The Keane Edge

Mayor Bloomberg was on the radio this morning co-hosting The John Gambling Show on WOR, when he felt the need to speak "Gaelic" as he called it, to explain what he felt about Arizona's new "show-me-your-papers" policy. You can listen to the whole show as a podcast at the WOR site, here. The audio excerpt below is the mayor responding to the Arizona immigration policy, where he expounds about the value of immigrants, about the need to chose immigrants based on skills-needed and about the bad thinking behind deportation movements and draconian laws such as passed in the south west. To summarize his feelings about America's current immigration policies, he said "as they say in Gaelic, it's meshugenah." Mayor Bloomberg meant of course to say "craiceáilte" (crack-awl-chuh) which is really the Irish Gaelic word for crazy, instead he said the Yiddish one. Listen to the mayor himself talking with John Gambling:

The mayor may be conflating Yiddish and Irish as the same language, after reading this story about "Getting Hebraic on Gaelic."

The New York Daily News has picked up on the campaign to get Chase Bank's ATM machines to offer an Irish language option in heavily Irish neighborhoods. I reported on this story when Chase Bank first answered Daithí MacLochlainn's petition by promising to consider the request, you can read that story here, or in the Sunnyside Times, here. Since then, there has been growing support from Ireland and the New York Irish community to make this happen. Seán Ó hAdhmaill, who is one of the language movement's brightest young leaders, has joined with us to form a working group (meitheal) to see this issue through to implementation--you can help by joining up on Facebook here. Doiminic Ó Brolcháin has also joined the New York group from his home in Newry where he works on behalf of the needlessly delayed Language Act for Civil Rights in the north. Bank of Ireland, for example, offers ATM service in Irish in the Republic, but not to residents of the north, violating the spirit of the peace process. The clipping from the Daily News newspaper with color photo is below, and the link to the article can be seen here.

Details are only emerging from Kane County in the Chicago area about an incident over the weekend that ended in an arrest, felony charges and presumably an angry Grammy-nominated fiddle player. Host of WFUV's A Thousand Welcomes, Kathleen Biggins, provides a report from the Daily Herald, and some additional information about what happened.

McNally's Irish Pub on Main St. in St. Charles was hosting Liz Carroll and Jim DeWan for a seisiún on Sunday night. Good pubs have hosted traditional artists for centuries, and in the States, it's becoming more and more necessary for Irish-styled pubs to show credentials by hosting traditional sessions by real traditional players, because the pub is to traditional Irish music what the speakeasy to jazz. As for Carroll, she recently performed for President Obama at a reception in the White House; she has innumerable awards, including this year's Grammy nomination to amplify the chorus of her legion fans who love and respect her music. An out-of-place mouth at the bar was not so much a fan, however, and wanted to play the stereo, hating, as she made clear, the warmly authentic Irish feeling at McNally's.

So she sounded a false fire alarm, killed the music session, and ran out of the establishment, down the road, before being caught by police, identified by McNally patrons, handcuffed, and charged with a Class 4 Felony for wasting fire response services. Her name is Shona A. Lukes--"sona" or "shona" is the Irish word for "happy" incidentally--she's 25, and should find another hobby besides drinking. Music is good for a disturbed soul, and can transport one away from troubles, even if brought needlessly on one's self.

Chase Bank has promised the Irish community of New York that it will review requests by at least one of its Irish-speaking customers in Queens, that the bank extend the courtesy of multi-lingual ATM service to those in places like Woodside who speak Irish. The bank's ATMs currently offer residents the option of an interface in any number of neighborhood languages, including Spanish and Chinese. A quick survey of the neighborhood confirms enthusiasm among residents for Irish language service and recognition.

Bank of Ireland made the move a few years ago making all their ATMs Irish-optioned, and in so-doing are joining a whole new generation of brands that wish to recognize their Irish customers as other groups are so recognized with service and advertisement in their language. A consumer group Tomhaltóir assists companies that make the decision to use Irish.

The desire is particularly accute in Queens, where residents asserted their Irish-speaking numbers in the 2000 Census. According to that survey, there are more than 1,200 Irish Gaelic speakers living in Queens County--see line 11 of the census chart here. As Census 2000 reports, there are more than 25,000 Irish Gaelic speakers living in the USA, who have 40 million Irish Americans cousins who are themselves descended from Irish speakers who were forced by the old United States assimilation model to give up their language in order to become accepted Americans.

Below are some pictures from a unique type of Irish event in America. It's put together by people who speak Irish and have a detail-oriented not-for-profit organization called Daltaí na Gaeilge that's been making these life-changing weekends-away happen for decades. The immersion weekends are for those lovers of Irish culture who wish engage it on a deeper level. Daltaí means students, and it's for anybody with the desire to learn.

The event below took place in a maritime setting by the beach on a long sliver of an island along the coast of New Jersey. The guests were a group of a couple dozen advanced speakers and students of An Ghaeilge, the majestic native language of Irish culture. Daltaí organized everything, from soup to nuts, hotel to classes, entertainment and networking opportunities at the cheapest possible vacation price. The next weekend coming up is for newbies and cainteoirí líofa--it's for everybody who wants to get into or get a taste of this world-wide Irish language phenomenon. A lot more people will be at that one as its inclusive of people coming to the language for the first time.

For those who missed this event, but would like to spend a lovely weekend in nature--by a river this time, upstate New York--and really engage Irish culture at the linguistic and poetic level, Daltaí na Gaeilge is offering another immersion experience and weekend getaway from Friday May 7th to May 9th at a lovely lovely retreat built with the soul's rejuvenation in mind. The Irish word for soul is anam, and is related to the Sanskrit word for soul, Ātman or आत्मन्. Indeed, it's a common expression at these weekends:

Chase Bank has promised the Irish community of New York that it will review requests by at least one of its Irish-speaking customers in Queens, that the bank extend the courtesy of multi-lingual ATM service to those in places like Woodside who speak Irish. The bank's ATMs currently offer residents the option of an interface in any number of neighborhood languages, including Spanish and Chinese. A quick survey of the neighborhood confirms enthusiasm among residents for Irish language service and recognition.

Bank of Ireland made the move a few years ago making all their ATMs Irish-optioned, and in so-doing are joining a whole new generation of brands that wish to recognize their Irish customers as other groups are so recognized with service and advertisement in their language. A consumer group Tomhaltóir assists companies that make the decision to use Irish.

The desire is particularly accute in Queens, where residents asserted their Irish-speaking numbers in the 2000 Census. According to that survey, there are more than 1,200 Irish Gaelic speakers living in Queens County--see line 11 of the census chart here. As Census 2000 reports, there are more than 25,000 Irish Gaelic speakers living in the USA, who have 40 million Irish Americans cousins who are themselves descended from Irish speakers who were forced by the old United States assimilation model to give up their language in order to become accepted Americans.

Billy Connolly the Scottish actor and comedian stopped into Lillies not too long ago, standing transfixed, listening intently to the sweet traditional Irish music at the session that happens there every Saturday afternoon near Union Square.

Connolly is also a singer and banjo player. You can watch a documentary he made in Ireland, where he visits the historic Cobblestones pub in Dublin to join in a session going on one night. The link to this film is here. He opens the clip describing the "wonderful session culture where people play for no other reason except that you can." He's a bit nervous before he goes, as he hadn't been playing in a session for a while, limiting his practice "picking by myself at home."

Christy MacNamara is a musician from the heart of the music in Clare who is making a home for himself in NYC. MacNamara is a highly acclaimed photographer who has made the life and music of his native county, the subject of his critically acclaimed work in photography, music and story. The Morrison Hotel in SoHo is better known for displaying works by photographers recording the images of rock legends like Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and yet MacNamara's black and white images from the rural kitchens where Clare's musical legends play their tunes, have been on display at the Morrison in a unique presentation converging fine art and traditional Irish life. The work feels right at home, as though some of legends of modern popular music were returning themselves to Irish sources.

MacNamara's influences draw on the local and his unique access and understanding of people who make the tradition in Clare the special thing it is. MacNamara has narrated his sense of life, and his art in what has to be one of the finest books ever written on Irish traditional music, called "The Living Note", which is now out of print. The book is a collection of some of his classic photographs married to stories he has written with Peter Woods.
"The Living Note: the Heartbeat of Irish Music," was first published in 1996 presenting a fictionalized narrative of a young traditional musician and his family. The striking black-and-white images capture moments you could not capture without a kind of access only the intimate would have right to. He is in the middle of sessions at pubs, at weddings and wakes, and in the homes of people just as they laugh or hit the note that makes their face light up in an ecstasy only another musician might recognize.

Christy has built up a large body of music photography recording U2 and The Pogues alongside the legends of Irish music like Martin Hayes and his father PJ playing together. In 2007, MacNamara released his first solo recording "The House I Was Reared In." He is the first ever Irish winner of a Communication Art Award for his photograph of the fiddle player Paddy Killoughery. His work has been shown from London to Los Angeles and throughout Europe and Scandanavia and is held in many private and public collections worldwide. During 2006 and 2007 Christy's work was exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, La Jolla San Diegio, London and Ireland. You can learn more about this great artist at http://www.christymcnamara.com/.

The Blarney Star concerts are the longest running presentation of Irish traditional music in Manhattan. Don Meade has showcased world-class trad talent in downtown New York in various now-epic venues for decades, but has found a true home for his concert series on Fifth Avenue at NYU.

Among the super-stars of Irish traditional music---the kind that has a quiet crowd of afficionados agape--are Kevin Crawford & Cillian Vallely of the mega-group Lúnasa. Their show, with wickedly sensitive guitar accompaniment by Ted Davis packed the house and was an event to remember.

Below are some of the pictures from the Blarney Star concert at Ireland House last month. Clare flute, whistle and bodhrán player Kevin Crawford and Armagh uilleann piper and whistle player Cillian Vallely will be playing with their full group Lúnasa--Seán Smyth, Trevor Hutchinson and Paul Meehan the other members of the quintet--in New York very soon, and you can follow the band's schedule on Facebook--here. The band have just released their long-awaited new album Lá Nua, and you can find out more on their website--here. Paul Keating has also written a nice piece on Lúnasa, their latest release and up-coming gigs, you can look at here.

New York gets its name from York, a place the Welsh-speaking Britons called Eborakon, which means "place of the yew trees." This has the same Celtic quality as the place-name, Doire or Derry city, for example, which means, "place of the oak trees," or Dublin or Dubh Linn, which means "place of the black pool." Although Manhattan looks like Mannanán, the Celtic Poseidon, it more likely gets its name from Lenapé Manahata meaning "place of the many hills." It's helpful to remember the nature poetry that gave our cities their names, as it's important to have parks.

Daithí MacLochlainn who does Irish language tours of downtown Manhattan told me he starts his tour on the docks by the Seaport Museum where they have one of the oldest examples on brick of grafitti ever written on a wall in New York, and it just so happens that the five lines of graffiti are written in Irish Gaelic. More on that later.

More to the point, MacLochlainn is the one who told me about the Welsh and how they use Israeli pedagogy to teach their rich Celtic language to foreigners and native Welsh alike in rapid time with great results--Welsh is a thriving widely-used language. The Israelis developed a school called the Ulpan or אולפן. It's a "studio" setting for intensive language acquisition. The Welsh borrowed the school model and called it Wlpan, which is just a Welsh spelling on the Hebrew word.

This contrasts to the Irish mentality of the cúpla focail, such as in that favorite expression tóg go bog é, take it easy. To learn a language you immerse in it and use it. The Israeli model has new comers without Hebrew, spend five months acquiring it in the studio classroom while living on a kibbutz. In Ireland, a few words and a few hours a week in class will do.

An Crisis is a new comedy series from TG4, Ireland's most interesting television station that you can watch for free on-line--click here to do that. It's a satire that hits the bull's eye with a concept that lets a cast of great talents take the piss out of Ireland's economic and identity crisis from an arts and language office on the budgetary cutting block in Dublin.

"All" the dialects and languages of Ireland are used in this show to create a linguistic atmosphere full of puns, rhymes and jokes that cross borders and taboos unique to Ireland. The writer Antaine Ó Flatharta began his career at the Abbey Theatre, and has uncanny skill at having the various languages spoken on the island hash it out in the one place.

Irish is the language that gave Irish writers leverage, so to speak, on English, to bend it, and abuse at whim and will. This show has packed that dynamism into the one show, using bi-lingualism, emphasizing the Irish language, to express and ridicule the Irish condition. In Irish, self-mocking seems healthier than it manifests in English, where the language preserves attitudes towards Irish accents that subject the inward-looking into a public display glibly misunderstood and miscategorized by the larger English world.

Long ago, when my dad first emigrated to New York City, it was Mike Garry that made him welcome and made the landing less arduous than it would have been. Mike Garry is from the same area in Clare where my grandfather Patrick Keane is from. Our families were neighbors in Ballynacally (Baile na Caillí, "home of the wisened women") and were long connected in the way that makes Clare particularly special. Neighbors in that area of the world made music together. Mike had left this special kind of musical homeland to labor on the infrastructure of the greatest and noisiest city in the world years before my father did. Established in the Irish Bronx, Mike treated my dad very well when he landed. My dad stepped off the plane in JFK to a world that appreciated his music, because people like Mike Garry supported the music that conjures Ireland like no other music does. There are pictures below of three generations of Garrys thriving in the world, including step-dancers and flute players among them. Sheila Garry flew over from Clare to play fiddle for Mike, with Jimmy Garry on accordion, his daughter Ursula on flute, and granddaughter Róisín, step-dancing. There are pictures of just a few of the musicians who were on hand over a long night of fun: Joannie Madden, Mirella Murray, Dessie Groark, Tom Dunne, Deirdre Connolly, Jimmy Coen, Keith O'Neill, James Keane and many others. They came to give Mike an unforgettable night of music. He was delighted and full of love--as he is known for.