September 27, 2009
Unmissably wonderful. This was the way of it: a semi-circle of chairs on the stage, occupied by eight men and two women. One at a time they came forward to the front of the stage to perform their words, spoken or sung. Whether distinguished academic or plain working person, they appeared like nothing so much as a bunch of friends getting together for a musical evening, who happened to have an audience in front of them.
The spoken words were a mixture of poems and passages from stories, not all by the two poets, Tom Paulin and Bernard O’Donoghue, but from a selection of Irish greats (Yeats, Joyce, O’Brien, O’Casey, Hamilton), some poignant and thought-provoking, some beautiful and moving, some witty and clever; my favourite was the deliciously funny Macbeth Murder Mystery by James Thurber, beautifully read by Bernard O’Donoghue.
The sung words were also pretty diverse, ranging from an extremely gritty Shane MacGowan song to an aria from La Bohème. The musical idiom was mostly traditional Irish, with the unaccompanied voice in the Sean-nós style well-represented. The singers were quite unbelievably brilliant – I’m not very experienced with this kind of music, maybe it is always this wonderful, I don’t know – but from the harsh, forceful, masculine tones of Joe Hughes and Mick Henry, to the keening, haunting clarity of soprano Cliona Cassidy, via the golden, rounded, warm tones of incredibly talented sixth-former Jenny Whitehead, all the singers were superb interpreters of their material.
Traditional Irish songs seem to possess in a very high degree the ability to ignite the emotions of the listener, whether they are funny satirical, angry-at-injustice, or piercingly sorrowful. The highlight for me was The Mermaid sing by Cliona Cassidy, which takes the form of a dialogue between a mermaid mother who has just regained her seal-form and is swimming away from the shore, and two children, a son and daughter, she is leaving behind her. The mere words of the song on the page cannot begin to convey the overwhelming sense of grief and loss that drenches you when the song is sung; for me it was exactly as if I had just downed about eighteen neat vodkas – tears burst from my eyes like bullets after the first line. Thank God for waterproof mascara.
It has to be said that some Irish songs are hard for English people to listen to, because if you have any sort of historical imagination you’re going to engage in uncomfortable speculations as to why a woman might be homeless, carrying her dying baby in her arms from door to door, perishing from cold and hunger. Even for people with three Irish grandparents, prolonged exposure to this sort of song is going to steep you with a sense of the horrifying collective guilt of your country, for causing the cumulative misery of centuries of wrongdoing. Ouch.
But apart from that, it was an absolutely brilliant and wonderful evening. It was only on for one night, but these are local people and I’m sure they’ll do it again somewhere else. Watch out for them: Gerry Byrne, John Griffin, Tom Paulin, Cliona Cassidy, Bernard O’Donoghue, Joe Hughes, Mick Henry, Roger Simmonds, Corinne Miley-Smith, Jenny Whitehead, Eoin Byrne.
The spoken words were a mixture of poems and passages from stories, not all by the two poets, Tom Paulin and Bernard O’Donoghue, but from a selection of Irish greats (Yeats, Joyce, O’Brien, O’Casey, Hamilton), some poignant and thought-provoking, some beautiful and moving, some witty and clever; my favourite was the deliciously funny Macbeth Murder Mystery by James Thurber, beautifully read by Bernard O’Donoghue.
The sung words were also pretty diverse, ranging from an extremely gritty Shane MacGowan song to an aria from La Bohème. The musical idiom was mostly traditional Irish, with the unaccompanied voice in the Sean-nós style well-represented. The singers were quite unbelievably brilliant – I’m not very experienced with this kind of music, maybe it is always this wonderful, I don’t know – but from the harsh, forceful, masculine tones of Joe Hughes and Mick Henry, to the keening, haunting clarity of soprano Cliona Cassidy, via the golden, rounded, warm tones of incredibly talented sixth-former Jenny Whitehead, all the singers were superb interpreters of their material.
Traditional Irish songs seem to possess in a very high degree the ability to ignite the emotions of the listener, whether they are funny satirical, angry-at-injustice, or piercingly sorrowful. The highlight for me was The Mermaid sing by Cliona Cassidy, which takes the form of a dialogue between a mermaid mother who has just regained her seal-form and is swimming away from the shore, and two children, a son and daughter, she is leaving behind her. The mere words of the song on the page cannot begin to convey the overwhelming sense of grief and loss that drenches you when the song is sung; for me it was exactly as if I had just downed about eighteen neat vodkas – tears burst from my eyes like bullets after the first line. Thank God for waterproof mascara.
It has to be said that some Irish songs are hard for English people to listen to, because if you have any sort of historical imagination you’re going to engage in uncomfortable speculations as to why a woman might be homeless, carrying her dying baby in her arms from door to door, perishing from cold and hunger. Even for people with three Irish grandparents, prolonged exposure to this sort of song is going to steep you with a sense of the horrifying collective guilt of your country, for causing the cumulative misery of centuries of wrongdoing. Ouch.
But apart from that, it was an absolutely brilliant and wonderful evening. It was only on for one night, but these are local people and I’m sure they’ll do it again somewhere else. Watch out for them: Gerry Byrne, John Griffin, Tom Paulin, Cliona Cassidy, Bernard O’Donoghue, Joe Hughes, Mick Henry, Roger Simmonds, Corinne Miley-Smith, Jenny Whitehead, Eoin Byrne.