root salad
The New Dublin Ireland’s capital is enjoying a new grassroots
traditional music scene. Sarah Coxson digs…
here’s something in the Dublin air: a bottom-up, grassroots scene, inspired by traditional music with its own DIY integrity and innova- tive paths. For the last five years or so, young players and singers (including Slow Moving Clouds featured last issue) have been meeting up at houses, squatted ware- houses and sessions, where they can share their love of traditional song, tunes and beyond. You’ll often find this issue’s cover stars Lynched playing in sessions at The Cobblestone, a cornerstone of the scene, or heading to Walsh’s in Stoneybatter.
T On any given week, you would find
Skipper’s Alley in The Cobblestone, The Piper’s Club, or maybe Hughes’ or Club Chonradh na Gaeilge. Ye Vagabonds run their own session at Walsh’s but you’d also find them at Jawbone blues jam at Arthur’s, or at “secret sessions in quiet pubs with our mates on nights we don’t have gigs and just want to play without any pressure!” Land- less co-organise The Night Before Larry Got Stretched (along with members of Skipper’s Alley), a monthly singers’ night at The Cob- blestone, but are equally at home at An Góilín (a singer’s club of 37 years standing, full of great traditional singers like Luke Cheevers, and indeed the late Frank Harte), or Howth Singing Session or an American old-time session in Thomas House (co-host- ed by Brian Flanagan from Rue).
When Macdara from Skipper’s Alley started playing, he was frustrated by the lack of young people eager to engage with Irish music in the same way as him. As he started going to sessions, he encountered future band-mate John Flynn, Ian and Daragh Lynch, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch (Landless). Sinéad says the recession “made a space for the arts to come forward, as people are broke and music is always free. In terms of participation, I’d say naturally we’re a resourceful bunch so we organised!”
“Suddenly, all these like-minded people had an excuse to hang out and sing songs together,” says Macdara. “Naturally, bands started to form and a small scene began to grow. A while later we became aware of another microcosm, less than five minutes away at Walsh’s – people like Julie and Bran- wen Kavanagh of Twin Headed Wolf and Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn of Ye Vagabonds – which opened us up to another pool of amazing young players and singers.“
“There is no fixed idea of how some- thing should be done among our circle of friends,” say Twin Headed Wolf, from Clare originally. “Lots of the nights we are a part of are excellent spaces for experimentation.
The essential fabric of our community is made up of artists, musicians, poets, circus performers, anarchists, radical activists and squatters. We are inspired by Dublin, so in that way our place is here. You could call it a scene but it is about a lot more than tradi- tional music. There are so many overlapping worlds. Music is our common ground.”
Brían Mac Gloinn of Ye Vagabonds feels lucky to live at the heart of it all: “It’s great to see people we know, who work hard at their music and stick to their principles, being recognised by a wide audience. Lynched are a great example.”
Landless – Lily Power, Meabh Meir (from Belfast), Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch – point out that as well as this “strong and mutually supportive” musical communi- ty, there is traditional singing scene in Dublin that “never went away”. These artists don’t see what they’re doing as being mutually exclusive; rather looking at tradi- tional Dublin singers and players as great sources of inspiration.
With the exception of Macdara, Ruth
and Twin Headed Wolf, all have grown up in the bosom of Irish traditional music (“much less a conscious, aesthetic choice and more a rite of passage“). Sinéad reflects: “I think for singers of our generation it’s often a case of working backwards with influences. You hear the bigger names first through record- ings, then begin to look at archival record- ings or written sources, and then also learn from singers at various sessions.”
This is borne out through the raft of reference points made: the “holy trinity of influences, Planxty, The Bothy Band and The Chieftains”, The Dubliners, Sweeney’s Men, Dolores Keane, Voice Squad, The Water-
Ye Vagabonds 23 f
sons, Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny, The McGar- rigles, The Carter Family, Jesse Smith (the Mac Gloinns’ brother-in-law) and then, after deeper delving, Paddy Tunney, Liam Weldon, Tommy Potts, Darach Ó Catháin, Willie Clancy, Frank Harte, Séamus Ennis, Michael Coleman, Paddy Cronin, Jim Dono- hue and more.
writing. Twin Headed Wolf are influenced by ancient Greece, folklore, myth and poet- ry and their shows feature rituals, strange characters, dance, performance art, teapots, puppets, gramophone horns, taxi- dermy animals and typewriters amongst other things. With Landless, it’s all about the song, as Meabh explains. “Storytelling through sound and singing connects us to the past and to the world around us in ways nothing else can. It feels good to play a small part in supporting the passage of songs on to the next generations, while enjoying them and making them our own while we are here; they will last much longer than us!”
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For Brian, taking it forward is the most exciting thing: “People who have been singing traditional songs are starting to write really well, breathing another kind of life into it. It takes you by surprise in a won- derful way to hear an old style song about current day reality, politics, relationships, drugs, sex and weirdness.”
www.yevagabonds.com wearelandless.wordpress.com www.skippersalley.ie www.twinheadedwolf.com
t’s not all about the ‘pure drop’. Ye Vagabonds have threads of psychedelia, 1930s blues and jazz and early hip-hop informing their song-
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