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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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland as part of a Celtic Connections special live from the foyer here at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. This year's event takes place on Sunday 30th January and will be broadcast live on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖgame.

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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖgames to remind everyone what makes this smallest of festivals so special.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖgame 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