Swimming with mermaids in the Irish ocean of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's poetry

I want to understand mermaids, and I suspect Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill might be one. The Irish poet around whom all other Irish poets school--as readers and translators--came to NYU's Ireland House on a torrential night of rain this Saturday past. We came to hear her talk about and read from her new book, The Fifty Minute Mermaid. She spoke in two languages. Her primary language is Irish, which has as many words for water, as the Eskimo have for snow. She is immersed in the language as in an acquatic universe. Her poetry catches listeners like Ogma, who would drag them by fish hooks chained from his own tongue to theirs.

I have very strange ideas about Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. I only know her from the poems I've read and studied as my first real work at learning Irish. She writes of tongues in Irish, where the word

Waking Saint Patrick to awaken the Spring

Special section / Saint Patrick's Day! Stories, music, videos, recipes, more! / Click here

Saint Patrick died on March 17th, and so Hibernophiles, lovers of Irish tradition, around the world raise their glasses, and remember the man that banished the snakes of human sacrifice and slavery from Ireland.

We are a diaspora over the world, and Ireland is a cherished place to us. May all Irish learn to be learnéd in ár ndúchais, owr nookush, our heritage, arís, areesh, again, so that green Ireland will not be severed from its roots. Éireann go Brách, Of Ireland forever.

Catching up with Irish Gaelic TV's best dráma, and the people of Ros na Rún

That's Berní talking with John Joe Daly about her son in grade school who's bullying other children, and stealing things and stuff like that. It's a still shot of a scene from part 1 of episode 11.03, which you can watch here. The Irish language television station has been revamped on-line, and the Flash interface makes it so easy now to watch.

That's Tadhg there with his wife. He's the owner of Tigh Thadhg, the pub his son Jason is talking about turning from a traditional haunt into a techno thing. Tadhg is publican and undertaker in Ros na Rún and is trying to get his son Jason to elevate his game from DJing, and take on the family business. You can watch the episode 09.03, here.

That's Adelaide who was left standing on the altar, and came back to hit Mack with the news later-on, that she was pregnant with their baby. He's trying to be up-standing, and support her as the father, but he only wants to be friends. Adelaide has issues. You can watch the episode here. It gets messy when Adelaide starts using the baby to restore the relationship, but Mack is not having it. Watch them try to figure it out in part 2 of the 11.03 episode, here.

Bobby McFerrin gets jiggy with bodhrán (watch video)

Flute and bodhrán player Kieran Munnelly sat down in an informal exchange between musicians with Bobby McFerrin. Thanks to Kathleen Biggins of WFUV's A Thousand Welcomes for posting this gem of good will and music.

The exchange between Irish rhythms, melodies and Black rhythms and melodies is one of the earliest experiments in the history of modern popular music. The first musical theater came from this exchange, and this is how tap dance was invented, between step dancers from Ireland and Black dance masters getting jiggy together in Manhattan not so long ago.

In a similar vein, Irish traditional musicians Liam Ó Maonlaí and Paddy Keenan, traveled to Africa as part of a documentary, that explores the African and Irish musical traditions together. You can watch that documentary online, here.

Irish Gaelic's great American ally, Séamus Blake--an interview

Séamus Blake's Míle Fáilte is New York City's only bi-lingual Irish Gaelic radio program, broadcast from his native Bronx across the tri-state region and across the world via an archive of his broadcasts available on-line--here. His program is chock full of media from the universe of Irish language music and literature, while connecting up the Gaeilgeoirí and their friends to what's the latest from Ireland's most interesting cultural movement--the re-popularization of our heritage's language.

I sat down with Séamus in Manhattan to learn about his life, his family from Clare and to pick his brain for better insight into the Irish language movement. I've broken the interview, which was four hours of enlightening conversation, into morsels that you can play and listen-in on yourself.

In the first clip embedded below this paragraph, I asked Séamus to speak to me about his family from Clare. His parents were emigrants from the west of the county to the South Bronx where he grew up. He speaks about John Walsh's study from 1926 on Irish speaking in that area of Ireland, and on the extensive Gaeltachtaí in that era, which numbered nine counties at the time. Blake's family were in the middle of the language shift that would reduce Ireland's Irish-speaking community dramatically during, ironically, the post-colonial period. Economic factors and psychological issues of self-worth affected parents who felt it advantageous to speak little or broken English to their children, rather than their native language. Bi-lingualism was not understood, or rejected as an option. He speaks of the Gaelic League and Seán Ó Tuama's analysis of the learning community from middle class Ireland and their relationship to the dialects spoken natively by people living in the west. He speaks about the caighdeánach and the standardization of the language, and great writers like Máirtín Ó Cadhain who wrote in his own dialect, and was Blake's teacher at Trinity.

The conversation will continue, and next time with more Irish on my part. Know this about Séamus Blake: he has been broadcasting bi-lingually in Irish since 1978. He has lived on the Árainn Islands and was a Fulbright scholar for two years at Dublin's Trinity College. He has been a teacher and lecturer at Queens College, NYU, John Jay College and The Gaelic Society of New York. Currently, he is a tenured professor at Nassau County Community College; the Irish Language Editor of the quarterly academic journal 'New Hibernia Review;' and the senior bibliographer of the Celtic section for the annual Modern Language Association bibliography. Less than a year ago, Irish America magazine named him with Bono, Van Morrison and Gabriel Byrne on the Global Top 100 list for his towering achievements and contributions to Irish American heritage, which, comes from Ireland and can persist, as it has with him so tirelessly, here in a new world.

Around NYC: the Irish traditional music seisiún and céilí events

The Irish live in a much wider area than just Manhattan in the lár (urban center). Traditional Irish music events such as the seisiún and the céilí pop up all over the region at various times. This is an incomplete list, but a good place to get started.

The list below works well with Maureen Donnachie's Ceol agus Rince calendar, which can be found here, and compiles gatherings happening among the musicians, listeners and dancers around town that create the unique seisiún and céilí culture of New York City.

A seisiún is an event (imeacht, imockt) where Irish traditional musicians go to play tunes from the large traditional repertoire. The audience can be a listening crowd, or when they're not, a threatening din.

New iPhone app puts "gentler" Ireland in your palm with stories by Eddie Stack

What's happening is the launch of an extraordinary new genre of multi-media literature, The West: a collection of short fiction by Eddie Stack which is now available as an iPhone app. It contains an ebook of seven short stories, 60 minutes of spoken word with music by Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill; the song Memories by Ron Kavana and several digital paintings by Phillip Morrison. This is excitingly new. The format collides music, literature and painting to an iPhone experience that brings you back to a different place. It's inspiring, and it is just the format to capture the spirit of collaborative art produced in a traditional pub like Ó Tuama kept in Penal Times or John B. Keane owned in Listowel, where music and spoken word are hand in hand.

Here is an excerpt from the IM-interview you can read in whole further below:

Brendan
Where are you from?

Americans can be Gaelic Kids too, thanks to Elaine Ní Bhraonáin at the Irish Arts Center

The Irish language is in a strange state nowadays, especially when it comes to native speakers raising children. More people know how to conduct themselves in the language than you would ever think by visiting Ireland, and yet more and more children in the Gaeltacht are shunning it as a first language, because the larger society has severely debilitating shame-issues that make speaking Irish in public in Ireland less normal than speaking émigré languages there. The message given to kids in Ireland is still such that English is normal, and Irish is to be turned off in most situations on the street. Add to that the unmet demand for Gaelscoileanna, where parents want more and more to send their children to Irish-medium schools because the education is better, but the government won't build them in time, preferring lip-service and no-hope waiting lists.

New York City is the perfect place for such attitudes to be diagnosed and cured, because languages flourish here, especially among school children, where bi-lingualism is a right, and something to be proud of and to use. More and more Irish in New York, and people from any heritage at all, can see Irish language as a resource skill. It's here that people realize that learners of Irish gain access to Europe where it is an official language, access to the Irish media universe which is truly unique and compelling, and access to a global community of Irish speakers networked in major cities across the world--not to mention access to the Irish speaking community in Ireland which is popping up proudly all across the island despite the unfathomable kibosh against public Irish speaking over there.

It is not the usual skill, and such unusual skills are what make children stand-out on applications to presitigious universities, such as Harvard, which is but one of scores across the United States and world, where Celtic, Gaelic and Irish studies programs are flourishing with growing budgets and expanding missions.

Pictures from Matt Cranitch's master class visit to New York

The Irish traditional music community of New York esteems the source musicians who come to town from Ireland, and when Matt Cranitch came to visit from his native Cork this past weekend, the fiddlers were assembled, sessions organized, and a master class offered to draw water directly from the well. Cranitch is the one of the world's foremost authorities on the distinctive style of Irish fiddle that comes from the Sliabh Luachra nexus in the Cork-Kerry-Limerick border lands.

The event that was his visit was made possible by Phil Weir, a Scotsman with a passion for learning traditional musics. Weir is bringing the Cape Breton master, Stan Chapman to town soon--stay tuned. When Cranitch landed at JFK, he was whisked from plane to cab to Union Square, in time to lead the seisiún there that happens every Saturday afternoon, started by fellow Corkonian Donie Carroll and promoted by the very friendly banjo player Dan Neely. Some of the pictures from that seisiún were taken by Michael Leahy who stopped in with his camera. The pictures from the class were taken by Marian Lawlor.

The next day, Weir had set up a master class, and signed up more than twenty fiddlers from across the tri-state area to sit-in on Cranitch's instructive session. His teaching style is reknowned, and he is the author of a brilliant book on Irish fiddle, which can be found here.

Cranitch comes from an Irish-speaking family steeped in the music. He grew up attending fleadhanna cheoil, as can be read about in an interview available on-line, here. Later, as he developed as a scholar, he became a specialist in indigenous music, and focused on the Sliabh Luachra style where he was born. He was tutored by Mick Duggan, whom he would make the subject of his academic work. He studied original manuscripts by Pádraig O'Keefe, the great Sliabh Luachra fiddler from Gleantan, Castleisland, just down the road from where my mother grew up in Ballymacelligott.

Since then, he has been a member of many iconic bands, such as Na Filí, with which he released an album of slow airs with Gael Linn called Aisling Gheal. That was followed by three more albums: Any Old Time, Phoenix and Crossing with various other artists. In 1994, Sliabh Notes was formed and they released their first CD shortly thereafter. His return to academic work in the research of indigineous music, came in the wake of the success of his Fiddle Book, and a meeting with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. He was awarded a Senior Research Scholarship from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and is recognized as one the great musicians and scholars who understand Irish traditional music from its core, at the roots of regional style.

Listen to Colm Tóibín read and talk about his new novel about exile called "Brooklyn"

Colm Tóibín's new appointment at Princeton University ensures he will be in New York with more frequency we can hope, and it's an opportunity to hear the great Irish author speak when he comes to town. I was lucky to catch his talk at NYU's Ireland House a fortnight ago, where he was on hand to meet his many many fans. Everyone at the event seemed to have his new book "Brooklyn" on their laps, and the room was alive with knowing laughter when he referred to Éilís and other characters from this book about exile, because Tóibín is a storyteller with a loving following.

I've read "Blackwater Lightship," and the memory of the women in that book will never leave me. That's why I have to read "Mothers & Sons," because it promises more of his famous power for empathy. "The Master" was an audio book for me, some books I want to be told to me as by a storyteller from a time when people gathered to listen to literature. It's about a fateful period in the life of Henry James by an equally prolific novelist and essayist. (You can have a little bit of that experience, as Tóibín reads excerpts from "Brooklyn" in the embedded lecture below.) I have read many essays by Tóibín, who writes widely and masterfully. His latest book, "Brooklyn," I now have, and will begin reading this week, at home in that very borough. The characters of "Brooklyn" are not necessarily at home there, but are in that liminal place between home and the emigrant's new life abroad.

It's about a woman who leaves Tóibín's hometown in Wexford to find a new life here. Ireland House was emotionally charged when he spoke, as so many seemed to share these exile experiences, and at the end, Tóibín made a connection with a woman (pictured to the right with her son) whose relative was on the golf team back home with his own aunt, a model for the book's main character. You can see Tóibín looking very happily and nostalgically at a black and white photo she had brought with her, that showed the friends in golf gear at the clubhouse in Enniscorthy.

Eileen Reilly, the Associate Director of Ireland House, (pictured to the left) has kindly made the entire audio from the event available to readers of this column. That is her voice introducing Tóibín, and you can listen to Tóibín's discussion just below:

Sneaker-head Riverdance fiddler Patrick Mangan coming home to Brooklyn

"I'm a bit of a sneaker-head. Probably comes from growing up in Brooklyn," Patrick Mangan told me in an interview recently from the road. The Riverdance fiddler is scheduled to be back in town for St.Patrick's Day when the tour hits Radio City Music Hall from March 17-21. The whole Riverdance extravaganza ends its long road trip--and world-wide phenomenon--for good, after 15 years influencing the status of Irish traditional music so that it is now a fundamental genre in world music. When the tour's done, Mangan's returning to New York City for good, after months and months on the road--wearing out those sneakers.

"Twelve pairs of sneakers might seem a bit excessive," he told me, "but keep in mind it is an eight-month tour, so you kind of have to pack up your life into two big suitcases. They would be way overweight if I had to get on a plane but luckily the company travels with a luggage truck, so even when we fly, our bags travel by ground which is very handy. I usually acquire a few pairs on the road, too. Whenever I see something unique, especially in a city I might never return to, I feel compelled to pick a new pair." You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but not Brooklyn out of the boy.



"I've been touring full-time since summer of 2006 (usually with a few months off in between each tour)." he told me. "In that time I've been all across the States, and traveled to Canada, Mexico, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and China."



Managan started playing fiddle at the age of 5. His first exposure to violin came through Suzuki, a classical system for learning, developed in Japan, but his parents were lovers of the traditional Irish music of their family's heritage and exposed him to The Music (as people in it, call it) from the crib. He was a regular at the New York Irish festivals like the famous one at Snug Harbor where people like Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds were regulars. At age 8, Mangan's mother met Brian Conway at one such feis, and lessons soon followed. You can read a profile of Brian Conway's decade-long Wednesday night performance-seisiún here. Mangan's been hooked ever since.

Vanessa Williams comes to the Blarney Star to hear Cormac Breatnach, Mike Considine & Ivan Goff

In a display of excellent taste, Vanessa Williams, was at Ireland House last Friday night to enjoy as we all did, the music of Cormac Breatnach, Mike Considine and special-guest Ivan Goff in the second concert of five in the Blarney Star series happening this year. Don Meade's Blarney Star productions are landmark dates on the calendar of Irish New York, offering an intimate setting for connoisseurs of ceol in the heart of Greenwich Village and the shadow of Washington Square Park, on Fifth Avenue.

Cormac Breatnach comes from an interesting cultural background, that has influenced his music and his philosophy of Irish traditional music. At home, as a child, he was raised speaking Irish with his father, and Castillian Spanish with his mother, whom he would later discover had proud Basque roots. English would come easily enough his parents thought from the streets. He explores these personal influences on a variety of wind instruments and in compositions, and has been doing so professionally with such luminaries as Dónal Lunny and Máire Breatnach (no relation). He was a member of Donal Lunny's Celtic Orchestra in 1985, with members Arty McGlynn, Nollaig Casey (Coolfin), Manus Lunny (Capercaillie), Steve White, Seán Óg Potts and Damien Quinn. He then founded Méristem which featured Máire Breatnach, Niall Ó Callanáin & Steve White; and later Deiseal. You can read his extensive discography, here. Audience members were buying up his "Musical Journey" CD like hot-cakes after the show.


Mike Considine is an Irish Londoner, whose people come from Cinn Mhara (Kinvara), on the Galway Bay (Loch Lurgan). He spent much time living in Galway and New Zealand, learning his music by ear, and becoming one of Irish traditional music's finest bouzouki players and a most sought-after accompanist.

Pressure on a British museum to return Gal Gréine to Ireland in honor of Constance Markiewicz

During the Easter Rising of 1916, the British administration engaged in a shock and awe campaign to destroy Dublin, and the morale of Dubliners, by the brute force of its army. Destruction and looting was a psychological tactic, and much treasure was whisked from the capital city of Ireland, back to the imperial city of London, as trophies of the British empire's brutal resistance to self-determination.

Dublin City Councillor Jim O'Callaghan is urging his City Manager John Tierney to join the growing pressure being put on the British Imperial War Museum to return a treasured flag, looted from the home of Constance Markiewicz. The flag is called Gal Gréine which is the sunburst symbol of Irish nationhood, found in Ireland's most ancient manuscripts and resumed in the modern period by culturistas and politicos of the Irish national renaissance.

A group of people has also formed on Facebook to advocate the return, and their site can be found here.

Joe Burke flown to NY to be honored with Charlie Coen and Mike Brady at Comhaltas

The Irish button accordion is an accoustic instrument that can fill a dance hall with a melodic heart beat few hands but those of a true box master can finger. Joe Burke is an Olympian in the pantheon of Irish traditional musicians that will forever be beloved in the memory of this magical tradition.

A master musician, and brilliant speaker, Joe Burke wrote a note to Monsignor Father Charlie Coen as they sat near each other in the beautifully designed Irish American Center in Mineola before either had yet been called up to accept their awards. As he gave his speech, he pulled the note from his pocket, and read aloud what he had written in question:
"Now that I seem to be on the same level as a Monsignor, what am I supposed to do?"

The napkin with this query also had Monsignor Coen's response written on it. Joe called Paul Keating, the Master of Ceremonies over to read to us what Charlie had scribbled in answer before passing it back.
"I feel like I'm being set up," Paul said as just before he read the word Father Charlie had written, which was: "repent."

The dancing woman of O'Connell Street has fallen very ill

Thousands of Dubliners have joined a Facebook site to piece together the story of one of Dublin's beloved characters, an elegant woman called "Mary," who used to dance and dole out tidbits to passersby, no matter the abuse she got from the occasional bollox. She hasn't been seen for sometime, and the rumor is that she has fallen very ill. If anyone knows more about her, join in on the conversation.

And another FB site dedicated to Dublin's Street Characters.

Below are some comments gleaned from the site dedicated to Dublin's lovely dancing lady.

Watch documentary on the Donegal fiddle with Altan's Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and other luminaries

A day in pictures with Colm Tóibín, Séamus Blake, Peter Quinn, and Maura Mulligan

I had a wonderful day yesterday. Firstly, I visited with Séamus Blake, the host of WFUV's Míle Fáilte, and then I attended Colm Tóibín's book signing for Brooklyn at Ireland House. My meeting with Séamus was transformative and informative--what a great mind. He is a highly respected scholar of Irish literature, and it was a conversation I can not wait to continue. I'll be writing about my interview with him in the coming days. Afterwards, I ran over to Colm Tóibín's book signing when my friend Jane Kelton alerted me to it. I've read many of Tóibín's essays, his novel Blackwater Lightship and I've listened to the audio book for The Master. I don't know how I haven't read Mothers & Sons yet. I will be writing more about his funny and eventful talk next week. I didn't have a chance to meet Peter Quinn last night, but I have heard him speak, and we once had an exciting moment at the talk he gave with Pete Hamil and others on Tammany Hall, where there was some controversy about the moderator's interpretation of the analysis being offered. Peter Quinn is of course the author of Banished Children of Eve, a very important book in the canon of Irish American literature, and a book called Hour of the Cat, I have yet to read. Maura Mulligan was at the book signing too. She's an exceptional teacher and writer, who has finished a book. I look forward to reading it. Fine fine day.

Dempsey's on Second Avenue in the East Village, a home for Irish traditional music

As reported, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann will be honoring publicans who have supported the Irish musical tradition, by providing a home for traditional sessions.

I'm sure no one at CCÉ meant insult, but the list was (as reported)--incomplete--and the fault is mine for leaking their list before the awards were given out. There was some upset, which I want to fix. Investigative journalism is an on-going process, and I'm glad it's all being sorted. I'll do my best to report updates on the publican honors.

New York Irish Center hosts Máirtín Ó Muilleoir for bi-lingual talks on business and renaissance

The New York Irish Center--situated a train stop from Grand Central Station in Long Island City--is many things to all those who volunteer, work and use the splendid facilities, but it has become an especially important hub for the Gaeilgeoirí of New York City and their friends.

Paul Finnegan is the center's director and was host to an interesting evening of bi-lingual talks about Irish language revival in Belfast's Gaeltacht Quarter, where multi-tasking leaders like Máirtín Ó Muilleoir found freedom by adopting Irish amidst an occupation by soldiers from England. Irish is now a major draw that brings untold tourist dollars to the city, because the renaissance there is unique and fascinating.

Daithí MacLochlainn is doing everything he can to recreate something like that in New York City. He's one of many culturistas that have been building up the Irish language community here with book clubs, laethanta Gaeilge, immersion weeks, and unique classes. New York Irish Center's language teacher, Maura Mulligan, uses wonderful techniques to get Irish into the heads and hearts of her students. She's one of many teachers around the city, and region available to teach the teanga, and I'll be writing more about them in time.

Christmas without fear, Irish emigrants work to reform laws in the US

My dad still feels the guilt of having to chose between keeping the life he was building for himself in America, or being deported for attending his father's funeral.

The anxiety of my dad's generation hasn't been resolved for the new generation of Irish, who now more than ever in the past decade are coming to America.

A petition is being circulating nation-wide to Get The Irish Home For Christmas.

Publicans to be honored for their support of Irish traditional music

Mick Moloney once made the observation that Irish traditional music is unique in that it can break out anywhere, like a good conversation between musicians.

Like conversation, acoustic and rhythmic music from fiddles or pipes or flutes can start up at a real Irish pub, where the publican understands his or her role as steward of traditional forms of community-building entertainment. Most Irish bars that go for the pub aesthetic fail this basic test of authenticity, where traditional Irish music is welcome, and the musicians who make it are treated with the respect they deserve as inheritors of an ancient musical tradition.

How the Irish (and Welsh) invented romantic love

Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married.....When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.
Joseph Campbell

When the Irish American scholar Joseph Campbell was growing up in New York City, he was a regular visitor to the Natural Museum of History, where he had discovered Native American peoples, and their metaphorical systems, or what we call mythology. This led the young man to pursue his own knowledge, and dig into his own soul.

It brought him to his own heritage, where he discovered ancient Irish mythology and James Joyce's modern Irish mythos, Finnegans Wake. He used Finnegans Wake and the Celtic myths of Arthur to unlock the universal mythology of the human unconscious. Finnegans Wake is littered with a dictionary-sized Gaelic Irish vocabulary and much talk of Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn Mac Cool) who was the hero of the Fenian cycle or the Fiannaidheacht wherein some of the earliest romantic love themes and poetry were composed.

Looking back on Alexander McQueen's Gaelic Scottish designs and his insult to prince Charles "Windsor"

The apparent suicide of Alexander McQueen (Lee McQueen), was committed it is widely reported in response to the death of his mother. He was a a 21st century romantic who explored the sinister that lurks beneath the traditional costumes of the gentleman and lady. He was futuristic and a dark revisionist of the entire canon of English fashion.

He was a rebel who invoked his Scottish heritage from the very beginning of his career and throughout, using traditional Gaelic materials such as tartan, lace and tweed. He also famously insulted the pretender to the throne of Wales.

Alexander McQueen was born the youngest of six children on March 17th 1969 in London to a working class family. His father was a hackney driver. His mother Joyce a teacher. When he was 16, he was watching a television program about the declining number of traditional tailor apprentices, quit school, and became a master of the trade. In time he would be christened "the hooligan of English fashion."

Friday night for the kids in Pearl River

Below are some pictures from a recent evening in Pearl River, New York with Willie Kelly, Rose Conway Flanagan, Patty Furlong and Galway transplant John Creaven playing music for some of the talented children from one of the largest Irish-American communities in the United States. The night of dancing and music is a regular event at the Hibernian Hall. Scholar Mary Holt Moore often teaches kids Irish language at the gathering. Many of the musicians' students joined the session on a variety of instruments such as fiddles, whistles and accordions. Proud parents watched-on as the next generation had some fun in the old Irish traditions long kept strong in New York.

Watch documentary on Johnny Doherty, Donegal fiddle legend

Tinsmith, storyteller and legendary traditional fiddler, Johnny Doherty was in the 1970s still traveling the hills of Donegal at an advanced age, playing music and making a living. The documentary below was made in 1972 by Seán O'Haughey of the Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann (Irish Folklore Commission). You can watch it in its entirety, in five parts.

Johnny Doherty (Seán Ó Dochartaigh) was born in Ardara, County Donegal (Ard an Rátha, Co. Thír Chonaill) at an unknown year.

The O'Doherty family were travelers in the culturally rich Gleann Cholm Cille area. Johnny's father Mickey was a fiddler, and his mother Mary McConnell was a singer. Johnny was the youngest of nine children. As a teenager, Johnny was not allowed to play fiddle in the company of his parents until he had mastered the reel "Bonny Kate." Johnny's brother, also called Mickey, was noted for his style after the recording artist Michael Coleman ( Mícheál Ó Clúmháin), and Mickey can be heard play on "The Gravel Walks."

U2 wins Best Stage Show award for 360 Tour

U2 rolled out the year's best stage show in 2009 with their 360 Degree Tour, that featured The Claw, as seen in the picture to the left.

TPI Magazine hosts the Total Production International Awards which brings roadies, riggers, truckers and gofers together to vote on which rock tour blew the roof most spectacularly. U2 won it hands down, with The Edge's roadie Dallas Schoo picking up an award and the tour's chief production head Willie Williams getting two trophies.

The award is especially meaningful because it is decided by those workers that make the magic happen, and give Bono his ethereal platform.

Jokes about the Irish

Brian Kelly, a union rep in Kent, has become a 15 minute celebrity in England for lodging a complaint against a local politician, Councilor Ken Bamber. Bamber told Kelly a "Paddy" joke, to which the Irishman objected and lodged a complaint, spurring a whole new genre of jokes on Irish political correctness.

A few jokes to put the situation in context:

Q: What's black and blue and floats in the Irish Sea?
A: An Englishman who tells Irish jokes.

Plastic Paddies

You're not Irish, you'll never be Irish. The idea stings some of us in the diaspora, but for me, I respect the assertion of native rights by Ireland-born people. I wish only the assertion was made in Irish, and not so often by Irish people that don't know the first thing about our common heritage, but that's the post-colonial condition. Nativism is sometimes healthy among smaller populations, otherwise the rights of self-determination and institutional freedom from more numerous and powerful foreign exploitators, or from unfair demographic shift, has no basis.

TG4.tv produces documentaries like Plastic Paddies that educate, entertain and deepen our collective identity as inheritors of ancestral traditions, heritage and that common story of our similar experiences. If you want to be "more" Irish, TG4 is the place to grapple with the issues involved.

Plastic Paddies on TG4 (in the Faisnéise Cartlann/archive) is a short half hour story about the children and grandchildren of the Irish who left Ireland for Britain, and raised them in Irish communities like those found in Manchester, Liverpool and London. According to some surveys, more than 25% of those living in Britain can claim an Irish passport, as I have done and many like me through our parents' nativity. It's a right placed in the Búnreacht so to recognize the truth of the Irish condition, which is diasporic.

How to catch a murderer on Ros na Rún

The circumstantial evidence is pointing to Ríona. She had motive to kill her ex, she has the skills of a nurse, making it possible for her to make the fatal cut so efficiently, and her suicide attempt only puts her under suspicion, no matter how much pain she's going through.

We know who did it. We watched Tina--in the picture above, played by Tara Breathnach--cut her ex-husband's throat from ear to ear back in December. Few of us had much sympathy for him, to be honest, but Tina is no hero. She's trying to frame the murder on the De Búrca family, driving poor Ríona to desperate acts of suicide.

Ríona's sister Róise feels so isolated, she's receptive to Tina's fake council, and meaningless kind words of friendship. It's Vince, the father of the De Búrca family, that's not buying Tina's ploys. On Thursday we watched as he tried to suss out from Tina more details that might break her alibi and clear his daughter's name. You can watch that episode and past ones at tg4.tv. Click on the Dráma Cartlann for Ros na Rún episodes, and other shows.

He beat throat cancer, happy birthday Dad

That's my beautiful Mother, Theresa O'Shea from Ballymacelligott, County Kerry. I was out to see my parents in Queens for my Dad's birthday yesterday. It was a birthday that might not have happened, except that my Dad fought throat cancer and won. Excellent care and music got him through it.

Using a camcorder and some poor lighting choices, I made some YouTube videos last year for a channel we called Irish Music Therapy, putting down some of my Dad's memories and tunes during the period of his radiation treatments.

Now that he's healthy again, he's back planning gigs with Randal Bays and Dáithí Sproule for their band Fingal.

NYU's Irish Language Day packs Ireland House

The bitter cold weather could not stop a big crowd of sixty at least from taking over three rooms on two levels of NYU's Ireland House. They had come for Lá Gaeilge, a five hour session with four teachers rotating between three groups at different levels of fluency. It was so much fun to be with such a big group of Irish-lovers in the middle of Greenwich Village.

Pádraig Ó Cearúill's success in creating so popular an Irish language program at NYU has been fifteen years in the making, since he first began as a lecturer at the university in 1995. A native of Gaoth Dobhair in Donegal (Tír Chonaill), he's responsible for making Gaeilgeoirí of many an American who've come to his wonderful classes at Ireland House. He's so popular in fact, he's the recipient of a student-voted Golden Dozen Teaching Award. As a result it's hard to get a spot in one of his accredited or more informal classes, but he's very accommodating, so e-mail him at po2@nyu.edu and get yourself going, or advance from where you're at. He's a New York City treasure.

The Hedge School - An Scoil Chois Claí is associated with Iona College in New Rochelle, and was founded by Hilary Mhic Suibhne, also a teacher at NYU since 1998. She is a central figure and scholar in the Irish language community of New York and a wonderful teacher. You can also check out her Irish language blog called Hilary NY. She's hosting another Lá Gaeilge at Iona (how perfect a college name!), and lots of people get very excited about it, for example the Irish Gaelic Circle of Connecticut, who've posted the attached notice about on their blog.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin brings Bríd to New York (with video)

Held in the splendid performance chamber of the Society for Ethical Culture on Central Park West, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin--hugging well-wishers yesterday--was in town to honor Brighid with a concert last night.

The night was a celebration of the mythological as the feast day of Bríd marking the Imbolc holiday just passed.

Ó Súilleabháin introduced the concert from a stage with the words "The Place Where People Meet to Seek the Highest is Holy Ground" emblazoned on the Ethical Society's wall above him. It was a major gathering of New York Irish cultural institutions for the American premier of Ó Súilleabháin's reworked composition called Kýrie in a program with work by other composers.

Lots of cursing on Tommy Tiernan video

The Irish for f@#k is foc. Foc seo (this). Foc sin (that).

You get the foc-in point? Yeah? Tommy Tiernan (watch video below) is a comic, sure, but a philosopher too, a philosopher about what it means that some Irish punctuate nearly every sentence with foc.

I won't ruin the punch line, but Tiernan's diagnosis of Irish anxiety within the hierarchy of English dialects is foc-in deadly.

Molly's father is back to cause trouble on Ros na Rún

Did you all tune in on Tuesday to Ros na Rún - 2/2/10? New shows are aired at 3:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with both shown together again on Sunday. You can go to TG4.tv at the time of broadcast and watch it at the same time it's airing live in Ireland, or go to the Dráma - Cartlann and catch episodes in the archive. It's a great way to learn the language as it's spoken, and great for plot-twisting and character development.

Molly there above as played by Lisa Ní Laoire is Bríd's daughter. Mother and daughter are at odds because Molly is absolutely contemptuous of Mícheál--Bríd's love--while unquestionably adoring her own father Johnny who is a cocky artist come out of the blue to sort things out between his daughter and Bríd, and determined to cause problems for everyone.

Tadhg and Frances are back with baby from their honeymoon only to discover Jason has left the pub neglected. Jason it turns out saved Ríona's life from a suicide attempt. She's saying nothing, and has made a big mess for her family. Her suicide note was written with a confession, admitting to having killed the abusive father of her baby--O'Dowd, but she really did no such thing. It was really Tina who did that, and Tina talks to Ríona's sister Róise like a mentor, advising that the suicide note/confession letter be be handed over to authorities. This would pin Tina's murder on the distraught Ríona. Vincent, the father of both Ríona and Róise has caught on to Tina's evil, and we can expect he's going to confront the real murderer today at 3:30 when the second part airs.

The Irish calendar - staying grounded with the 8 seasonal holidays

The Irish calendar is divided into four quarter days, and four cross-quarter days, that help communities stay grounded in the seasons.

The wheel above depicts 8 seasonal holidays that mark the solstices, the equinoxes and the four days in between them called the cross quarter days.

How to make a Saint Brigid Cross (with video)

Brighid means the Exalted One in Irish, and The Woman, is a figure of intense power in Irish mythological and religious imagination. In Ireland the mythological, the pagan, the local, and the universal, the philosophical, the religious and the topographical are mixed up. Time is not lost but put aside or walked around as though it were laid out on a map, in an always continuing whole, allowing for Tír na nÓg and notions beyond usual physical laws to become mixed into the resources of Irish, Gaelic and Celtic thinking. Such understanding is what draws artists, musicians and sensitive people--wonder-filled--to the treasure house of Irish tradition.

February 1st or 2nd is a day claimed by Celtic seasonal thinkers, who called the holiday Imbolc to celebrate Bríd in the form of cailleach-becoming-maiden who collects kindling to make fire in the winter that will warm the Spring and make her young again.

This holiday then is understood through the stories of incredible Brighid. She was the inventor of the mourning songs called caoineadh "keening." In the story, she keens to mourn the death of her son Ruadán and so invents the artform. Irish traditions are often attributed to a supernatural being giving it that unkillable quality that frustrates all snobbery against it.

Shell's Nigerian plan for Ireland and natives of Mayo (with video)

When Ken Saro-Wiwa once demanded the right of native people to rule themselves and own their own natural resources, he was doing so against the super-human powers of Shell corporation in their quest to exploit and take Nigerian resources.

Similarly Shell is a major stakeholder in the Corrib gas pipeline saga of County Mayo in the west of Ireland. The mural above depicting Wiwa is from Ireland. Watch the video below for a better sense of how the Nigerian experience precedes and warns the Irish.

With video: Militant Beyoncé & alternatives at the Grammys

Does Beyoncé really need to start her Grammy's performance with a hundred man military police escort? Back-up dancers dressed up in black-camoflauge soldier costumes with guns and bullet-proof vests is somewhat of a cliché in pop stage performances nowadays. The effect is to make us comfortable with the promised police state of 1984, or it is a reflection of the militant culture we live in already. Whether chicken or egg, the music industry is too often a tool of the darkening culture of wartime. As Jay-Z says in the lyrics to the so awarded Best Song of the Year, (Who's Gonna) Run This Town

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With video: Imelda May is true blues Dublin

Imelda May is true Dublin who's not washing the Irish out of her accent to make-it as the capital city's newest star of traditionally Black forms of music. Black music made by Irish people is often exceptionally good and unusual. There's a certain Irish affinity to the blues, for example. Both Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday spoke of Irish ancestors, and many Irish performers, like Van Morrison recognize in Black music qualities that resonate to the deep note of native forms.

Sean-nós singing is blues with epic quality in a way. (cf. Sinéad O'Connor's Sean Nós Nua. Or Iarla Ó Lionáird's Afro Celt Soundsystem)

Imelda May is a Liberties colleen through and through--a sweet of heart with street smarts. She's a bodhrán player as a matter of fact, and a hot singer. I hope she explores more Irish sources.

Celts Take Manhattan

Ireland was well represented at the big party the Bretons threw at Connolly's in Times Square last night. Pictured there to the left is Tony DeMarco, New York City's premier fiddler and one of the great masters of Irish traditional music. He will be a judge at the prestigious Fiddler of Dooney festival in Sligo this coming October. While his regular Sunday night performance at the 11th Street Bar in the East Village, is a cherished weekly listening event for lovers of Irish fiddle.

Last night's performance at the Interceltic Fest Noz was a celebration of the music, dance, and culture of Brittany, Wales, Galicia, Cornwall, Mann, Ireland, Scotland and Wales by scores of artists. These nations share history, languages, and feeling that made the jam-packed event strangely beautiful.

The Bretons of New York have an organization called BZH NY and a reputation for throwing great events. So to usher in Imbolc, they invited friends from across the Celtic lands to celebrate in our various manifestations.

Ríona's TV suicide and murder (!?) of own child

The Irish phrase for suicide is "lámh a chur in a bás féin" or "to put hand in her own death," and it is a disturbingly familiar phenomenon one study attributes to the "social fragmentation" and economic downturn in dense urban and less populated areas of Ireland. Suicide or "féinmharú" and "self-harm" as it's put in the Hiberno-Irish expression are themes Ireland's best television program Ros na Rún confronts graphically in yesterday's broadcast.

It's not for me to psychoanalyze the character Ríona (pictured above, and played by actress Sorcha Ní Chéide). Her story has been told over ten seasons since she first appeared. In the last while, we've been watching as the murder of Ríona's husband -- the drug dealer O'Dowd -- has put her and her family under Garda investigation and stigmatized little Sophie, whom Ríona fears will always be haunted by her father's reputation.

Tadhg and Frances are married in this episode found at TG4.tv under the Dráma Cartlann and labeled Ros na Rún - 28/1/10. The wedding vows are worth watching the episode alone. At "the after" friends gather for speeches, including the shy one Tadhg gives, with the reference to Henry VIII, a particularly frightening reference considering what Mícheál has to tell us.

With Audio: Hear Jack Coen talk about his musical life

Reverence for the

Frances Goes "Bridezilla" on her Mother on Big Wedding Day

Today's the big wedding. Tadhg (there in the picture on the left, played by Macdara Ó Fatharta) is supposed to marry Frances. They want a simple wedding, but Frances' mother and father are meddling, and driving both bride and groom nuts. Tadhg threatens to shove the nose of Frances' mother where she won't like it if she doesn't stop interfering. In yesterday's episode, the bride herself snaps and kicks her own mother out of the house.

We won't see the big wedding until tomorrow when the second part airs on www.tg4.tv. Ros na Rún airs two new episodes a week on Tuesday and Thursday, and then the two together on Sunday. Yesterday's episode can be watched in the Dráma Cartlann (archive) at tg4.tv, go in there and click Ros na Rún - 26/1/10 to watch. Be sure you have Flash downloaded--it's all free and very easy.

Anything could happen with this wedding. The best man--Jason--is Tadhg's son from Dublin. The two have a rocky relationship, and Tadhg has already made Jason's friend Ríona unwelcome at the wedding. She's deep in worry over the murder of the father of her child who was drug dealer and nasty piece of work named O'Dowd, because she worries for the future of their daughter Sophie who must carry on in life with the awful reputation O'Dowd leaves behind.

Finding the African in Irish traditional music

The masters of the Irish musical tradition have done more global diplomatic work than any politician could ever do. Available now on the Link TV website is a very special example of how the Irish musician has made our unique culture welcome across the world.

Two immense ambassadors of the Irish tradition--Liam Ó Maonlaí and Paddy Keenan--were sent to the west African nation of Mali by Luachra Productions a couple of years ago to produce an award winning documentary on Irish and African music that is now available on-line in its entirety at Link TV for free, and for an indefinite time. Click over to the site, get a cup of tea, and sit back for an hour or so to witness the enormous power Irish music has to make the most exotic of cultures utterly familiar.

The film is called Dambé - The Mali Project. The movie opens with Paddy Keenan. He plays a melody on low whistle with a local flute player and drummer while village members listen, appreciate and make percussion to their music. An ancient woman dances to the sounds like a bird swimming in wind. The scene is very beautiful.

¡Viva! ¡Los Chieftains! New album celebrates Mexican Irish alliance.

Irish people can relate to various peoples around the world on the basis of a similar history. When the United States attacked Mexico and confiscated states like Texas and New Mexico in the mid-19th century, Irish people could relate.

In a new album to be released tomorrow night at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, The Chieftains celebrate the memory of a band of Irishmen who defended Mexico against American invasion.

The album is a collaboration with American guitar legend Ry Cooder, with whom (and my dad!) they previously recorded a track on The Long Black Veil called The Coast of Malabar. Cooder is scheduled to appear with the band at tomorrow night's concert in Glasgow.

Magic nights under the Blarney Star

If Carolan were alive and living in New York City, he'd be giving house concerts to patrons of the Irish arts on Fifth Avenue. Rightly, Carolan's musical heirs--Irish traditional musicians--already have a home in the shadow of Washington Square arch at the venerable home of Ireland House, NYU's center for Irish studies and culture.

The townhouse in the middle of NY's preferred zip code became a sanctuary for Blarney Star Productions--the Friday night concert series organized forever by the Don of Irish music production in New York City, Don Meade. Meade has dedicated his life to ensuring that Irish traditional music has a quiet home for listening, and the Ireland House venue has long served as a magical spot for just that. Here's a snap shot of two ladies dancing to the music at Ireland House, from Friday night, when Seán McComiskey and Cleek Shrey performed--kicking off the 2010 Blarney Star season:

Worst Irish act honored in Dublin

Celebrity in Ireland has a lot to do with how the bollox in question makes everybody look at home. To mitigate the effects of cheese stinking it up for everybody else--are The Gooseberries.

The not-so-distinguishing ceremony was held on Thursday at Dublin's Sugar Club with the sour cream of Irish entertainment and media whipped up for humiliation dished back.

Standing before Simon Cowell night after night on British TV last year were twin boys from Dublin--Jedward--who became a household word uttered by the top politicians in both Britain and Ireland. The wholesome pair were booed and beloved, and gave Cowell plenty opportunity to slag, but they were able to say to Graham Norton that they always heard the "boos" as "woos." In the video below the pair kick it with Vanilla Ice, which serves as one of the most vivid examples of the truth to be found in Dubhglas de hÍde's essay The Necessity for DeAnglicizing Ireland which can be read online here.

Rare species of troll Takes to Dublin airwaves

The traffic coming into Dublin every morning is brutal. Inching into the city, commuters turn to the radio for the solace that comes from a bit of craic. No better place to get it than on Dublin's 98FM where the Toll Trolls named "M" and "50" for the motorway make everything better. The brothers live under a toll bridge on the M50 and broadcast live every morning in short sketches of comedic gold.

If road rage has met its match with the Toll Trolls, so too maybe the situation in the north. You can watch the Toll Trolls tackle the peace process head-on in this clip about Sesame Street, northern Ireland.

Echoes of Ireland in 'Twilight' movies

Exotic Ireland takes the lead in culture showcase

New Yorkers feel like we've seen it all. Life in the city is a constant hunt for the new or the strange. And that's what Cultúr Éireann gave us at the Irish Arts Center's showcase two weekends ago.

With the world at our fingertips--and not to mention scores of facade-Irish mish mosh acts slogging away here already--when performers come out to entertain us, we're hoping for something exotic, something that you can only get from Ireland, something deep.

Same goes for tourists. The recent Lonely Planet review of Ireland describes "a land of motorways and multiculturalism" and laments the loss of "traditional culture" but what they mean is the loss of something uniquely Irish to make the trip to Ireland more interesting than one elsewhere. You can read about it here.

Confessions of a 'Ros na Rún' addict: How to get started

Now everybody can make like John Millington Synge and earwig on the native Irish at work and play in their own language. Having passed the 1000th episode mark this past Christmas, Ros na Rún's characters and its unfolding plots have garnered a richness rare except for great television. And generously, TG4.tv provides the show to an international audience

Former Irish PM Bertie Ahern gets (BS) artist tax break

Determined to get every penny he can for his tell-nothing autobiography, the former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern applied to the Irish Republic's Tax Commission for a tax-break usually reserved for artists. And he got it.

The Artist's Tax Exemption Scheme was originally designed to assist struggling

Irish twist on NYC subway's No Pants! Day

In the ever-blurring boundary between art and stunt, Improv Everywhere's 6th Annual No Pants! subway ride got some Irish up the weekend before last.

Over 200 provocateurs did away with social convention and dropped trou, before doing like Mayor Michael Bloomberg and taking a symbolic trip on the uptown local. The mayor did not participate, and is known to be a stickler about wearing pants in public.

Among the mad men and women, were none other than some of Irish traditional music's more daring performers: Katie Linnane, Isaac Alderson and Dan Lowery, who ended up taking No Pants! to a whole new level.

Irish language thriving In New York City

More than 20 Irish speakers and readers gathered in Long Island City to have a raucous round-table talk together this past Saturday. The impressive turn-out had come to discuss the novel “Sobalsaol,” written by the popular author and screenwriter Pádraig Standún.

"Irish speakers make excellent use of the Internet," said Daithí MacLochlainn who organizes Club Leabhar for Irish language book-lovers (hence the name). It's how he explained the group's unexpected size. The club uses a Facebook page; while club member Séamus Blake described the reading material and has promoted the gathering on his bi-lingual Irish language radio program Míle Fáilte on WFUV -available on-line.

Reeling over the midweek hump with Irish trad and folk sessions at Dunnes

Getting over the Wednesday hump takes something to look forward to. Usually that's the weekend, but not so in White Plains, where daydreamers in the office can look forward to Wednesday night at Dunne's Pub to bring them out of the rut, and have been for more than a decade.

With master Irish-American fiddler Brian Conway at the helm, the performance-level session attracts serious musicians and an audience of serious listeners.

Brian Conway is a lion among the true Irish fiddlers of New York, coming out of the tradition from a continuum that stretches back to 19th century players who performed and recorded Irish traditional music for the same labels that the earliest jazz recordings were made on.

Blarney Star series kicks off at Ireland House with McComiskey and Shrey

Keeping up with all the Irish traditional and folk music happenings in New York City is a massive task.

The city is not just chock-a-block with brilliant musicians, and a vibrant multi-venue session scene, it's also a key destination in the Celtic Corridor that runs along the Northeast United States. There's no telling who might show up--or from where--any given night. Musicians from Baltimore often stop in to a NYC seisiún on the way to a gig in Boston, say, without batting an eye.