Living Tradition
Is It Our Turn To Play?
By PAT FLEMING
Sliabh Luachra Musician “Sliabh Luachra isn’t a destination, it’s a way of life.” - Con Houlihan
It’s true. Within Ireland, even within Duhallow, Sliabh Luachra is its own beast. Before music, Sliabh Luachra was famous for its poets, writers, and artists. It’s a culture inspired by safety; your safety, your family’s safety, that’s how the culture developed. That sense of safety and that awareness of the contrary, it seeped into the art. No one here is a stranger to trad music, but the Sliabh Luachra music is a sound of its own. It’s passed down, like adding links to a chain. Timmy plays as he learned from Johnny Mickey Barry, and I play the way I learned from Timmy, without any interference or any outside genres of music and stuff. Compare the music now and then; music is so accessible now with Spotify and the internet and everything, there was none of that in that time. They played the style, they weren’t copying or emulating, they were playing the way they felt the tune should be played. It isn’t about the massive ornamentation; it’s pure rhythm and music. With those tunes, it isn’t about how many notes you play in the tune. A famous quote - Dan Jas Herlihy used to say; “‘tisn’t about the notes you play; it’s about the space between the notes.” The music and the stories they carry echo a simpler time, and some of the regions most notable composers capture this sense, even now; as late as the recent session in the Rock Bar, Raymond composed some lovely music. New music came to the Sliabh Luachra repertoire over Covid and honest to God, if you listen to them, they
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don’t sound new. They sound like old tunes, and that’s a big thing for a composer that’s into that. New stuff is fantastic as well, but there’s a different sound off the older music. The trad is strong here; there are fantastic musicians around the place, young musicians especially. They’re highly involved in Comhaltas and in competition, but this isn’t the same. Local music wouldn’t be recognised in that world. They have incredible skill and talent, but the standard is so good that in a couple of years, the old stuff will be gone. We started the session when the lockdown lifted, and the curfew was 9 o’clock. My cousin has the Rock Bar in town and we said we’d go in. We started with one night and said we’d meet, start at 7, finish at 9. It stayed the same, it suited everybody, and we’re still at it, I don’t know how many months later. A lot of youngsters come in, including my own daughter and her friends. They’re good at it, it’s a good confidence builder. At the start, they didn’t want to play, now they come up and they say “is it our turn to play yet?”. I get a great kick out of that, and Timmy does too. It’s a great time to meet and we’re all learning tunes, we’ve got musicians coming down - my wife Maria plays the fiddle, Siobhan Cronin on the banjo, Raymond O’Sullivan, another fantastic musician and a great man for knowledge, Marie Barty comes down with the piano
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accordion, Eilish Murphy on the flute, Henry Keogh on the bodhrán, and Tim Browne comes down from Kanturk. In the last couple of months there’s a few extra people, I don’t know where they hear about it but they come on anyway. We’ve had a piper from Scotland there, he was blown away by it! We’d a great old evening. Ultimately, I want to make aware that there’s a massive wealth of culture and heritage where we are and I hate to see it slide while saying “I should have done this or that”. So this is my contribution to it at the moment. At the concert, and on the album we recorded, we’re playing a couple of Johnny Mickey Barry tunes, fantastic tunes. If ye’ve the pleasure of buying the album or getting a hold of it, ye’ll hear the tunes on it; they’re very distinctive, the rhythm, you can hear the music in it, it’s hard to describe it. If you never liked Sliabh Luachra music before, you should give it a listen. It might change your mind. Join us on the 16th of June at 8pm in the Culturlan MacAmhlaoibh in Newmarket, and celebrate this music with us, and fall in love with it just as we did all those years ago.
Issue 65 June 3rd, 2022
