Evie Waddell may not have won this year’s BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician title but her engaging performance in the competition’s final stood out for its arresting blend of vocals, movement, BSL signing, and the bonus of an Ivor Cutler cover version. ‘It was great to see it on TV,’ says Waddell. ‘The deaf community is obviously very visual so it’s a way that music can be “heard” by deaf people.’

Waddell has been deaf in one ear since the age of 11 (‘not good timing’ for high school, she notes). By this point, her key creative interests were in play, from her Gaelic education (‘sometimes my dreams would be in Gaelic’) to gatecrashing her mum’s singing group and attending dance classes and ceilidhs. ‘I knew all the dances and would spice them up a bit,’ she says, a foretaste of her rebellious artistic streak. ‘Growing up, it was music and dance, and I could never choose between the two.’

In the end she left her contemporary dance studies in Dundee to study traditional music at the Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland, having been advised by family members not to mention her deafness until she passed the audition. ‘Now I’m more vocal about it,’ she says. ‘I think people get a bit freaked out by a deaf musician, thinking “how is that possible?” But deafness is such a spectrum and even those who are profoundly deaf should and could be involved.’ 

Waddell has created an idiosyncratic, multi-lingual blend of traditional, contemporary, verbal and non-verbal performance but will freely admit the challenges of soundchecking levels and the occupational hazard of quiet acoustic gigs. ‘There’s a lot of explaining to people and sometimes I’m in the mood to do that and sometimes I’m not. Because being deaf is invisible, I need to make myself be patient when hearing people forget, which is often!’

To some degree, Waddell is happier setting her own levels. ‘Musically I feel most comfortable creatively by myself. It’s made me quite an independent artist but I do like collaborating with other people as well’. Her visual EP, Cluich!, released in February, features collaborations with percussionist Signy Jakobsdottir and movement artist Fran Till. Waddell is also developing a project with Gaelic rapper Hammy Sgìth with a street-dance spin on Scottish step dancing. ‘I have quite extreme repertoire, either silly songs or very serious, so it’s really nice to let that mad side of me out and work a standing crowd. Traditional music is often seated and if you’re solo or a duo or trio, people think you can’t bring the party; but I like to think I can.’

Waddell gets her chance to prove her party credentials with forthcoming appearances at Edinburgh’s Tradfest as well as HebCelt and Solas Festival, and would love to make a visual album with dancers and BSL artists. ‘I know I do a lot of different things,’ she says. ‘For ages I thought you should only do one and do it well, but now I’m less worried about it as the mediums are really blending more’.

Evie Waddell plays Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 10 May, as part of Tradfest.