The way Colin Hynd tells it, Celtic Connections, Glasgow's persuasive 18-day Celtic music festival, wouldn't have been the success it is if it hadn't been for the miserable failure of Home And Away - The Musical. That and a show called Don Cossacks, a Russian Red Army dance ensemble, were staged at the city's Royal Concert Hall in the early 1990s, in the traditionally slow box-office months of July and August.
The hall had opened with a suitably impressive fanfare in 1990, when Glasgow was European City of Culture, yet it quickly became apparent that, commercially, two periods were pitifully slow for the venue: July and August, when one or two evening events a week were staged, and January and February, with an average of seven concerts or other events each month.
"After the whole investment into the hall, having four relatively quiet months wasn't the greatest thing for us," says Colin Hynd, festival director of Celtic Connections. He is relaxing for half an hour in the hall's cafe, having pretty much run himself into the ground following the official launch of Celtic Connections the previous day.
Swiftly disclaiming any responsibility for Home And Away - The Musical, Hynd says he was keen for the hall to break away from its perceived image as a classical-music venue, despite the fact that classical-music events sold very well.
But not even the most resilient of programming could entice customers into the venue during the summer months, the lure of balmy evenings and alfresco dining being too much for the hall to combat.
Much to the delight of all concerned, that initial idea worked like a dream. A synchronistic partnership with BBC Radio Scotland ensured that the Celtic Connections audience was heavily targeted through radio programmes. Such promotion attracted 33,000 people to the festival in 1994, with Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as the sole venue. In the first two months of this year, more than 80,000 people attended a range of venues and peripheral events.
"From the very beginning, what we had to get an audience was to offer something for everybody," says Hynd. "If the festival was going to run for 17-18 days, who can come out 17-18 days in a row? So the programme I put together had to try to cover lots of different angles, from the traditional, such as The Chieftains and The Dubliners, to something a bit funkier, younger, and the singer-songwriter strand."
The profile of the audience is very diverse, says Hynd, as is the age range. At this stage, he's adept at gauging what sections of the festival's audience would like to see, albeit safe in the knowledge, he says, that a strong core audience comes year after year. As the years have gone by, criticism of the festival, and of Hynd, has diminished.
In the beginning, he recalls, "the dyed-in-the wool traditionalists were saying Celtic Connections was just a commercial venture, that it wasn't doing enough for traditional music. I have to stand back now and say, yes, in the first year we didn't know what the audiences were going to be. I was booking bands that I thought would deliver an audience for us - my job at that time was primarily to open up the concert hall and get audiences in. It was a themed event and we were promoting it as a festival. I was also booking for smaller audiences for, say, an unaccompanied singer, within the concert hall.
"As we developed as a festival, however, nine years on we're in about a dozen different venues in Glasgow. For the past five years we've programmed performances in the Piping Centre, a 180-seat acoustic space, and it's perfect for unaccompanied singers, duos, trios. In the first year, we couldn't afford to book out other venues. We didn't have any workshops, either. Once we realised it was successful we started to take the role much more seriously - we asked ourselves, what can we do as part of the traditional-music scene? So, through an outside body, we started programming workshops".
Each year Hynd and his team attempt bring to the festival something different, enhancing but not altering the "fairly standard" blueprint. This is reflected by the venues the festival uses and the bands that play there. The Piping Centre, for example, is home to a staunchly traditional, much-loved strand.
"It serves the festival well, and gives a platform for a very valid section of the music and the tradition. That was new several years ago, but now it's par for the course. Last year we originated the Nordic Nights weekend, which we have worked to put into a newish venue called the Arches. This is three days of Scandinavian music - nine bands over three days - to help Nordic bands to get an audience in this country. That's back this year and will hopefully be an ongoing event."
The team also hopes to launch a singer-songwriter event at another venue, the Tron. Different strands within the festival are stewarded by relevant experts - this is partly the reason why a number of new projects got off the ground quite quickly. Creative delegation, anyone?
"With the best will in the world, one brain sitting at a desk, answering the phones, probably doesn't know as much about each area as they possibly can. The best thing to do is to talk to people - sit down, have a drink, throw ideas about and see what comes out of the mix. Ideas filtered through other people can be a much more valuable project than you would create on your own."
Categorisation of music, says Hynd, is purely a commercial consideration. On a personal, individual level people have their own meaning of the terms Celtic, world and folk. "But if you ask anyone to try to articulate it in a way that could be universally accepted, I'm not so sure it could be done."
Accusations of cultural elitism have been levelled at Celtic Connections because of its refusal to allow performances by acts that Hynd describes as the tartan shortbread brigade. Each year, Scotland's cabaret folk musicians - "who probably earn more money in a year than our best traditional bands" - ask whether they can be part of Celtic Connections. Each year, Hynd says no. "My criteria? I like music to be authentic, based on the roots. It has to be good, the quality has to be good, the singing has to heartfelt. Or I'll go the opposite way, with artists who have taken the music and developed something entirely ground-breaking, different and new.
"These tartan shortbread brigade artists don't necessarily perform very much in Scotland, except at tourist-board functions and during the Edinburgh Festival, to tourists. They're simply not very good or very interesting to me. Some of the arrangements and what they do to some of the material! Karaoke Scottish folk music is probably a good term for it."
While the range of acts appearing at the forthcoming festival is as eclectic as you can get under the Celtic Connections banner, there are plans to organise tours and mini Celtic Connections weekends at different times of the year.
"The size and scale of the event is probably as big as we want to go," says Hynd. "Its success has surprised me, but my gut feeling was that it would be a success. What I wasn't able to foresee was the fact that the festival would take on a life of its own."
Celtic Connections runs from January 16th to February 3rd. The festival's box office number is 00-44-141-3538000. For accommodation, contact Greater Glasgow & Clyde Valley Tourist Board on 00-44-141-5664014. The hall's website is at www.grch.com
