Live music: Maighread & Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill / Andy Irvine & Dónal Lunny

"Well that was fucking awful," was a harsh verdict I heard applied to this concert. Harsh but fair? I will let you be the judge. The concert took place as part of Tradfest, an annual festival of trad-like music that takes place in a various venues in Dublin. This saucy foursome were playing in St. Patrick's Cathedral, the olde cathedral in Dublin that is not Christchurch. It is actually a terrible venue for large-scale gigs and I fear this may have contributed to a certain dissatisfaction with the performance. The venue has the fundamental church problem of having a flat rather than a banked floor, meaning that you do not have to be very far back to start finding the stage hard to see. The problem is exacerbated by St. Patrick's being long and thin, so nearly everyone is back behind the cheeky line. From a purely subjective point of view, it did not help that that the venue boasts unreserved seating and that although we arrived down just as doors were due to open we still ended up sitting right at the back in the "probably shouldn't have bothered" section.

What of the performance? It began with the two Ní Dhomhnaill sisters, who come from Donegal. They do vocal stuff together while one of them plays on the piano. The piano and the perhaps over-deliberate singing style made this a bit too reminiscent of a recital rather than something from the world of traditional music, though if you know what you are getting yourself in for that it is not necessarily a bad thing. I was struck though by the strange sexual politics of some of the songs (something not uncommon in the lyrics of traditional music). One warned women against the dangers of slighting young men who express admiration, lest the man refuse the woman's advances should she subsequently fall in love with him. Another described a worrying encounter between a beautiful child on her way to school and a mysterious stranger who seemed to be intent on luring her away to a terrible end. Although the song has a happy ending (the stranger is revealed as the Devil himself, who then spontanaeously combusts), the endlessly repeated line about the beauty of the child disturbed me somewhat.

Dónal Lunny joined the Ní Dhomhnaills for a song and then as the sisters left Andy Irvine took the stage. As you know, Irvine and Lunny have been musical collaborators since their time together in Planxty. Their setlist was like a redux version of what you get at an Andy Irvine concert, focussing in particular on Planxty tunes but also delving into tunes from his solo career, including such favourites as 'A Close Shave' (the one about the miner who is swindled out of his gold and his clothes by a mysterious golden-haired lady of easy virtue) and his song about hanging out with other musicians in O'Donoghues in the early 1960s (the one featuring the shocking revelation that so-called true Dub Ronnie Drew is actually from Dún Laoighaire). I enjoyed the musical interplay between the two of them and their roffley chit chat, though I was thinking continuously how much more I would be enjoying it if I was not sitting a long way away from them at the back of a church. Irene pointed out that all the political songs seemed to have been excised from the set, with 'Never Tire of the Road' (Irvine's celebration of Woody Guthrie, which features Guthrie's own chorus of "All of you fascists bound to lose") being a particularly odd omission, given our troubled times and the fact that Irvine played it in the same venue a few years ago at a gig by the reformed Sweeney's Men.

Being at the back meant that we were able to get out quickly and make our way back home with despatch (which might just mean that we missed an unexpected encore of 'Never Tire of the Road', where we were greeted by a wet cat who regretted her decision to spend the evening out having adventures.

[Live] Dabka and Trad: traditional music and dance from Ireland and Palestine

There is often a long lead time between when I experience things and when I finally post about them here. I went to this event back in April, before this summer's Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the simmering autumnal violence in Jerusalem. The evening was organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, bringing together the Palestinian dance form of dabka and Irish traditional music. It took place in Liberty Hall, headquarters of the trade union SIPTU.

Dabka is a dance style popular in Palestine, though it also features in other parts of the Middle East (popular Syrian superstar Omar Souleyman is a dabka singer). There may be a split in the dabka world between people who dance to a more acoustic accompaniment and ones dancing to the kind of programmed high octane beats served up by Omar Souleyman's collaborators; this may however be a difference that means more to westerners than to people of the eastern Mediterranean.

This event was not solely musical and cultural, as it was also about reinforcing support for the cause of Palestinian freedom. This was done through speeches and the like from the stage and exhibitions of photographs outside, as well as the showing of films before the performance proper.


The compere was Robert Ballagh, a well-known Irish visual artist who used to design our banknotes back when we had our own banknotes. He mentioned once attending a peace conference in the USSR as a guest of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Despite his being a well-known figure in this country, I had somehow never heard his speaking voice before. He is very well-spoken and also possessed of a dapper demeanour. If The Chap ever come to Ireland in search of well-dressed men they could do worse than interview Mr Ballagh.

I was quite *tired* when I arrived at the event, but the first act lifted me out of my customary torpor. They were the Kilteel Comhaltas Youth Group, who were basically a small army of young musicians playing céilí band music. People with a more advanced appreciation of Irish traditional music can be a bit sniffy about céilí band music, but I liked its relentless full-on massed attack. I can see how one could get obsessive about this kind of thing.

Frances Black was on next. She is a well known singer in this country, a member of the famous Black family of singers and musicians. Her musical efforts are not really the kind of thing that appeals to me, but I can see why people like her. One thing that was amusing about her performance was that she had her son accompanying her on guitar. He had a great "Oh mum!" air to him whenever she started recounting anecdotes.

Ms Black's set featured that Labi Siffre number 'Something Inside So Strong' (actually '(Something Inside) So Strong'), part of the ongoing campaign to turn the struggle for Palestinian freedom into the 21st century equivalent of the battle against apartheid in South Africa. If this means that there will be an updated version of 'Sun City' then I am all for it.

Cormac Breathnach, Kevin Rowsome and Brian Fleming were on next. They were a pretty straight down the line Irish trad trio. I have the least to say about them but that should not be taken as an indication that their music was uninteresting or unenjoyable.

And then there were Eoin Dillon and Colm Ó Snodaigh from the band Kila. Kila are now a rather long established modern trad group. Despite their fame, I had not hitherto seen them live or even heard their music. They rather confounded my preconceptions, as these two players were nothing like the raucous rapscallions I was expecting. Instead the music seemed to contain some odd harmonics and the suggestion of a modern composition influence, so much so that I must seek out more of their tunes.

Donal Lunny and Paddy Glackin gave us more trad action, with Mr Glackin on fiddle and Mr Lunny on bouzouki and vocal. Mr Lunny is famous from his time in Planxty and various other important outfits. Mr Glackin is not so well known to me but I understand him to be a heavy weight in his own right. They did one song with Irish language lyrics sung from the point of view of a crazed stalker woman who is cursing the wife of some fellow for whom she is has an obsessive love. I was surprised that there is enough Irish lodged in my memory for me to suddenly register that at one point the song was about wanting to break the legs of the man's wife.

There were also non-musical elements to the evening. Robert Ballagh told anecdotes of the time he met Mahmoud Darwish at that Moscow Peace Conference, then a woman, possibly from the Palestinian General Delegation in Dublin, read some poetry of that famous writer. She read it in Arabic, but I find foreign language poetry oddly soothing so I was not complaining.

The dabka dancers themselves were from the Lajee Cultural Centre in Aida refugee camp. They performed to backing tracks of recorded music that was a good bit more restrained than the high speed mentalism of Omar Souleyman. As they came onstage the thing that immediately struck me was that the dancers were both male and female; given how gender-segregated the Middle East is, this was something of a surprise. I thought perhaps they might be from a predominantly Christian area where separating the sexes might conceivably be less common. Research however reveals that that the troupe is run on an inclusive basis that does not discriminate on the basis of gender or creed. That sounds to me like it might be a relic of the progressive-nationalist-leftist era of yore, even if the centre was only founded in 2000; or maybe it is a harbinger of a bright new future.

The dabka performers gave us two sets, dancing in formation with a lot of foot stamping by the men. The dancing was folkish rather than like anything akin to ballet or modern abstract dance forms. It is the kind of thing you could imagine people spontaneously doing at social gatherings. You could realistically aspire to learning the steps and having a not completely embarrassing crack at this yourself, in a way that would be inconceivable for something like ballet or Butoh. The dancers seemed to boast a range of body shapes, though the flowing outfits worn were less figure hugging than those of western dance. The men's outfits were somewhat reminiscent of the cossack outfits you see in films; the influence here could go in either direction.

Some of the dance pieces seemed relatively apolitical, but others had an overt political charge. One the dramatisation of an unfortunate incident wherein a youth was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while playing football, his funeral then transformed into a piece of political theatre. The grand finale saw a lot of Irish and Palestinian flags being waved on stage. My consciousness was raised.

Here is a YouTube video of the troupe performing on Grafton Street:


More images (Lajee tour/Dublin, a set on Flickr by Fatin Al Tamimi

See also: Lajee Center

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.