills online spaces.

Music without musicians, without composers, without instruments. What costs you can save! All you need is a laptop with access to AI, and someone to type in a few prompts. The result is a shimmering surface of something that sounds like cool jazz, or Scottish fiddle music, or bluegrass – but has no depth at all. No imperfections, no rough edges, no quirkiness. Which amounts to: no heart, no soul, no humanity.

Music isn’t meant to be perfect. It doesn’t work if it’s as slippery as a greased eel. Some friction is essential. The words of that wise man of the mandolin, Dick Levens, come to mind. He’d frequently wag a finger at me and repeat his favourite slogan: ‘Keep music bad!’ By which he meant, keep it human, imperfections and all. The best music comes from the heart and touches the heart. Virtuosity can play a part in that, but it’s not an end in itself: it’s an optional extra, not essential.

Last year’s Water Sound Festival was full of bad music. By which I mean great music. The line up was well-chosen – a mixture of smart local acts and brilliant visitors – all playing music influenced by bluegrass and other southern US roots music. There wasn’t much ‘pure’ bluegrass, but what does purity have to do with sincerity? Purity is an abstract notion. Sincerity is a actual, present humanity. What made it special was the looseness of the performances, the way the players interacted with the audience, and with the community beyond the audience.

Outside the marquee Burray bairns were playing football, or sumo wrestling. At one point during the show a strange shadow thumped onto the roof above the stage: someone’s toy glider gone astray, and was now casting its shadow on Ethan Setiawan and Louise Bichan. The audience walked in and out of the tent as the mood took them. There was a bar at the back and food trucks outside. Across the road in the hall was an RNLI café and merch stall. Musicians did guest spots with each other’s bands, often with little or no rehearsal. That was the risk and the thrill of it. Perfectly arranged performances were not the goal: the goal was the joy of keeping music human, keeping it sincere.

This year’s Water Sound Festival promises to build on 2025’s terrific debut, without changing the basic elements or the relaxed, community feel. What a perfect way to start the school holidays, and to celebrate another Orkney summer.

Keep bluegrass bad!

The video at the top is from last year’s Water Sound Festival. Ethan Setiawan (centre) is leading the jam.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 2nd July 2026. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.