Martin Hayes & Iarla Ó'Lionáird

Ah, musicians, they come in all shapes and sizes, and bearing all manner of ambitions. Roughly speaking, they can be divided into two classes – those in it for the celebrity, and those who got snared by the magic of music and have never figured a way out.

You have to wonder why the celebrity hounds get into it in the first place – they have less chance of success than Steve Duggan nailing eight winners on a rainy day in Belmont.

Come to think of it I don’t know why I got into the music game myself – I’d have made a better parish priest! However, there are consolations - one of them hosting Celtic Crush on SiriusXM - for it allows me to interview other musicians and get to the heart of their relationship with their craft.

I steer well clear of celebrity seekers who have basically little to offer except their Facebook and Twitter numbers. On the other hand, I had wanted to interview Iarla Ó’Lionáird and Martin Hayes for a long time.

Iarla was the singer with Afro-Celt Sound System, a groundbreaking group that melded Irish and African music with some formidable dance beats.

How would you describe Martin Hayes’ work? A multi-tasking friend once stood spell-struck and described it as the closest thing she ever heard to fairy music. There is, indeed, a very spiritual side to Martin’s playing but there’s an even deeper connection to the magical countryside of East Clare.

Both artists dropped by the SiriusXM studios when in New York recently to play the Masters of Tradition show at Symphony Space. Those studios have seen and heard it all but I don’t think they experienced time standing still before.

Though Iarla and Martin have graced major stages around the world there’s an unhurried quality to their presence; still, there’s nothing casual about their music. It’s deeply felt, well thought out and oozes a quiet, but unruly, passion.

It’s the sense of connection to the origins of their music that makes them so singular. Iarla was born and reared in Cúl Aodha in West Cork where Sean O’Ríada retreated to immerse himself in Gaelic culture.

As a boy he joined O’Riada’s local choir and witnessed first hand the creative strivings of our greatest musical innovator. As he talked about this experience it was as if Cork’s misty mountains closed in around us, and when he sang as Gaeilge a very old song handed down by a relative, all the questions I had planned about his years with Afro-Celt evaporated.

Likewise Martin draws from the deep well of music particular to East Clare. He is profoundly aware that he is channeling more than mere notes but rather a tradition created by people who saw and heard things differently than we do today.

He cut his teeth playing in the Tulla Céilí Band, co-founded by his father, P.J. Hayes, and we spun P. Joe’s Reel, a track by this venerated dance band; then he played the same piece in his own inimitable, graceful style.

I’ve always loved to watch him play for he seems to lose himself, not just in the music, but in the place and time from where it originated – much like the old bluesmen. When he opens his eyes at the end of a piece both you and he have traveled a long way in a very short time.

The commitment of Hayes and O’Lionáird to their music is stirring. It has little to do with money, fame or celebrity. They’ve been lucky enough to receive a gift and they’re conscious of their duty to share it.

If this modern world is beating you down take a listen to Foxlight by Iarla Ó’Lionáird and Welcome Here Again by Martin Hayes and his gifted musical partner, Dennis Cahill. Both albums will prove a tonic for the soul and will transport you to a misty West Cork mountainside and the magical country of East County Clare.

That’s what great music does for you – it blocks out the babble of an intrusive world and leaves you at peace with yourself.

Culture of Connectivity

I recently participated in a conference at Missouri State University entitled Culture of Connectivity.

Nice work, says you, if you can get it. But what the hell was it all about?

Well, I too had much the same thought as I arrived in Springfield, MO fantasizing that I might down a few pints with Springfield’s most famous son, Homer Simpson, in the course of my four day visit.

I had little time for socializing, however, before jumping onstage for a solo show and then braving a question and answer session that ranged from the ideals of Bobby Sands to the current state of Irish-America’s soul.

From the next morning on I was immersed in a grand stew of ideas about the nature of modern life, and the changing manner and sheer variety of ways that we connect with each other.

Springfield is an old city, a Civil War battleground and scarcely an oasis of peace in the various social and economic wars now raging for the soul of America.

On my first panel I was quite rightly taken to task for assuming that the US was intended to be a democracy. Anything but, I was informed, the founding fathers were terrified of the anarchistic influence of the mob.

Their ideal was a republic governed by the educated, propertied class. This prickly revelation led the discussion to the current elevation of the American Constitution to a status as revered as the Ten Commandments.

But how wise can this noble document be, questioned a panelist, if it excluded the rights of women and condoned slavery?

Because, another postulated, the constitution has been amended down through the years to encompass current and more wholesome ideals.

Shouldn’t this then be an ongoing project, remarked an audience member; for instance, why should the Second Amendment be deemed sacrosanct when more Americans are annually killed by legal weapons in the US than in the worst years of the war in Iraq?

Lively stuff for a first morning session, and the pace never let up!

One of the main thrusts of the conference was how we’ve all been intrinsically changed by modern means of communication.

Many complained that the ubiquitous cell phone has rocketed the level of rudeness, while the “yap factor” has driven them to distraction. I overheard a particularly irate scientist predict that the descendants of Homo Erectus were slowly morphing into Homo Crick-in-the-Neckus from staring down into hand held screens.

Another common theme - does Facebook have any redeeming values? Is it merely a vast time-waster?

At first the constant brainstorming was a bit overwhelming for how often nowadays do we allow ourselves the luxury of unbridled thought, much less have time to question our own preconceptions and shallow media-influenced notions?

Around the third day, though, the following ideas began to take shape for this participant.

There’s far more to democracy than just having a vote. In fact, democracy itself is destined to failure unless it adapts to the challenges of the times.

And our times and democracy are dominated by a rapacious corporate culture that is reaping huge profits on the backs of those lucky enough to be granted the right to work. Ask anyone who has a job – hours are longer, benefits fewer, and inflation-adjusted wages are lower than ten years ago.

But our new culture of connectivity has provided us with weapons. Just as Facebook and Twitter were employed by the youth of North Africa to topple their corrupt governments; so too with the threat of boycott can we force our new corporate masters to bring back jobs from overseas and spend a portion of their profits on retraining the workforce.

Our world is changing ever more quickly; social and economic pressures are increasing with the tempo. Reflection can often seem like an unaffordable luxury. Missouri State froze the clock for four days and allowed me to see that democracy is an ongoing experiment that functions best when people use today’s tools to renew it from the ground up.

Now if only I could have run into Homer Simpson.

For more on Culture of Connectivity and a Rock & Read show by Larry Kirwan go to http://publicaffairs.missouristate.edu/

A Nun's Story

I’ve always had a soft spot for nuns. I can still remember Sister Aloysius beaming when I read my first full sentence, and if Sister Anthony of the same Presentation community occasionally rapped my knuckles didn’t my mother say, “ah sure you probably deserved it.”

I taught Sister Angela of the Mercy Convent to play the guitar though she hadn’t a note in her head, God bless her; while who can forget the many righteous sisters over the years who have been to the forefront of humanitarian and social causes.

All have been marked by a can-do attitude, a steely optimism and a quiet determination to get on with the job.

So why didn’t I pick up on the fact that Maura Mulligan had been a Franciscan sister?

That’s New York for you. We get caught up in our own private dramas and rarely see the forest before crashing into the trees.

And what a forest Maura guides us through in her autobiography, Call of the Lark. Not only does she paint a joyous picture of what it’s like to be part of a religious community, she also gives a sense of the costs of such a commitment.

This is a nun’s story that we can all relate to for it springs from the bedrock of family and human experience; it is also richly colored by a rural Irish childhood.

Maura recalls a vanished world that you can now only catch echoes of when you stumble upon an abandoned farmhouse - weeds and nettles sprouting from the kitchen where once there was so much bustle and laughter.

Call of the Lark brings back to life all the warmth, love and innocence of an era before television coarsened and dulled the senses; when the kitchen was the center of the universe and each person had their anointed place within it.

It was even then a very old way of life galloping to an end; few of us fortunate enough to have experienced it had any idea of that at the time.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that it provided little room for personal or economic growth; still, would we have left if we’d known we’d never quite fit back in again?

Maura takes us through that familiar but always gripping dilemma. In her case, the pain of leaving behind a mother and five younger siblings – her father literally unable to say goodbye from the crushing sorrow of losing the daughter he adores.

All that is balanced against the sheer excitement and seemingly unending possibilities of New York City. We follow Maura as she cuts a swathe through immigrant circles, displaying her dance skills, allowing her personality to blossom and living life to the fullest.

Still, though there was laughter, romance and much friendship it was never quite enough. Something was missing and she eventually found it in a Franciscan novitiate in Peekskill. “You won’t have a care in the world if you marry the Lord.” Her mother’s words ring through her head.

I won’t spoil the story by listing the various ups and downs of her sixteen years of religious commitment, but it’s a very relevant one compounded by the current “rúile búile” going on between the Vatican and the vibrant women who many feel are holding the modern church together.

She takes us through the changes that follow Vatican II and her own personal doubts about the place of women in an authoritarian male dominated church, but the human element is never far from the surface including the heartbreak that comes with the realization that she’ll never have children of her own.

Emigration is a central theme as is the emigrant’s perennial nagging thought – “would things have worked out better for other family members if I hadn’t left."

Parts of this memoir are searing but in the end Maura’s religious training and sparkling character stand to her and, in her practical dry-eyed manner, she gets on with life.

Call of the Lark is a treat. You’ll laugh, shed the occasional tear and understand a little more about life by the time you regretfully turn the last page.

Gunfight At Rosie's Corral

What a thrill to meet one’s critics for lunch, especially if they’re charming, mysterious, and you don’t have to pick up the bill.

Some months back a finely worded letter was published in these pages regarding a column of mine on Iran; while magnanimously allowing that I was entitled to my political leanings, the writer pointedly questioned my grasp of the facts and general sanity.

Since I too have often been concerned for the latter I was not without empathy for this scribe, Mr. John McEnroe, noted lawyer and father of the tennis great.

Soon thereafter, that mover and shaker in Democratic circles and counsel to the mighty, Mr. John Connorton, let me know that Mr. McEnroe would welcome an opportunity to make my acquaintance. Whereupon Mr. Ray O’Hanlon, our inestimable editor, offered to attend as my second, and a date was set for lunch at Rosie O’Grady’s midtown saloon.

Mr. McEnroe, no doubt aware of the value of a grand entrance, appeared wearing a ten-gallon hat that would have not looked out of fashion at the OK Corral.

He eyed me speculatively from behind shades. I must admit I’m often nervous in the company of lawyers, especially with the clock ticking. Thus, much of the early banter went over my head as I wrestled with the cost of a consultation with these two legal titans. An hour of their combined time could surely cost as much as an evening with a top-class courtesan.

Mr. O’Hanlon was in top form as he recounted the Echo’s covert strategy in endorsing Senator Obama in the last presidential election; until Mr. Connorton inquired innocently enough who the Echo might favor this coming November.

As the smile drained from Mr. O’Hanlon’s face, I ventured to suggest that the Echo’s readership was not as conservative as was generally imagined and that many nuns, radical and otherwise, were avid readers of my column.

To which Mr. McEnroe baldly stated that he would vote for anyone but Barack Obama – with a toss of his leonine head he seemed to suggest that even a commie, such as I, would be preferable.

I voiced my concern that a Romney presidency could be fraught with peril since this economic genius had stated that on no account would he have bailed out the American car industry. Such inaction, I postulated, could have wiped out the states of Michigan and Ohio.

Mr. McEnroe gazed at me in steely silence until I began to wonder if he was familiar with the areas in question or merely employing a lawyerly stratagem.

I forget his precise answer, engaged as I was in calculating that sixty seconds of this eyeballing could cost a client eight or more dollars.

Ever the provocateur, Mr. Connorton tossed in the occasional acerbic aside to keep the discourse lively, and after he had polished off a giant Turkey Club murmured that a good dessert had healed many political wounds.

As they tucked in with gusto to Rosie’s concoctions I marveled at these three gentlemen and their lack of any cholesterol problems and wondered how many bowls of oatmeal I’d need to consume to counter my own whipped cream transgression.

Buoyed by this sugar rush Mr. McEnroe was tossing off jokes, salty and otherwise, when Mr. Connorton confided that the bill had already been settled and he must hasten to “a board meeting”. All three of us smiled knowingly and watched this éminence grise glide off, no doubt to sort out the Secret Service’s brothel problems or the transfer of Madam Clinton from State to the Vice-Presidency.

There was nothing for it - I girded my loins and inquired just what I had written about Iran that had so upset Mr. McEnroe, to which he breezily replied – “Everything. It was all wrong!”

Thereupon, Mr. McEnroe strode off into the sunset, his ten-gallon hat cocked jauntily while Mr. O’Hanlon comforted himself with the thought that he had five months grace before hazarding a presidential endorsement.

I, however, had been struck by an epiphany - with a free lunch a month, I could silence five critics before November while lessening my living expenses. Does anyone know Your Man From Pearl River’s phone number?

Alexander Hamilton

“Oh Burr, Oh Burr, what have you done
You’ve killed the great Lord Hamilton”

He’s mostly renowned now for getting whacked in Jersey but Alexander Hamilton was a giant who strode many stages in the early days of this republic.

His achievements almost beggar belief: an intellectual giant he dashed off many of the Federalist Papers while running the US Treasury and guiding a nascent political movement, he was in the thick of every public debate and, oh by the way, he founded The New York Post

His personal bravery was beyond doubt – while still a student he publicly burned the British flag in New York City, he was General Washington’s most trusted aide and led a company of cavalry in the Revolutionary War; while at various times he was the darling or villain of the mobs that controlled the streets of America’s cities.

Though adored by his wife and family his private life was notorious – he was blackmailed and publicly humiliated by a femme fatale, while for sheer drama it would be hard to beat his bloody exit from this mortal coil.

A novelist wouldn’t dare come up with his story for he began life illegitimate and with little means on the Caribbean island of Nevis. Yet both current political parties have appropriated aspects of his legacy and claim him for their own.

He is the founding father of American corporate capitalism; but he wouldn’t be caught dead interfering with the politics of other nations, let alone fighting wars of choice half way around the globe.

Unlike Washington, Jefferson and the other slave-holding Virginian grandees, Hamilton foresaw that garrulous melting pot New York City with its eye for commerce would be the nexus of the new America.

His finest hour, however, was his insistence that the US assume and honor all state debts in the wake of the Revolutionary War - an extremely unpopular proposition in its day.
Hamilton’s belief was that a country that did not pay its way could be starved of credit, and he knew from his penurious days as a teenage bookkeeper on St. Kitts that credit greases the wheels of commerce.

The thirteen ravaged and rivalrous American states foresaw that the federal government’s accelerated repayment of debt would mean higher taxes and had little appetite for such hoists.

Hamilton had his way, however, even though it meant promising the Virginians – who had already retired most of their debt - that the US capital would be built amidst the swamps of the Potomac.

Remarkably, the crippling national debt was reduced far quicker than the naysayers had expected, and to add insult to injury Hamilton tossed in the seeds of the modern Fed with his creation of the First Bank of the United States.

Jefferson and Madison claimed that such an entity was unconstitutional and would benefit merchants and investors at the expense of the population – and so it goes.

It’s intriguing to imagine what the great Lord Hamilton would have recommended to us in our present financial crisis. You can be sure that anyone who bartered away the national capital to a swamp in DC would have encouraged, nay demanded, compromise.

My guess is that he would have taken a horse-whip to both Speaker Boehner and President Obama on their failure to close the 2011 deal for the great 3.4 trillion tradeoff on federal cuts and higher taxes.

Although a conservative at heart, he knew that commerce cannot flourish unless a strong federal government provides and maintains a stable currency, consistent business laws and an extensive and well-maintained infrastructure. He feared neither debt nor taxes feeling that in a thriving economic environment debt could be paid down gradually by rising government revenues.

This master of the possible must be turning in his grave at the current health care crisis. Costs are not only hobbling US citizenry, they continue to make many American industries non-competitive overseas. The conservative Hamilton would have had few scruples in harnessing the federal government to deliver economical health care and to hell with labels and ideology!

“Where have you gone, Alexander Hamilton, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you…”

Brian Mór - A Man You Don't Meet Every Day

To say that an era passed when Bernie Boyle died would be a cliché, and yet…
Bernie, aka, Brian Mór, was a Republican activist, an artist and a veritable force of nature.

I first met him in The Bronx in a pub called Durty Nelly’s, though I’d been aware of him for some time. The guy was hard to ignore. A big hulking presence he kept his cards close to his chest until you passed some unspoken test.

I was playing in a duo called Turner & Kirwan of Wexford back then. Bernie used to take in a set occasionally.Coming of age in the 60’s he knew his music and his taste was broad. Turner & Kirwan’s particular sound and fury, however, seemed to confound him – Irish acid rock tended to do that.

Bernie must have finally judged that it was not without merit for one night he nodded at me and we began to talk. Once you had passed his litmus test he took you totally into his confidence. In that one conversation I learned his political views, ideas on art, and his rock-ribbed abhorrence of any compromise, pomp or shallowness.

There was something about the man that made you want to be better than yourself in order to live up to his expectations. Once you were one of “his people” you could change your point of view, disagree with him, but on no account could you let yourself down.

Later that night he took me down the street to The Bunratty. That pub opened my callow brain to the wonders of traditional Irish music. Back in Wexford jigs and reels were nailed to the floor and drained of their vigor by very nice and proper musicians; in the wild North West of the Bronx traditional music was unhinged and unfettered, mad as the mist and snow.

Bernie’s often-hooded eyes gleamed as he watched characters and players the like of Johnny Cronin, Banjo and Accordion Burke knock my socks off. That was a gift he gave me and I still owe him big-time for it.

There were few stauncher Republicans. He was from the breed that initiated the Border Campaign of the 1950’s and he remained uncompromising until the very end. He aspired to a 32 County Republic and would settle for nothing less. All gains and losses were measured against this golden grail.

He never seemed to have any doubts that unification could be achieved, whereas I was full of them. I think that was where his calling as an artist stood to him - when things were at their worst he could lose himself in the fine strokes of some painting and emerge renewed and even more ready for combat.

The great sadness of being part of the broad New York coalition against British intransigence and entrenched Ulster unionism was that when the peace process began former comrades turned against each other. It was inevitable, I suppose, for as one wise old Republican stated, “it’s a lot easier be against something than for it.”

Bernie knew exactly where he stood and he could be harsh in his judgments of others, suspicious too of their motives. But as long as he felt you weren’t letting yourself down he wouldn’t turn his back on you.

At an award dinner in Queens some years back he presented me with a painting that stunned me. There in his fine hand and lovely brush work he had composed the story of my life as he knew it, from my love of James Connolly back in Wexford to the madness of the Lower East Side, from forming Black 47 with Chris Byrne on Bainbridge on down through the obvious successes and attendant failures.

It hangs on my wall and I treasure it; but I’ll take it down and bring it to Connolly’s on May 4th just as so many others will bring theirs when we commemorate a towering man and a great Irish-American during his month’s mind.

Clichés be damned! There’s no way we’ll never see the like of Brian Mór Ó’Baoighill again.

Goin' to Kansas City

I got my first impressions of Kansas City through music. I can still remember belting out:

“Well I might take a train
I might take a plane, but if I have to walk
I'm gonna get there just the same.”

Sounded like a hell of a place and it didn’t disappoint. But whereas I visualized stockyards full of baying cattle and cowboys chatting up floozies in saloons, instead KC had more fountains than any city this side of Rome and was intensely Irish too boot.

Then again, the Irish seem to end up everywhere. They had already reached the town of Westport on their way to the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails; but it was a priest from Co. Cavan who single-handedly turned KC into an Irish town, proving once again that it’s hard to beat a Cavan man when he has his mind set on something.

Before his arrival in Missouri Fr. Bernard Donnelly had worked as a stonecutter in his native Kilnacreeva and as an engineer in the shipyards of Liverpool. He intrinsically understood that if his Kansas City parish were to flourish roads would need to be cut through the bluffs that bordered the river’s edge.

What better men to do it but the boys from home! He recruited 300 Irish day- laborers to not only slice the bluffs but level the ground and establish a brickworks. Thus was modern Kansas City born!

It’s interesting how the lie of the land affected the Irish that settled near the confluence of the Missouri and Kaw rivers. Say what you like about the merits of the East Coast Irish, it would be hard to argue that we haven’t been affected by close contact and the general lack of space in our cities. There’s a scrappiness to our nature and long may it live.

Likewise there’s a natural expansiveness to the KC Irish. And why wouldn’t there be – on the ride in from the airport you can’t help but be struck by the broad landscape and the sight of one beautiful fountain after another. The Van Wyck Expressway may have its charms but beautiful it ain’t!

Though it must be tiresome getting whipped by the Yankees on a regular basis – and I’m a Mets fan - KC has its compensations. They’re mad about music out there – not surprising in a city that fostered Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Big Joe Turner.

It doesn’t take more than a couple of pints to see horn-carrying ghosts in Zoot suits glide by, for if jazz was born in New Orleans it grew up around 12th Street in this “Paris of the Plains.”

The fact that local Irish political boss, Tom Pendergast, allowed liquor to flow during prohibition didn’t hurt when it came to attracting top-flight musicians.

When I first played the local Irish Festival it seemed as if it was being held in someone’s back yard but you could sense the enthusiasm and spirit of both organizers and patrons. Now the KC Irish Festival draws over 100,000 people to Crown Center Square usually with their own Celtic Rock phenomenon, The Elders, topping the bill.

But you can always measure the vibrancy of Irish culture by the strength of its Irish Center and how involved the local people are in its doings. With concerts, book clubs, dance and language classes the KC Irish Center located at historic Union Station is on a roll.

Having the vivacious and enterprising Nancy Wormington as executive producer doesn’t hurt. When I ran into her in New York last year she insisted I come down and do a Rock & Read solo show.

How could I resist? Fountains are good for the soul anytime of the year but particularly in this cruelest of months. Besides, Kansas Citians make for a lively audience, especially when they have a drink or two taken.

Though, no doubt, the teetotaler Fr. Bernard Donnelly would turn up his nose at the mere sniff of alcohol, I bet his ghost is never far from the Irish Center seeking recruits for his brickworks.

I’ll keep a weather eye out for him this coming Saturday night. Rockin’ & Readin’ is one thing – cutting through bluffs quite another!