Almost five years ago, sean-nós singer and native Irish speaker MacDara Ó Conaola gave Irish Stew a tour of Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands. Since then, he has moved to the mainland, worked two very different jobs, taken a slice of Irish culture to Italy, and come home again.
For Irish Stew’s 170th episode, co-host Martin Nutty catches up with MacDara back on the island, still as passionate about the language as ever.
“I keep telling younger people, and just anybody really, that Irish can open a lot of doors,” he says, “and it’s a very positive thing.”
The conversation covers his year as an Irish language officer in Ennis, County Clare, and the story of Clare’s lost Gaeltacht, where the last native speaker died only in 1996. His work there launched Irish language events and projects that are still running.
While MacDara's role as a language officer was satisfying, he wanted to spend less time in the office and more time rubbing shoulders with people. So he moved on to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, where he had his own cottage as the Irish language and sean-nós singing interpreter. He calls it “the nicest job I ever had.” There he got visitors from Alabama and Connecticut talking to each other, and met Jason Alexander and Jimmy Kimmel along the way.
When his time at Bunratty came to an end last winter, MacDara went looking for his next project, and found it in Verona, Italy. A cold email to Tocatì, a festival of street games that features a different guest country each year, led to Ireland taking the spotlight this September, with a delegation of about 200 sportspeople, musicians, craftspeople and Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht.
His advice for anyone learning Irish is hopeful: speak it at home, starting with the youngest.
“They’re not judging you,” he says.
The episode features three of MacDara’s songs: "Caisleán A’ tSléibhe;" "The Love Token," title track of his 2006 album; and "Fadó Fadó," recorded with his children, Seán and Michelle.
You can listen to MacDara Ó Conaola on the Irish Stew Podcast here:
For more information, visit IrishStewPodcast.com. You can listen to "The Irish Stew Podcast" wherever you get your podcasts.
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