Raised on North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides, she grew up in a Scottish-Gaelic-speaking community where singing and piping were part of daily life. Over the past five years she's helped introduce these ancient melodies and rhythms to the world, giving winsome voice to a resurgent identity that resulted in Scotland electing its first independent parliament in nearly three centuries.

"People are starting to stand tall, not nationalist in the negative sense, but for the culture and what they believe in," says Fowlis, 28, who makes her local debut at Club Passim tomorrow. Her small but powerful band features guitarist Tony Byrne, fiddler Jenna Reid, and her husband Éamon Doorley, a member of the acclaimed traditional Irish band Danú, on bouzouki and backing vocals. New York singer-songwriter Rachael Sage opens the concert.

"We're still battling away," Fowlis says, speaking from her home near Inverness. "Our language wasn't recognized by our own government and Westminster until 2005, so it's a really positive time. The decline has been halted, and the numbers are going up."

The rising interest in Scottish Gaelic can't explain the rapid upward trajectory of Fowlis's career. She started gaining attention in Celtic music circles as a member of the Scottish sextet Dòchas in 2003. Her first solo album, "Mar a Tha Mo Chridhe" ("As My Heart Is"), was a sleeper world-music hit that garnered her the Scots Trad Music Awards' Gaelic singer of the year trophy in 2005. Along the way Fowlis has picked up a coterie of high-profile fans, such as KT Tunstall, Ricky Gervais, and Radiohead's Phil Selway.

Fowlis credits her success to her repertoire of obscure Scottish Gaelic songs. In many cases, they're tunes she grew up with, but she's also learned tunes from elderly Hebridean denizens and in the recording archives of the University of Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies.

"There's such wonderful poetry in the songs," Fowlis says. "The melodies are very distinctive, very influenced by the scales of the bagpipes. The Hebridean people had a really hard life, and the songs helped pass the time when they were working. But there's also brilliant humor and opportunities for passing on news, for telling tales, and keeping traditions alive within communities and islands."

The title of Fowlis's latest album, "Cuilidh," translates as "treasury" or "sanctuary," and it features a vivid bouquet of sumptuous ballads. Most striking, however, is her virtuosic command of mouth music, terpsichorean tunes with intricately alliterative lyrics set to hard-driving rhythms. Created out of necessity when the British banned the pipes, mouth music enabled Highlanders to preserve Scottish culture and community life during the repression following the Jacobite uprising in the mid-18th century.

While decidedly Scotscentric, Fowlis's sensibility is anything but insular. "Cuilidh" features several guest artists such as American mandolin master Chris Thile and powerhouse Irish guitarist John Doyle. Released on Shoeshine Records, which is run by Teenage Fanclub's Francis MacDonald, the album was co-produced by Doorley, Fowlis's most important creative collaborator. In a case of taking a mission to its logical conclusion, they met as part of a musical project promoting links between Scotland and Ireland.

"We have this amazing shared culture," Fowlis says. "Two main differences between traditional Irish and Highland music are the melodies and the rhythms that come from the pipes. For Éamon that was new and interesting. Even now I'll sing or play something and he'll say, what is that all about?"

With so few people fluent in Scottish Gaelic, Fowlis is essentially an emissary to her own culture. Whether or not Scotland breaks away from the United Kingdom, her music provides a link between the nation's beleaguered rural past and its increasingly self-possessed present.

"One of the most important things with the Highlanders was the lack of confidence," Fowlis says. "The culture was decimated. The language was nearly wiped out and pushed to extremes of the country. With the new parliament, there's been a growing confidence that comes with governing yourself. It's been a very interesting time politically."
by Andrew Gilbert