Tommy Makem
Irish music is quite distinctive and it has influenced different genres in the United States. It travelled to the US in the 1800s when millions of people emigrated to Chicago, Boston and New York because of the famine and deprivation in Ireland.
Irish music tells the story of the people in good times and in bad. There was a wonderful collection brought out about 20 years ago entitled "Bringing It All Back Home:The Influence of Irish Music " which contained a lot of the Irish songs that were popularised in American Culture such as Kilkelly, The Lakes of Pontchertain and Sonny. Kilkelly is one of the saddest songs ever written comprising letters from a father to his son in England starting in 1860 to tell him the news about deaths in the family and saying how good it would be to see the son again.
Irish music was revived in the US in the 1960s by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem with songs like Will Ye Go Lassie Go and Roddy Mc Corley. In fact the Clancy Brothers were an influence on a young Bob Dylan 's folk singing style. The following instruments are often used in Irish traditional music - fiddle, guitar, uileann pipes, accordion (piano or button, bodhran, flute, tin whistle, harp and possibly piano. For me one of the most beautiful sounds is the voice - Sean Keane singing Ellis Island or Sinead O Connor singing from her 2002 album Sean Nos Nua. Sean nos refers to the traditional Irish way of singing which is sometimes called comhaille.
In the 1970s groups like Planxty and Clannad emerged with Clannad singing in the Irish language. I spent a few summers in the Loch an Iuir Gaeltacht in County Donegal and Clannad actually performed for the students in the college when I was there. I was only about 11 at the time - Teach Leo where they had been brought up was only about 4 miles away in Crolly. I remember they were good - this was before Enya achieved massive worldwide acclaim with her album Watermark.
I played the violin and piano myself but I learned classical music at school. My grandfather, James Eddie Mc Cluskey from County Monaghan played the fiddle and he taught me a couple of Irish tunes - The Boys of the Bluehill and The Dawning of the Day. He always talked about "An Chualainn" which I have just been able to find played on the internet. The wonders of modern technology!
Traditional Irish music has also been fused with rock and roll and this started in the 1970s with Horslips, Thin Lizzy, The Pogues and Rory Gallagher - one of the most famous recent songs is Fairytale of New York which Shane Mc Gowan first performed with Kirsty Mc Coll in 1987. U2, Van Morrison, The Cranberries and The Corrs are all groups that have been very successful in recent years.
Irish music can be divided into drinking songs, like Dirty Old Town, Whiskey in the Jar, marching songs like Roddy Mc Corley, The Foggy Dew, emigrant songs like Ellis Island, The Mountains of Mourne, ballads like Boolavogue, Arthur Mc Bride and the Minstrel Boy and love songs like Down by the Sally Gardens (WB Yeats) and Will Ye Go Lassie Go? (covered by Thin Lizzy). One of the most famous Irish songs of all The Fields of Athenry is actually a Famine Song although it is sung nowadays at football matches and rugby matches.
What is amazing is that all of the above music and songs has survived through the years. These are a big part of Irish culture. Matt Molloy of the Chieftains has given a concert flute to a NASA astronaut called Catherine Coleman who is going to play some traditional music on a space mission soon. She reportedly said to Matt Molloy "Your music always brings me to a special place so I thought I'd bring yours to one".
The Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin holds a lot of this music, supported by the Arts Council, the Office of Public Works and RTE but it is really the singing of these songs and the playing of this music that keeps it alive for future generations.
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Tommy Makem ~ Will You Go Lassie, Go
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