ON THE face of it, that rumbustiously creative, protean entity we call the Scottish folk scene went from strength to strength during the past decade, and there must be more people playing bagpipe, fiddle and clarsach than at any time in Scotland's history. Yet there remains a certain discrepancy between the fortunes of what one might call the Celtic Connections face of Scottish folk and the essential grass-roots movement from which it all springs.

While seasoned names such as Battlefield Band, Tannahill Weavers, Capercaillie, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham continued to draw crowds, a plethora of young soloists and groups emerged, such as fiddlers Lauren MacColl, Jenna Reid and Shona Mooney, Give Way and Bodega and the inspired pairing of Angus Lyon and Ruaridh Campbell, to invidiously name but a few.

Meanwhile, the "progressive" folk scene developed apace with creative spirits such as Fraser Fifield, Chris Stout, Corrina Hewat and Dave Milligan's Unusual Suspects, and more recently the exuberant musical adventures of accordionist composer Martin Green, while the Celtic Connection festival's New Voices programme spawned much experimentation.

There were some sair losses, however. The genial presiding sage of the Scots traditional music revival, foklorist, poet and general catalyst Hamish Henderson died in 2002, and in 2005 Martyn Bennett, virtuoso piper, fiddler, composer and mixing-desk mischief-maker, died at a tragically young age. Two other untimely departures were that of Johnny Cunningham, whose fiddle playing in the band Silly Wizard helped energise the scene in the late Seventies and Eighties, and the formidably talented piper and tune writer Gordon Duncan in 2005.

There have been plenty of others to take up the torch, however, and the past ten years have also been a time of crumbling barriers between genres, with folk-jazz crossover, for instance, erupting with outfits such as the Unusual Suspects and Colin Steele's Stramash.

Similarly, from the rock world, Idlewild singer Roddy Woomble teamed up with ubiquitous fiddler John McCusker and singer/guitarist Kris Drever. There again, there were the spirited 18th-century fiddle explorations of the adventurous early music group Concerto Caledonia.

The BA course in Scottish music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, introduced in 1996, went from strength to strength and added a specialist BA Scottish music-piping degree in 2001.

Resurgence in Gaeldom saw the Feis movement produce legions of young players and singers, among them Julie Fowlis, emerging to make even the London media sit up and take notice. Emerging Lowland Scots singers, though less prolific, included such impressive exponents as Siobhan Miller and Shona Donaldson.

Add the advent of the Scots Trad Music Awards, bringing folkies the kind of glitzy profile which would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, and it's fair to say that Scotland's music is held in far greater public esteem than hitherto.

Yet amid all this visible creativity, there was an undoubted irony in that, despite a reinstated Scottish Parliament and an SNP administration ostensibly committed to nurturing Scottish culture, last year saw irate traditional music activists lobbying Holyrood following cuts in the Scottish Arts Council's Flexible Funding programme, which threatened the futures of the Traditional Music and Song Association and the Scots Music Project, organisations which promote and teach traditional music.

This was seen as threatening the "seed corn", without which the current burgeoning scene would not exist. Both organisations soldier on, doubtless wondering anxiously what difference next year's advent of the laboriously debated Creative Scotland might make.

So while the decade may go out to the supercharged strains of Lau, the eclectic broth of Fraser Fifield, or Jim Sutherland's True North Orchestra, which opens Celtic Connections on 14 January, there remains a salutary need to cherish the lodestone from which all such ventures are tappedt and an SNP administration ostensibly committed to nurturing Scottish culture, last year saw irate traditional music activists lobbying Holyrood following cuts in the Scottish Arts Council's Flexible Funding programme, which threatened the futures of the Traditional Music and Song Association and the Scots Music Project, organisations which promote and teach traditional music.

This was seen as threatening the "seed corn", without which the current burgeoning scene would not exist. Both organisations soldier on, doubtless wondering anxiously what difference next year's advent of the laboriously debated Creative Scotland might make.

So while the decade may go out to the supercharged strains of Lau, the eclectic broth of Fraser Fifield, or Jim Sutherland's True North Orchestra, which opens Celtic Connections on 14 January, there remains a salutary need to cherish the lodestone from which all such ventures are tapped.