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Young folk band Malinky recently picked up the coveted Scottish Folk Band of the Year award at the and have been impressing music fans around the world with a series of tour dates that have taken them from Berlin to Chicago via Dartford.

The band dropped in on Travelling Folk on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland as part of a Celtic Connections special live from the foyer here at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland. Watch a few tracks below and take a wander over to the Malinky page on our Celtic Connections site for more footage.

The end of January each year sees a hand-picked selection of young Scottish traditional music talent go head to head in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. This year's event takes place on Sunday 30th January and will be broadcast live on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland and filmed for our Celtic Connections website.

As the finalists may be new to you, we asked each of them to answer a handful of questions to give you an insight into the people behind the instruments. Head on over to our Young Trad 2011 page to find out more.

To give you a taster of what to expect, watch a clip of 2010 winner below:

The gather their clan at the start of each year for a collection of gigs in and around Anstruther. This coming together of musical minds is known as the Homegame.

The next scheduled gathering will take place the first weekend in May and unfortunately tickets have already sold out. If you're lucky enough to have grabbed a ticket, however, you'll be hearing the Fence collective's Pictish Trail and King Creosote alongside a varied selection of guests that have in previous years included musicians as diverse as KT Tunstall and Four Tet.

We thought we'd take a walk down memory lane and pick some of our favourite performances from previous Homegames to remind everyone what makes this smallest of festivals so special.

Homegame 2010

Eagleowl cramming an upright double bass into our wee van to perform Sleep The Winter:

Meursault in our wee van:

Vic follows his Top 75 Albums of 2010 with the 50 Scottish artists that you should be watching in 2011, over to Vic:

I know, I know... I don't things by halves! But the way I see it, if you're going to turn people on to new music at the start of the year, you may as well give them a load of names and styles to investigate and explore. I can never limit my choices to only 10 - there's simply too much good stuff out there and far too much competition. And as we all know... music isn't a competition!

So, feast your eyes and ears on this lot. There's indie, rock, dubstep, electronica, acoustic singer-songwriters, hip-hop, R'n'B and quite possibly a mash-up of all the aforementioned genres into something completely different.

This is simply a list of Scottish artists I find interesting at the moment. Some you may know, some you may not: some might breakthrough and become better known, some might not... but they're all good in their own way. I've included bands, solo artists, producers, labels and collectives - check the names, follow the links and judge for yourselves...

&

I hope you find more than a few things you like in there. Get involved!

I'd also like to mention a few names I dropped into you can still check out.

(formerly Brother Louis Collective), (formerly Paper Planes), , , , , , , , , , , , , & .

I've noticed more people tipping these guys and talking about them. They will no doubt move onto bigger things in 2011. But hey, I tipped them last year... come on, keep up!

All the best for 2011.

Cheers,

Vic xxx