I cannot
celebrate the memory of Ireland without hearing traditional Irish music. The
tunes of The Chieftains and Gaelic Storm were alive with the pastoral green
fields and fog covered hills of Ireland, not unlike what I later saw in
Scotland. Though my program at the University of Limerick seemed to be an even
choice with the other program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, my
heart directed me to the Emerald Isle.
In the years
since I had been in Ireland, you lose an experience such as that the same way
one loses a language once familiar to their tongues. Two years have passed
since I last attended Milwaukee’s Irish Fest. I give little thought to the life
lessons I developed in those years; rightly so as one grows and hopefully
matures. What I have left to connect with Ireland is few and far between –
somehow the music has faded, but not yet.
This past
Sunday Ally and I attended the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Square,
Chicago. Created in 1957, later expanding to its Lincoln Square campus in 1998,
Old Town describes themselves as an institute that “teaches and
celebrates music and cultural expressions rooted in the traditions of diverse
American and global communities.” Almost no-one who comes to a concert at Old Town has little to no
interest in seeing the music perform or taught – all are fans of eclectic world
sounds of traditional folk music forms, from Ireland to American bluegrass to
ancient Chinese rhythms.
The Donegal
based group Altan took up the
afternoon and night shows on March 24th, much to my delight! Altan is a traditional Irish band that
strays away from what Gaelic Storm
has sadly become – a hackneyed mockery of Irish music with songs like Pina Colada in a Pint Glass and Kiss me, I’m Irish. One might as well
have an alcoholic Bostonian dressed in a Leprechaun suit do a dig on stage to
represent Irish culture. Though I’d laugh, I would harken back to Altan’s salute to the Gaeltacht regions
of Ireland, where Irish Gaelic culture and language had survived the
Anglo-Saxon cultural domination the British had forced upon them for close to
five hundred years. Even the band members names speak to this Gaelic
traditional reborn in the past decades – leader singer and fiddle player Mairéad
Ní Mhaonaigh is one to name a few. Mairead formed the band with her late
husband Frankie Kennedy, surrounding herself with fiddle, bazooki, guitar and accordion
players of immense talent, including Dermont Byrne, the winner of the
Traditional Irish Musician of the Year for 2013.
I felt embarrassed
for having had a drink before the show, the band’s traditional Irish love songs
from Ireland and Scotland were all sung in Gaelic and because of that drink, the
songs lulled me to have droopy eyes, for which I am not sure if that is good.
Certainly I would be foolish to not admit the jigs, reels, sets and Shetland
style traditional tunes that they played were intense, heart-warming and rhythmically
in tune with every piece they performed. Ally and I admitted that the group of
whiney hipsters behind us needed not to clap as loud at the Hulk in the middle
of every tune – that’s not what traditional Irish music is all about!
Memories of
Ireland came alive this past Sunday within the first jig and reel played, my
eyes watering a bit with waves of potent nostalgia. When I return to that
island and explore cities familiar and landscapes yet unseen, traditional Irish
music should be a required accompaniment, with at least one of the tracks being
from Altan.
