Listening to Ireland: Patrick season

Ireland: it is a twenty first century country, to be sure, and yet... the music and the stories, the legends and the landscapes, reach back across time to connect, to share to create, to reassure, to inspire. The music and the stories reach across the world, too, to new landscapes where Ireland’s far flung sons and daughters have made their homes, and to places where the sound of the music is the only connection.

During the spring of the year, Patrick season, folk often turn thoughts and hearts especially to those connections and to the music of Ireland. Here along the Music Road Irish music and the people who make it are a subject of conversation and reflection often, as are those Irish landscapes; you’ll find upwards of three hundred stories on these ideas in our archives.

For your Patrick season enjoyment, here are several to explore

Tommy Sands is from Rostrevor in County Down, just along the border with the Republic. He knows both dark and light sides, both the political side of recent Irish history and how it plays out in day to day life. To hear ways these make part of his music, take a listen to his albums Let the Circle Be Wide and Arising from the Troubles.

Cathie Ryan is first generation Irish American, and has lived long in both countries. Landscape, legend, and story all play their parts in the music she writes herself and what she sources from traditional and contemporary song. Hear this in her recordings Through Wind and Rain and The Farthest Wave.

The four members of T With the Maggies each have careers as members of other ensembles and collaborations. When the four women, who knew each other growing up in Donegal before their music took them along differing paths, got together to create an album, they made a project through which you may hear the wind and water, rugged mountains and hidden glens and crashing waves and tales and history that form Ireland’s far northwest. Learn more about this recording from T With the Maggies.

One of the Maggies on that album is Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, singer, fiddle player, and songwriter who is also founding member of the band Altan. They have traveled the world with their music and collaborated with symphony orchestras and American country superstars. Home in Donegal is where they made their album Poison Glen, which they chose to name after an especially lovely spot in their native county. Take a listen to fiery fiddling, graceful singing, and class act ensemble work on Poison Glen.

Mary Black does not always -- or even often -- choose music from Irish tradition. The native Dubliner is brilliant and hearing the stories and poetry, the threads that connect and pull through, in the work of contemporary songwriters, though. Many of her choices are songwriters from Ireland, but whatever she chooses, Black puts her own graceful and very Irish stamp upon it, and adds to the ongoing tradition of class act songs and singers in Ireland. Hear this in Twenty Five Years Twenty Five Songs.

There is more, of course, much more, to the music of Ireland, and I’ve more recordings and conversations with artists waiting in the wings to share with you -- and a book or two in the works as well. Keep in touch here along the Music Road to know more about all that.

Photograph of hillside in Louth, Republic of Ireland, is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

You may also wish to see
Women of Ireland: Music
Learning about Irish Music: a bouquet of albums
Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh: Dual

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From Donegal: T with the Maggies

Donegal is in the far northwest of Ireland, a land of sea and mountain, much of it a place where Irish is spoken as often as English, all of it a place where music is respected and loved. Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, and Moya Brennan all spent time growing up in Donegal, and knew each other in those days. Each has made a top notch career in music, through work with bands, groups, and as solo artists. Over the years they have crossed paths at family gatherings and at festivals, and have thought that they really ought to do something together. Now they have.

From the first notes of the first song at the City Halls Grand Hall in Glasgow, the four women wove a tapestry that included intricate harmonies, soulful lead singing, fine playing, and more than that, connections of deep and long lasting friendship among the artists, and deep and long lasting love for the land, as well. The landscape, the people, and the history of Donegal were all present in the music they shared.

It was a sharing, too, rather like friends telling tales around the fireside. Notwithstanding the slightly formal setting at City Halls, listeners were immediately drawn in to become a part of things as well, enjoying the stories, both serious and funny, that the women told, and enjoying the gentle humor as during the course of the evening they joked with each other, as longtime friends do. Appreciating too not only the connection of voices but also the connection through fine playing. Tríona was on keyboards, Moya on harp and on djembe, Mairéad on fiddles, and in the background, Jim Higgins on percussion and Manus Lunny on guitar.

Calling themselves T with the Maggies, Mairéad, Tríona, Maighread, and Moya have made an album, also called T With the Maggies. Music they recorded for that, much of it music from the tradition sung in Irish, formed most of the program for the Glasgow evening. Ceol an Phíobaire, A Stór A Stór A Ghrá, and in English the lively song Wedding Dress were among the songs they offered.

Especially engaging were two songs the women wrote. Mother Song, inspired by the present situation which sees young people emigrating from Ireland again as they have in past days, showed passion in restraint in taking a mother’s view of those things. Domhnach na Fola, the most haunting song of the evening, is a response to the recent release of the findings of the Bloody Sunday enquiry in Derry.

Audience members were on their feet at the end of the concert, calling the artists back for three songs in encore. It was a lovely and lively evening, honoring tradition and carrying it forward, honoring friendship and carrying that forward as well. Chances are, once you’ve heard the album, you’ll want to be putting it on for encore spins, too.



This concert was part of Celtic Connections 2011. Photographs were made with permission of the artists, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: music and hope: Derry
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: Scott-Land at Celtic Connections
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

-->Your support for the work,here at Music Road is welcome and needed.
Here is one way to offer that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.