51 f “A

nyway, a photographer called Tom Collins told me there were some guys playing in Newbridge he wanted me to hear, and it was Planxty – Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny and Christy Moore. They were playing in the church hall

there, and we invited them back and had a party that lasted a week! I told them they were the Beatles of Irish music and took them on the road with me. Through them, I met the guys from Sweeney’s Men, who Andy had been with, and started learning from them the facts of how this music was passed on, and that there were pockets across the west coast where these real, tradi- tional fiddlers still played. Then, many years later, I met Seamus Begley and Steve Cooney and the new tradition.”

“First I met Planxty and Maire Brennan of Clannad, then when we came back here in 1989 we ran into the Waterboys and Sharon Shannon and all those guys. That was an amazing scene too. We’d go to pubs with these people and the owner would lock the door and we’d never go home ’til four in the morning! The fiddles and flutes and the bodhrán and the banjo and guitar, and the girls singing… It’s amazing how Ireland preserved its traditional music. And we all know that the Irish and the Scots went over to America and invented pop music!”

If the folk boomers of the early 1960s soundtracked the Civil Rights movement and the opposition to the Vietnam war, what does Donovan see as the role of today’s troubadours?

“The questions still remain about how do you speak out against

inequality, against the Earth’s destruction and against the greedy sods who just want to buy up and waste and eat and pollute? How do you do it? The singer-songwriters of the new generation have to use their understanding of these things and sing about them. Billy Bragg is the only one that really stands out, for me. Maybe we can say that the social commentators in music now are the street-level hip-hop artists rapping about the continuing racial inequality and the power of the bosses to keep the poor down.”

“The roots of all popular music is folk music and these things never change. So, when you say an artist has gone back to the roots, it means they’ve gone down to get at the sustenance. People think that the roots music is just something from the past, but in actual fact it’s what supports all the music being made today. The smart younger ones like Moby and Jack White go back to the roots to be nurtured, to be fed and to be encouraged into creating new music. That’s what I think about roots, anyway.”

Donovan’s new album Donovan Retrospective is out now on Union Square Records

www.donovan.ie The man today F

Photo: Michael Collopy