Is Sean O'Casy Still Relevant?

I once missed Led Zeppelin in Madison Square Garden, and didn’t attend The Who, with The Clash opening, at Shea Stadium, so help me god! 

I even scalped a ticket to Bruce Springsteen for thrice the price in lean times, but under no circumstances will I miss the upcoming Dublin Trilogy of Sean O’Casey at the Irish Repertory Theatre.

It’s not as if I haven’t seen The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, or The Plough and the Stars before – I even attended opening night of the latter back in 1988 when it was the Rep’s first offering.

But to see all three in sequence will be like getting a front seat to one of Ireland’s most turbulent periods of history as seen through the jaundiced eye of its greatest playwright.

Nor was O’Casey some casual hurler on the ditch, he was an active participant in the years of industrial turmoil that led to Dublin’s 1913 Lockout right through to the end of the Civil War in 1923.

My grandfather adored these three plays and thought nothing of driving the 80 miles to Dublin for a decent production.

Odd in itself as Thomas Hughes was a conservative Catholic Republican. O’Casey on the other hand had strong communist sympathies, and was a Protestant to boot.

But their world was “in a state of chassis” - many Republicans had been excommunicated, while many Christians had grown to question the alliance of their churches with a brutal capitalist world order.

One thing Sean O’Casey and Thomas Hughes had in common was a dislike for James Connolly. I once heard my grandfather mutter that “Connolly was nothing but a little Scottish troublemaker,” a sentiment shared by O’Casey.

They both, however, adored Big Jim Larkin, labor agitator supreme and founder of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union – strange in my grandfather’s case, since he was a small businessman.

But that’s part of the magic of this dynamic era, and O’Casey captures it so well in his plays.

William Butler Yeats, O’Casey’s champion at the Abbey Theatre, said that poetry should be “cold and passionate as the dawn.” He was intimating that balance is essential in all things, especially art.

He could have been speaking about O’Casey’s trilogy, all tragicomedies balancing on a fine fulcrum. 

Set in Dublin’s fatigued tenements, tragedy lurks around every corner, and humor one of the few ways of combating the roiling poverty.

But overplay either tragedy or mirth and the audience can be in for a long evening. 

There’s little fear of that happening at the Rep. They know their O’Casey, and although Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly have differing directorial skills and process, they always highlight O’Casey’s sheer humanity and love for his characters.

One way or another all three directors will have a wonderful repertory cast to work with.

As ever I’m interested in seeing Terry Donnelly and John Keating, two of my favorite Rep veterans, both outstanding O’Casey interpreters.

Terry is what I call a “light-stealer.” No matter the part she soaks up the light onstage and I always await her entrance – the energy in the room shifts and it’s hard to take your eyes off her.

Though John’s entrances are equally powerful, at first his comedic chops sweep all before him, but gradually he coaxes out the tragedy inherent in all O’Casey’s major characters. 

There’s a pathos to this 20^th Century playwright that some modern interpreters are wary of. Bald as it may be it never bothers me, for those times were indeed tragic. A dream was betrayed, and the Irish people traded one set of masters for another.

Sean O’Casey never lets us forget that. And over the next four months the Irish Repertory Theatre will bring his turbulent world roaring back to life. 

O’Casey bared the soul of a nation in these plays. The political and social questions he asked have yet to be answered.

And yet, Captain Boyle’s innocent, if enigmatic, inquiry to Joxer Daly is still my favorite, “What is the stars?”

Perhaps The Rep will answer it this time round.

Rick Kelly's Carmine Street Guitars

New York is changing. Streets I walk down now are a mere shell of what they were in the 1970’s. Starbucks, CVS and Banana Republic have displaced the bodegas, record & book stores that gave New York its particular stamp.

But when was the city ever different? Surely Walt Whitman railed against the changes he saw on his return from the Civil War. 

Some businesses, however, weather the changes and continue to provide both great service and a much-treasured dollop of hospitality.

Take, for instance, Rick Kelly’s Carmine Street Guitars – it’s like entering a haven from a bygone era when the music business was idiosyncratic and occasionally even fun.

The front room - full to the gills with guitars of all shapes, sizes, vintage and prices - is usually devoid of attendants. You’ll hear laughter leak out from the workshop, and eventually Rick or Cindy Hulej will venture out to offer assistance.

Rick has had a shop in the vicinity since 1976 and if you wish to experience the old West Village then take a hike down to Carmine Street, just west of Bleecker. 

You can browse in the Un-Oppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Bookstore while across the street House of Oldies (no CDs or Tapes sold) flaunts its vinyl, all basking in the considerable shadow of Our Lady of Pompeii Church.

Rick himself hails from Sunnyside Gardens and is from solid Irish-American stock, though he’s not sure from whence his branch of the Kellys originated. “Maybe Dublin,” he offers without too much conviction.

The shop is a delight for musicians, or just the plain curious - any space not occupied by guitars, mandolins, and banjos is filled with pictures of Patti and GE Smith, Lenny Kay, Lou Reed, and the many others who have ventured in.

Rick has a lot of time for working musicians. Tell him you’re in a panic because you have an upcoming gig, and he’s likely to bump you up the line for repairs or a quick set up.

If you have a guitar whose strings buzz or are too high off the neck to play with comfort, Rick’s your man! And he doesn’t charge an arm or a leg, much less a finger.

One of the problems with modern guitars, he feels, is that the wood employed is not what it used to be. It can’t hack the winter heat of apartments or the air-conditioned rigors of summer.

Which brings me to Rick’s main gig. The man makes his own guitars. Bob Dylan owns two and plays his sunburst Eaglecaster regularly onstage. Why - because like all Rick’s guitars it sounds great.

The key is the wood he uses. And that’s where the “old New York” comes in. According to Rick our city was originally built with Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). And that’s what he’s been hunting down since 1976. 

He keeps his eye on old buildings and recently got some beams from the loft of his friend, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch.

Inside his workshop you can witness how Cindy and Rick convert this venerable wood into all manner of “axes.” 

Not only does White Pine sound sweet but it’s one of the straightest trees and thus its guitar necks rarely bend. 

You tell Rick and Cindy what kind of axe you want and they design it for you, and don’t take forever about it either.

Meanwhile Rick’s mother, Mrs. Dorothy Kelly does the books and, like the white pine, keeps the enterprise on the straight and narrow.

Rick is about to lose some of his anonymity. A movie has been made about him and his shop. Carmine Street Guitars debuted at the Venice Film Festival, and Rick himself was persuaded to attend the prestigious Toronto Festival. He’ll soon be traveling to Amsterdam to receive well-earned plaudits there.

In April, this “five days in the life of a unique guitar shop” will hit the nearby Film Forum for a run and will be available in DVD soon, before it ends up on Netflix.

But Kelly’s Guitars will always remain the same – a place where refugees from the pre-Spotify world still drop by for a chat and a laugh, and where their axes will always receive TLC at a decent price. 

Long may you thrive, Rick & Cindy!

An Duanaire - The Dispossessed

There are books… and then there are books that change your life. Most of the latter I read in my teens and early 20’s. 

I remember so well reading For Whom The Bell Tolls in a frigid Dublin bedsit and becoming ensnared by the poetry, principle and pragmatism of its hero, Robert Jordan.

In somewhat similar circumstances in the East Village I first ploughed through The Alexandrian Quartet and discovered that not only could there be two sides to a story but four in Lawrence Durrell’s classic collection.

And where would any of us be without an introduction to Ms. Molly Bloom. Along with being introduced to literature’s greatest character, Sunny Jim Joyce demonstrated to me, at least, that the very sound of words is as important as their literal meaning.

Each of these books catapulted me into new worlds of imagination. But two others that I read in my 30’s were glances back into a history that I’d brushed against as a young boy in Wexford.

How odd too that I read them on Avenue B with the sound of drug dealers hawking their wares outside my window and the occasional gun shot to make sure I didn’t doze off.

The Hidden Ireland by Daniel Corkery might be a study of 18^th Century Munster culture, but it also helped me understand that buskers like Margaret Barry and Pecker Dunne who I had listened to on the streets of Wexford were among the last survivors of a fast disappearing Gaelic Ireland.

I realized how privileged I was to have experienced that world in some small way.  Corkery’s book opened up a vista that I’ve drawn on as a writer and composer, and showed me how vapid and insubstantial it is to be a “dedicated follower of fashion.”

Before you move forward you must first look backwards and come to terms with your roots.

I can’t even remember when or where I bought An Duanaire 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed, but as I look at my dog-eared copy it’s obvious I’ve turned to it often.

This priceless book of Gaelic poetry was collected by Sean Ó’Tuama with exquisite English translations by Thomas Kinsella.

These years encompass both the Cromwellian genocide and the Penal Laws era that ended with Catholic Emancipation in 1829. You can almost touch the loss of a people dispossessed seeping from An Duanaire.

The poems within are written by well-known bards steeped in learning like Piaras Feiritéar down to Filíocht na nDaoine – the anonymous verses of the common people.

Kinsella’s translations are both muscular and sublime, and he opens up a whole new world to those of us with little or no proficiency in the Irish language.

An Duanaire also contains internationally renowned poems like Brian Merriman’s Midnight Court, and perhaps one of the world’s greatest laments, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire written by his wife Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill.

Lament for Art O’Leary enriched my life considerably for back in 1992 I was privileged to write the music for a Dance/Theatre piece by June Anderson that featured Black Eileen’s passionate response to the murder of her husband.

Part of this vocal elegy became internationally known when I used it as an introduction to the Black 47 song, Big Fellah which was featured in Sons of Anarchy.

How strange is life – a lament for an 18^th Century Cork mercenary finds its way onto a contemporary TV motorcycle drama!

By the way, don’t miss Paul Muldoon’s upcoming translation and re-enactment of The Lament for Art O’Leary at the Irish Arts Center, featuring Lisa Dwan with music by Horslips.

One of the most moving poems in An Duanaire is Mo Bhrón ar an Bhfarraige.  My Grief on the Ocean speaks of a woman longing for her partner who has departed for America.

As in other poems from An Duanaire it describes an earthy and sensuous relationship – feelings rarely mentioned in verse after puritanical European Jansenism overwhelmed Gaelic Catholicism in the wake of An Gorta Mór.

“My love came near

up to my side

shoulder to shoulder

and mouth to mouth.”

An Duanaire is out of print and can be expensive, but find one. You’ll get a view of the past - both precious and frightening - that could help you comprehend the complexities of the dizzying present.

From Paradise Square to Berkeley 155 years later

Have you ever looked up at a Broadway stage and wondered just how a riveting performer got there? I can assure you it did not happen without hard work and fierce determination.

Many have special gifts, and they’re all talented, but the sheer effort that goes into getting cast in a top-of-the-line musical is extraordinary. 

Cyndi Lauper once put it to me in her inimitable manner, “Anyone can give 100%; it’s what do you got at 120 or 125 that counts?”

Paradise Square is now well into its sold out run at Berkeley Rep and has already been extended until Feb. 24th. Some of you will remember the project began as Hard Times at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell, directed by Kira Simring back in 2012.  

There’s a tremendous buzz about this musical that deals with the amalgamation of “Famine” Irish and African-Americans in New York City’s Five Points in 1863.

The wonderful 32-member cast has brought “the most notorious slum in America” roaring back to gritty life on the huge stage of the beautiful Roda Theatre in downtown Berkeley, CA.

So herewith – an insight into three young performers who hail from quintessentially Irish-American locations – Pearl River, NY; South Philadelphia, PA; and Dublin, OH.

I remember the day Bridget Riley auditioned for choreographer, Bill T. Jones.  She was so photogenically Irish - long red hair, pale skin, and sparkling blue eyes. Then again she was born and bred in Pearl River.

Though she seemed almost waif-like, you could sense her determination. More importantly she possessed an odd timeless quality and I instinctively knew she would embody the spirit of the many young women who escaped Ireland’s Great Hunger, attended Five Points dance halls, cast aside convention, and married African-American men.

And can she dance! She began ballet at 5, switched to Deirdre Guilfoyle’s School of Irish Dance in West Nyack at 12, before adding Jazz & Tap at 14.  But from the moment her mother took her to see Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, the six-year old girl knew where she was headed.  

         

Ambitious and organized, Bridie has a way with people and was chosen as one of two dance captains for Paradise Square’s run at Berkeley Rep.

Sidney DuPont is a solid 2% Irish. He learned that through Ancestry.com. He attended CAPA (Creative Performing Arts High School) in South Philly, a safe haven where he could shape his craft; he began performing professionally at sixteen.

It was while marching/performing in the St. Patrick Day Parade that he was first introduced to Irish step dancing which he finds mesmerizing, and calls a fusion of tap and ballet.

He plays William Henry Lane, AKA Master Juba, a runaway slave hiding out in The Five Points who enters into a partnership with Owen Duignan, recently arrived from famine-stricken Ireland.

The friendship of the two young men is severely tested when Owen’s name is called in the Civil War Draft while Will Henry, as an African-American, is prohibited from joining “Mr. Lincoln’s Army.”

Sidney is a triple threat, a dancer who can channel the legendary Master Juba, a singer not unlike Curtis Mayfield, and a skilled actor.

Anyone who’s been to their big annual festival knows just how Irish Dublin OH is. You could say the same for A.J. Shively who plays Owen Duignan.

Although he’s an amazing mover it’s been an experience to watch him learn Irish step dancing from the ground up. 

He did have Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman from Hammerstep for coaches. But six months later he’s matching steps with them nightly as he goes mano-a-mano against Master Juba in a dance battle for his life. 

But that’s the signature of all these 32 performers – if there’s a skill you need to master in a hurry, then bring it on! A gig’s a gig and it’s all a step forward to a hallowed goal – originating a role on the Broadway stage.

Did I mention that A.J. has a voice to die for and that he’s fallen in love with Sean-Nós singing through merging his psyche nightly with Owen Duignan, the Gorta Mór refugee.

Three major talents from three bedrock Irish-American areas, and every night they give 125 % in a theatrical séance that summonses up the spirits of the Irish and African-Americans who for a brief moment rewrote American history.

 "Paradise Square" at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, CA Jan.10-Feb.17 Tickets and information www.berkeleyrep.org

Christmas in Wexford

It’s been thirty years now since I’ve spent Christmas in Wexford. But as many of you can testify the memories of an Irish Christmas stay strong.

Of course, your relationship to “home” changes when your mother, father, and the old house are gone, but once you come to terms with those losses there’s still a whole vista of nostalgia to reacquaint yourself with and treasure.

Back in my youth Ireland had certain universal traditions: a delirious Christmas Eve followed by midnight mass or service, and a dead certainty that from Christmas morning on until New Year’s Day one could relax and celebrate with family and friends. 

And yet, each town and county had its own traditions. In Wexford the main one was the sheer joy of welcoming home emigrants.

Like many other areas of Ireland, Wexford was scarred by emigration. Because of the proximity of the UK and the low cost of travel, there was often a casual nature to many an exit.

You could go out for a drink on a Saturday afternoon with some of the lads home from London, and find yourself still in their company on the Rosslare ferry to Fishguard later that night.

By the same token you had to be very down on your luck not to make it home to Wexford from London, Dagenham, or Birmingham for “the Christmas.”

The boat train that arrived twice a day would be jam packed from Dec. 20^th on, and the old town would echo with the footsteps of returning emigrants as they strode up and down the Main Street making sure that nothing had changed in their absence.

Families would return too – local men and women accompanied by their English wives and husbands, the children with hilarious cockney & scouse accents, sounding like pintsized Jaggers and Lennons.

Christmas lights would stretch from lampposts across the narrow streets and Woolworths, our one department store, would be chockablock with flirting teenagers, and anxious grown-ups seeking bargains for Christmas presents.

Few people had much money back then and the rich took care not to flaunt it, for it would have been considered the height of bad taste to make even the lowest feel less valued.

Was that a Christian ethic or an awareness that every Irish family had at one time experienced either repression or famine – and there could well be another come-uppance lurking just around the corner?

Whatever, Christmas was a time of communal joy, and the pubs reverberated with good fellowship as everyone – both emigrant and stay-at-homer - vied with each other to buy their round.

Faces would be flushed from the heat, overcrowding, and the sheer delight of seeing an old classmate - resplendent in the latest London fashions - flash a twenty-pound note at a dazzled barman.

And while the owner was shouting, “Ah lads, come on now, drink up, or the guards will take me license,” many would already be winding their wobbly way up to the Friary or one of the diocesan churches for midnight mass.

Others would arrive beyond fashionably late, and the wiser priests would stall their entry so as not to suffer the inevitable tumbling into pews or the loudly whispered greetings among the hard chaws back by the holy water font.

Nor was it unusual for the flutered devout to doze off into a fit of snoring until rudely awoken by a comrade’s elbow in the ribs. For attendance at midnight mass meant that you could forego the bleary downtown excursion for last mass the following morning.

But there was something else about this late night religious tradition – the pure joy of knowing you were home and taking part in a communal celebration about who you were and where you came from.

A very happy Christmas to the Irish Echo community and special best wishes to those undocumented who will once again not make it home for fear they will not be allowed back in the US.

I remember the feeling well in my own undocumented days, and the hope that something would change for the better the following year. My heart goes out to you.  Hang in there, perhaps in 2019.

Anthony Bourdain

Like many I was saddened by the death of Anthony Bourdain. He was the real deal in a medium full of botoxed puppets who spin their seven-minute slots of scripted talking points in between interminable ads.

Right from the start I felt I knew him from somewhere, but such things happen for as Joan Rivers once wisely proclaimed, “After 50 everything rings a bell.”

On reading his obituary I thought I’d found the answer: he had been chef at Les Halles, one of my favorite restaurants, mere crawling distance from Rocky Sullivan’s and Paddy Reilly’s. 

And so I figured he was one of those gregarious lords of the kitchen who descend on your table soliciting compliments, usually while your mouth is full.

But when I watched his final CNN show devoted to the Lower East Side the penny dropped.

It was nothing spectacular - he was just another face in the crowded mad scene of the early ‘80’s down around Avenues A and B. 

I never spoke to him but I saw him often enough, usually standing in the center of a crowd, his charismatic face lit up with laughter and booze, the center of attention in a scene of many stars. 

But there was another recurring memory of him – solitary and hunched over his drink, often picking at a small plate of food.

Did you ever notice that some people habitually gravitate to the same part of whatever bar they find themselves – Anthony’s was down near the service station where he could banter with the bartender and waitresses when the mood hit him.

When he talked about his heroin use in that last show, pieces of his puzzle fell into place. Many hard drug users are dual characters, extroverts dominating the conversation, but more often than not loners wearing almost visible “don’t mess with me” psychic armor to keep the world at bay.

His Lower East Side CNN show rocked me back on my heels. I had blacked out so much of the scene, partly because I spun off into a different universe when Black 47 took off; I moved away from Avenue B and a world I’d long been a part of.

Bourdain kept posing the same question to Debbie Harry, Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie and Lydia Lunch among others, “Was the scene on the Lower East Side really that special?”

In typical LES cool, each of the interviewees made a point of stating that “it was just a phase, life goes on, I’m still creative,” with the unspoken plea, “you should see what I’m doing now!”

And they’re right. No matter what you’ve achieved in the creative world, you’re only as good as your new song, novel, painting or film. 

Perhaps, the most grounded of his interviewees, the eternally creative John Lurie put it best. “I’m just glad I survived the excesses of the times and am still working.”

But there was something beyond special about the Lower East Side in those years - just think of Hilly Crystal’s CBGB’s! What a place – what a guy, so understated and matter of fact – but would there have been an international Punk scene without him?

Hilly’s own musical taste ran to Country and Bluegrass, and yet his club spawned a musical movement that rocked the world and changed the aesthetic of popular music. 

I saw The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, and the amazing Television emerge from CB’s miasma of mediocrity, for Hilly gave everyone and his mother a shot – including me!

But Lower East Side music was also the background track to a wonderful DIY kaleidoscope of poets, painters, choreographers, novelists, dreamers & cultural revolutionaries that you collided with in the bars, clubs, galleries and parties that seemed to go round the clock.

Craziness too – I once got a lovely kiss from Debbie Harry who upon hearing my accent mistook me for a Boomtown Rat.  Ah well, mistaken identity it may have been but she was our Marilyn and I still treasure the moment.

Yeah, Mr. Bourdain, your suspicions were right – those years in Alphabet City were amazing. They didn’t last. Nothing does. But thanks for the CNN memories and that tunnel back to a spiky past when everything seemed possible.

Ireland - Today and Yesterday

I take a couple of busloads of Americans and Canadians to Ireland every October. Most are listeners to Celtic Crush, my three-hour weekly radio program. As the show deals with history, politics, and current events the travelers already have a general awareness of the Ireland of today and yesterday.

Through conversations and attempts to answer my guests’ many questions I’m often forced to re-evaluate my own ideas and core beliefs.

I long ago realized that modern Ireland is far removed from the island I left behind in the 1970’s.  Even as late as the 1990’s there was still a familiar quaintness to the country - something I came to treasure, even though I had railed against it while living there.

I didn’t care for the changes that occurred around the time of the Celtic Tiger; but I partly attributed my attitude to the deaths of my parents in the early 2000’s. Those two milestone events cause most people to reassess life in general.

The financial crash of 2008 had dreadful consequences, yet oddly enough I began to relate to Ireland once again. People seemed more gracious, and as my mother would have put it, they regained “the run of themselves.”

Then recently Ireland took a giant leap forward. The present Taoiseach though young, gay, and of Indian descent, is very Irish.  And yet compare Leo Varadkar to Eamon de Valera, Charles Haughey, or even Enda Kenny, his immediate predecessor. We’re talking revolutionary change! 

      

Now you could say this is a fluke and that the old status quo will reinvent itself in the guise of some new conservative leader.

But I doubt it, for the electorate who chose Mr. Varadkar has transcended many Irish traits, customs, and prejudices. The Ireland I grew up in would never have countenanced such a change.

This brings us to the position of the Catholic Church in modern Ireland. What a change - and a healthy one at that!

My opinion has little to do with faith or lack thereof; but the lifting of the awful blanket of clerical oppression that suffocated the social, sexual, and spiritual life of Ireland has transformed the country.

It’s not that one couldn’t temporarily kick off this suffocating blanket - I remember no clerical oppression in the randy bedsitter world of Rathmines in the early 1970’s; but as soon as you caught sight of the foreboding twin spires of Wexford town you could feel the clammy fist of clerical power reassert itself.

Don’t get me wrong: there were many compassionate and charitable people of the cloth, but the system had already corrupted itself by protecting the monsters who preyed upon children and the trusting.

The question is – what will replace the paternal influence of the Catholic Church? 

And now with the rise to respectability and prominence of Sinn Fein, nationalism – the other twin strand of Irish DNA – is also being transformed.

Of course, Brexit could change that. It’s hard to imagine that the British would be stupid enough to resurrect a “hard border,” but they’ve surprised us before.

Nor is Ireland impervious to the nativist winds of change sweeping Europe; the country even appears to have spawned its own mini-Trump in the figure of recent presidential candidate, Peter Casey.

And yet I witnessed a new Ireland last month when I watched a woman in hijab casually stroll through a small town with her Syrian husband, their young son already flaunting his Kerry accent.

I heard teenagers in Dublin converse as Gaeilge as though it were no big deal while a gay couple among them embraced openly without fear of aggression or ridicule.

The country may have problems – people sleep on trolleys in hospital corridors as they await medical care – but its citizens are no longer weighed down by the repressive baggage of centuries.

Ireland has finally become a modern European country. People may still be “wearin’ the Green” but they’re now doing so as a fashion statement.

Who knows what brave new world the little Syrian refugee boy will help build in County Kerry. But it will smack a lot more of Leo Varadkar than Eamon de Valera.

For Information on Larry Kirwan Tour of Ireland Oct. 1-7, 2019 write blk47@aol.com