A concert where people remembered Palestine

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign managed to get former Planxty star Donal Lunny to headline a benefit concert for the organisation. They titled it Remember Palestine, because there is a sense in which Palestine has dropped off the radar what with the Iraq War and Lebanon stealing the headlines. Even the relatively recent shooting into a crowd of apparently unarmed women by Israeli soldiers elicited little more than reactions of "sure that’s hardly news, they’re always at it".

The first act up on stage was Roisín El Safty. She is from Galway, and sings songs written by her mother, in an Irish old time styleeee. She played three of these, finishing with one called 'An Phailistín'. This was entertainingly incendiary. Next up were some outfit called Band on an Island, who apparently feature some niece of Donal Lunny on an instrument. They played three songs and seemed to improve with each, though my favourite was the one about being chased by the Gardaí. They were not tradders. Shaz Oye is not a tradder either, but a woman who sings and plays guitar. She had a very loud voice about which I was undecided, but I was warming to her when she left. All of the acts from before the interval played three song sets, making opinion formation about them difficult.

After the interval, Iarla Ó Lionaird came out and did some of his sean-nós unaccompanied singing. Or maybe he had some accompaniment, it's so hard to remember. He was followed by the other Planxter on the bill, Andy Irvine, who played on his own for a bit before being joined by Donal Lunny. The two of them played away together like musicians who are comfortable in each other's company, which was just as well. If you know anything about Irish music you will understand that these two are giants, and not people who play together every day of the week, so it was nice to see them together. It was also interesting to see how Lunny, the ostensible headliner, never actually played on his own, played lead, or sang lead vocals. Yet, having seen Irvine on his own previously, I could see how Lunny filled in the spaces in the sound.

They finished with a rousing rendition of Irvine's song about Woody Guthrie, the one that 'samples' his 'All You Fascists Bound To Lose' chorus. Old Wobbler Irvine explained that, having recently been dubbed a fascist for playing the gig, he took especial pride in singing it. I did wonder, however, if given all the Indymedia posters in the audience it might have been better to change the line to 'all you facists bound to lose'.

So there you go. I went home and remembered Palestine.