'The Crucial Groove'

Fàilte - Welcome to my website.  Here you can find updates and links to the sites where you can listen to music which has been posted.

From the West Highlands of Scotland,  Derek MacLennan brings you a view from a croft.  Afro-Beat influenced funk grooves and good measures of bluesy electric guitar fused with some traditionally inspired phrasings provide the backdrop to his individual vocal style.  A global view from a highland perspective, presented with something of a bardic style of delivery, sets the scene.  For many many years now Celtic melodies have been getting  blended with African rhythms in a balanced and soulful way and there is no doubt here that there are more ways yet for styles and traditions to come together with meaning.  The 'Cuisle', sometimes known as the 'endless groove', is an infinately adaptable dance generator with a pulsing harmonic link between the rhythm and the melody, the crucial groove that is as at home with Puirt a Beul or an Oran Luaidh as it is with Funk, R&B or Afrobeat.

The singing is often in Gaelic - at one time known as Scottish - the language which united Alba (Albann), or Scotland.  It was once widely used in what are now known as the British Isles, Indeed the oldest known name for the largest of these islands is Albann (Albion). It was gradually pushed out for political reasons and even today it doesn't often get credit for its true worth... yet flexible, versatile and poetic...it's as good a language to sing in as any. There are still a good few gaelic singers around to prove this point too.

Free downloads and listens

Straight on to the music on offer here, and there are a number of different ways here for you to listen to it, but for starters why not check out these videos...?

Fionnghala

A light-hearted reworking of the classic Port-a-beul (sometimes spelt Fionnaghuala)

Shuas Mun Chnoc-fhaire

Skye bard Rody Gorman translated Dylan's All Along the Watchtower into Gaelic for this recording. The video won Best Technical Direction at the FilmG Awards 2008.

10 Out Of Illusion was first released on CD in June 2005.

 You can buy it now at

Tracks from 10 Out of Illusion can be listened to over at last  FM. 

And the profile over at myspace has been up and running for a while now.  A selection of more recent tracks can be heard here. 

Most recently posted - Fionnghala - a reworking of the classic port-a-beul made popular by the Bothy Band in the seventies.

To buy 10 Out Of illusion as an mp3 album, click here.

For updates on new musical  output stop by again soon.

 Mar sin leibh!