IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990627
Lyric champion of the underdog. The opening of Scoil Samhradh Willie Clancy next weekend emphasises the centrality of the rural in defining Traditional music. It focuses mainly on instrumental music and set dance, somewhat less on song. But last month's launch of a CD collection of the songs of singer/songwriter the late Liam Weldon - 'Dark Horse on the Wind' - at the Cobblestone bar at Smithfield, draws attention to the singer in city. This was verified on Wednesday last with the unveiling of a plaque to his memory at Ballyfermot library. Born in Dublin in 1933, Weldon was passionate about song words and singing. He learned from the Travelling people and from the remnant of the broadsheet ballad singers, and his own songs reflected a strong awareness of poverty, disadvantage and exploitation. Uncompromising, these challenged the middle-class complacency of the Irish Free State, dangerously he trod ground shared with critics of a Irish national identity which he believed in. His personal ballad style had features of other genres, but the precision of intent in his abrasive lyrics was unmistakable and did not endear him easily to the keepers of the intensive care unit that incubated the Celtic tiger. Six years working in England from the age of sixteen tempered this awareness, but yet his lyrics often have deep lyric sensitivity. He sang first at the Central Bar in Aungier St., Dublin, and with wife Nellie ran gigs and clubs through the 1970s. His Blue Tar Road, is an indicts us for our indigenous racism implicit in the eviction of Traveller families by Dublin Corporation at Cherryorchard; Dark Horse on the Wind, from 1966, criticised the 1916 commemorations in the face of what he saw as the failures represented by emigration and poverty: In the ashes of our broken dreams / We've lost sight of our goal / Oh rise, rise, rise, dark horse on the wind. Dublin singer Frank Harte regards Liam Weldon as someone who gave Dublin people an awareness of the culture of the city they occupied, and for Christy Moore he was "one of the great singers". Liam Weldon had other standards too - about performance, and in Harte's memory "he never tolerated anything but silence for a song." A collector too, he is noted by Tom Munnelly of the UCD Dept. of Folklore as "the only urban-based singer with a genuine interest in the lives and song of the Travellers". Liam Weldon had his brushes with the possibility of stage success too, playing in the pre-Bothy Band group '1691' with Tony MacMahon, Tr’ona N’ Dh—mhnaill, Peter Browne and Donal Lunny; his songs are sung by such as Mick Flynn, Kevin Mitchell and Tim Lyons. Perhaps his power as a singer is summed up best by close friend Colm Keating who recalls the intense silence which he generated at the Ballyfermot Phoenix Folk Club while singing Patrick Galvin's James Connolly: "the dishwasher filling up sounded like a waterfall". .
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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