IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990905
Last Sunday Australia's Channel 31 TV ran a day of Irish band music at the Celtic Club in Melbourne, part of a series exploring Irish identity there. Melbourne at the present time has a full spectrum of Traditional music activity - fifteen Gucci-Paddy bars market music as seasoning for commodity Irishness, CCƒ has weekly classes, there is an independent network of pub and house sessions, and Guinness tour big-stage promotions. Many exiled players have lived in Australia, including Tulla fiddler Jack Canny and Dundalk player Ailish O'Connor. Fiddler M‡ire O'Keeffe, piper Martin Nolan and accordionists Jackie Daly and Seamus Begley have toured, and Kerry musician Eileen Begley started CCƒ there in 1970 with Vincent Loughnane, Louis McManus and Paddy Fitzgerald. Its branch at St. Philip's Anglican hall in Melbourne now has many Aussie members and is ritually led in Wednesday sessions by Lurgan flute player Noel McGran. Present too are Cavan banjo player Paddy O'Neill, Whitecross (Armagh) accordionist Paddy McKeown and Miltown Malbay flute player Susie Moloney. Another milieu - with Killaloe box-player Joe Fitzgerald, ex-'Aughrim Slopes' Billy Moran, London Irish flute player Elaine Jeffries and others - has run sessions for years in the Normandy Hotel, and, separately again, Scot john McAuslan is a festival promoter, and Sean McLernon of Toome brings in players like Andy Irvine. The major cultures of the world are active in Victoria state, so too native Aboriginal influence. Their music - notably didgeridoo - is reflected in bands, as is also the legally-binding multiculturalism which makes sense in 'cross-over' music. Yet Irishness is flavour of the decade, and so major Traditional events in the capital's opera house have plenty of patrons, and unaffiliated players like fiddler Helen O'Shea can be in great demand to teach Irish music to children. Younger players are attracted to the Irish theme bars where the publicans call the shots - demanding action, volume and beat, so creating an urban hotch-potch of ballads, U2 and Pogues covers, with only narrow breaks for dance-tunes; among these bands are The Colonials, Bhan Tre and Trouble in the Kitchen. Music shops have little evidence of Irish albums, but sell bodhr‡ns whistles, fiddles and concertinas. Here too - particularly in the scenic Castlemaine area - are instrument makers, notable among them Mike Grinter whose reputation is strong enough in Ireland to have Kevin Crawford of Lœnasa playing his flutes. His wife Helen McGechin has put the town on the map too by running gigs with Irish artistes. Cultural adjunct to all this is self-taught Irish speaker Colin Ryan who hosts an Irish language radio programme on state-sponsored SDS which supports 68 Australian languages. He is interested in the language for itself, believing - similar to the artistic attitudes of many of the Irish musicians to their music - that it is just as viable a medium as Chinese, Italian or Greek.
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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