It is nigh two decades since Glasgow was crowned European City of Culture. The rest of the world may have sneered but Clydeside was about to give other urban centres approximately the earth a lord class in how the arts could help ease the choppy passage into the post industrial age.
Today Glasgow is revelling in its latest laurels as it is named a macrocosm centre of music by Unesco, the United Nations cultural establishment.
News leaked out, sweetly enough, in the beating cultural middle of its old rival at the Edinburgh Fringe during a visit by the Unesco director general Ko�chiro Matsuura.
Announcing the initiative, portion of the Creative Cities Network, he said: "We at Unesco believe that culture non only makes an economic contribution, it provides meaning, and a sense of identity and continuity that is constitutional to the life of all societies".
Mr Matsuura will make the journey west to confirm the selection at a civic receipt later today. The official announcement testament elevate Glasgow alongside the previous recipients Seville, and Bologna, home of the composer Rossini.
The former ship building capital has long notable its unique ability to produce the very best in musical talent. In the public of popular music, few cities, excluding perhaps Liverpool or Manchester, can claim to receive churned out quite such a glittery array of stars.
In the 1960s, Lulu topped the charts at the tender age of 15 with "Shout", and now aged 60 is still playing. In 1970 there was the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and in the 1980s there was Orange Juice and Del Amitri.
Today Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Belle and Sebastian and most of late Glasvegas get confirmed the city's musical heritage.
The yearly Celtic Connections festival has become an acclaimed fixture in the folk and traditional music calendar, lottery fans from around the world.
The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall opened to coincide with the Capital of Culture class, replacing the St Andrew's Hall which was destroyed by fire in 1962. Since then leading outside orchestras get played there including the Moscow State and the Vienna Philharmonic. Glasgow now bills itself Scotland's "classical powerhouse" as home to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Scottish Opera, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra.
Scotland is nowadays the solely nation in the public with deuce Unesco Creative Cities. Edinburgh became City of Literature in 2004.
The title is expected to bring a major hike up to tourism and job when events begin in 2009. It comes with a high-voltage delegation travelling to Unesco's Paris military headquarters earlier this summer to deliver a 50-page document outlining the case for Glasgow.
The dossier pointed out that in a typical week the city would host 127 music events, with the music industry worth an estimated �74.6m to the local economy employing 2,922 people.
The bid received the support of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Scots fiddler Nicola Benedetti.
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