IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
991205
Stone Mad For Music (Marino, £9.99) is Donal Hickey's treatise on the music, poetry and storytelling of the Sliabh Luachra area of Munster. The place defies both Irish music's notions of 'standardisation' and county administrators' attempts at setting boundaries. As a cultural unit it is enclosed by a triangle linking Killarney, Millstreet and Castleisland; it is not strictly speaking a 'mountain', translating to English better as 'rushy, wet bogland' where history's major disasters have been the consequence of damp and rain. Settled by marginalised people it had all the ingredients for the development of a high level of artistic diversion, with a Bardic school and poetry court: set among inhospitability sharpened the artistic faculty, producing in the 18th century the poets Aodhagh‡n î Rathaille and Eoghan Rua î Sœilleabh‡in. Precedent of course has î Rathaille as 'The Dante of Munster', screaming in verse amongst the snuffing out of his class, the old Irish nobility. î Sœilleabh‡in's genius was passed on orally in brilliant assonance conditioned by an extraordinary life that was ended young after his being battered by yokels defending the honour of one whom he had successfully satirised. Fr. Dinneen, the dictionary man, was another literary talent from here, so too many poets and versifiers, notable among them Dan Sheahan who in Australian exile in 1944 composed The Pub With no Beer. Matched still in the present day it is music that is now art's vehicle, a transfer from voice to technical intercession. Accordionist Johnny Leary of Jib, Gneeveguilla, mediates an old generation of early-century stars - P‡draig O'Keeffe, Denis and Julia Murphy and John Clifford. He played with them all in the area's house and commercial hall dances, beginning at the age of twelve in Toremore Hall, 1934. Dan O'Connell is the colourful monarch of the music energy, a former athlete who has the O'Keeffe hall of fame decorating the walls of his bar where, arguably, the modern set-dance movement began forty years ago. O'Keeffe is Sliabh Luachra's music guru, a meticulous teacher in unfashionable times, who for his Bohemian ways was dismissed by many. A noted wit, wonderful anecdotes are sourced to him: "Slow down or I'll spill!" is how he reacted while travelling by lorry over a bumpy road to play at a dance, and, once, defying clerical upbraiding for avoiding mass he said: "five minutes in church feels like an hour, but an hour in the pub feels like five minutes". Blind tom Billy Murphy was his predecessor, negotiating the maze of boreens on ass back, his formidable hearing his eyes, and equally unique tunes now his legacy. Author Hickey worries about depopulation, afforestation, interpretive centres, commercialism and modern media sweeping all this and its unique, dance-driven style of polka and slide music away. But in documenting the integrity of a music, place and a history interwoven so positively with the present, one could be forgiven for thinking this is Shangri La.
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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