Stand up and say "Aye"

It's all wrapped up in questions of identity. Mrs. Rentoul, the teacher, stands hands on hips in front of the blackboard. The Bank Head Non-denominational Primary School sits in a working-class neighborhood in southeast Glasgow, Scotland. Thirty or so uniformed students sit nervously underneath the cold glare of fluorescent lights at old wooden desks set in neat rows, the bright kids up front, the not-so-smart in back.

Mrs. Rentoul is leading her charges through the days' arithmetic lesson. She points her yardstick at the sum on the board and calls on young Alan Black, 9 years old, and asks if the sum is correct.

"Aye," affirms Black. He's sure it's right, but waits anyway for Mrs. Rentoul's warning; a rap on his desk with her stick.

"That's not the proper way to speak," Mrs. Rentoul frowns. "That is a common way to speak. You have to say 'yes,' because that is the proper way."

Black, now a 31-year-old San Francisco bartender, expatriate, and co-founder of the SF-based Scottish Cultural & Arts Foundation, never stopped saying "aye" when he meant "yes." In a lyrical Glaswegian brogue he ruminates on cultural oppression, nationality, and the power of language in the construction, and destruction, of identity.

Language "is very, very important-critically important," he says, the "Rs" rolling off his tongue. Important because, in Britain, where people are instantly placed by accent-by region, economic status, and social caste-language is bound up in a social system still defined by antique notions of "class," and individuals are often pre-judged based on their class origins.

"You didn't want people to think you were from a lower class," Black says with a passion that burns like cold fusion. "My mother would answer the telephone in a completely different voice than when she would speak to people. Every time we went to the doctor my mother always spoke in 'polite, proper English.' It was very confusing."

Black, along with his partner and fellow Glaswegian expatriate, Allen Aitken, also 31, founded the Scottish Cultural & Arts Foundation in early '95, after a long conversation about the way Scotland was perceived on the international scene.

Black and Aitken felt the need to correct the restrictive portrayal of Scots in books, film and T.V., which Black says comes more out of Victorian romanticism-with its images of sword-wielding highlanders, clans and castles-than from contemporary urban reality. (Aitken recently removed to Spain, and plans to move back to Scotland where he'll run the foundation's Scottish office.)

The foundation imports contemporary Scottish writers, poets and artists for shows and tours, and sponsors plays, staged readings (they did Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll & Mister Hyde" last year), and throws "ceilidhs" (see glossary). With his brown, swept-back hair, aquiline nose and piercing, satirical gaze, Black is also the commanding presence behind the bar at the Edinburgh Castle pub on Geary, the foundation's main venue and San Francisco's only Scottish bar.

In February the group staged Harry Gibson's theatrical adaptation of Irvine Welsh's smash-hit novel "Train Spotting," which played to sold-out audiences in the back room above the Edinburgh Castle's cavernous beer-hall.

Directed by SF actor, James Reese, "Train Spotting" proved so popular that its run was extended twice, finally closing in early May. The British novel is due for release in the U.S. in June, and the film, directed by Danny Boyle ("Shallow Grave") is due out in summer, from Miramax.

Black's temper never flares when he speaks of his native country's 500-year battle to preserve its culture, but seems always to simmer at a low boil. He says that constantly being asked things like "What clan are you in?" and, "Do you like the Black Watch?" (a Scottish army regiment famous for its bagpipes), fueled his and Aitken's drive to start the foundation. According to Black, "Scotland was (being) represented in a sterile, one-dimensional way-basically all kilts and bagpipes and clans."

"This kind of stuff," Black says wryly, "is really alien to 99 percent of the population in Scotland."

"Scotland has always been seen as a very nationalist type of country," he continues. "But what's really more important over there is the internationalistic mentality. Expressions in Scottish terms tend to have universal applications."

Black's universalism is one of the things that drew him to San Francisco, where, in the '80s, he encountered an international community open to all kinds of expression.

"San Francisco is truly one of the great metropolitan/cosmopolitan cities of the world," says Black. "Here identity is universalist, because we're all here, and therefore we can all exchange ideas."

As much as the foundation aims at demythologizing Scottish identity, Black maintains a reverence for his homeland and the common people that have made its history. The foundation achieves this balance by showcasing works by the country's "punters" ( British slang for "regular folks"), and their international contributions to culture. "Train Spotting" has been the foundation's most profound, and disconcerting, success.

Produced by Black and Aitken's company, Patter Merchant Productions (see glossary), the "Train Spotting" plot revolves around a group of jobless, working class, 20-nothing punters in Edinburgh. Grappling with post-industrial hopelessness, they turn to alcohol, weed, ecstasy and heroin in a funny but graphic and scary frenzy of low-rent decadence.

Through the foundation, Black reclaims and celebrates the real, working-class, urban Scottish culture from which he came, grit and all. For Black it's a culture that's more than just kilts and bagpipes; a culture which bridges nationality, race and geography through its struggle with oppression.

"That's been the real success of it," he says. "It's great to see how something, like 'Train Spotting,' translates into American culture."

"Language is a very important tool for any conqueror to install on a subjugated people," Black growls, comparing Scotland's experience with English cultural oppression to the European subjugation of Africans and Native Americans. "But there's a lot of people fighting against that. Like the Scottish writers right now are beginning to assert themselves and be more confident with the vernacular."

"I'm doing (this) because for too long I was living under the shackles of my own mind, having grown up in Scotland with this inferiority complex that so many Scottish suffer from," Black concludes. "It was time to start being proud of the class I came from, and the way the language is spoken."

The Scottish Cultural & Arts Foundation will hold its 2nd Annual Fest on the Faultlline, a 10 day festival of contemporary & traditional Scottish performing arts and festivities, beginning Aug. 23. The Fest will feature a staged production of "Shopping Cart Soldiers," a forthcoming novel by John Mulligan of Kirkintilloch, Scotland, edited by Bay Area writer Maxine Hong Kingston. For more info, call 415/522-9621 or check their website: http://www.scaf.org.

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