GREEN NOTES FILL THE EMERALD ISLE
Amid natural wonders of Ireland’s Atlantic coast, the towns of Doolin and Dingle showcase rich talents and traditions of Irish music
IDOOLIN, Ireland t was just after 10 on an August night when the music began at McDermott’s Pub in this village along the aptly named Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland’s west coast.
I only had an obstructed view of the band from the doorway into the small, crowded room. But the music came through — loud, clear and glorious.
A long-haired Blackie O’Connell, fronting a trio seated on a modest wooden bench, was stomping his foot to a hard-driving jig. He was playing at hummingbird-speed on the uilleann pipes, an Irish version of bagpipes (the wind produced by squeezing bellows at the elbow rather than blowing).
To his right, a kilted flutist was matching him note-for-note with the same calm virtuosity. To his left, a third player strummed vigorously as he hovered over a bouzouki — a teardrop-shaped, stringed instrument with Greek origins, re-tuned for the Irish repertoire.
This was near the end of a two-week family vacation to Ireland. We had toured the cathedrals and museums of Dublin, strolled along breathtaking Atlantic cliffs and made pilgrimages to the haunts of the authors W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Lady Augusta Gregory.
But as much as anything, we had come for the music.
You might call it a trip that was decades in the making. Back in college, a friend had lent me an album of Celtic music (the umbrella term for the traditional songs of the Irish, Scottish and their cousins). That prompted me to get another album, and another. Even though my Irish roots are slender and distant, I was hooked. My wife and I have been going to Celtic music performances in the U.S. since our early dates, and our daughter has caught the bug as she learns the steps of traditional Irish dance. So we were eager to hear the music in Ireland itself.
You can pretty much throw a dart on a map of Ireland and find stellar music at a nearby pub, as indeed we found from Dublin to Trim to Kilkenny. But we found an especially rich vein on the western coast, in the towns of Dingle in County Kerry and Doolin in County Clare.
Each town provides a base for a small legion of remarkable talents who perform solo or in various combinations on guitar and fiddle, on pipes and bouzouki, on tin
whistle and bodhran drum, on dancing feet and vocals switching nimbly from the English to the Irish, with its rich palette of gutturals and sibilants.
To be sure, some of the bands played the obligatory chestnuts such as “Irish Rover” and “Whiskey in the Jar,” but there’s much, much more to the Irish repertoire.
Many of the ensembles we heard played brisk dance reels and jigs, riffing in solo turns and constantly shifting instrument combinations. They also mixed in folk ballads redolent of love, loss, dark humor, faery mystery and heroic deeds.
The Irish folk tradition is, in fact, a living tradition, with musicians still composing at a steady clip. And they’ve been incorporating influences from blues, modern folk and rock at least since Bob Dylan met the Clancy Brothers in 1960s Greenwich Village.
In fact, the music reflects the conversation that Celtic musicians in the Old World have been carrying on for generations with their distant cousins from Cape Breton to Appalachia to Australia. We heard one musician in Dingle perform an Irish ballad that was taught to her by a singer from Kentucky.
Dingle
We arrived in the Dingle peninsula on a dark and stormy night, greeted with gale-force winds and horizontal rain. Only by the light of day could we begin to appreciate its ancient lanes, steep cliffs and rocky beaches.
By evening we had settled into the peninsula’s namesake Dingle village and began a crawl through the row of colorful, gabled pubs along the winding streets of the village center.
We enjoyed sets by a guitarist and concertinist in one pub, An Droichead Beag, and a guitarist and fiddler around the corner at O’Sullivan’s Court House Pub.
At the nearby Dingle Pub, a larger band played a mix of folk, rockabilly and John Denver. At intervals there, local champion dancer David Geaney put down a wooden platform and performed astonishing hardshoe routines in both modern tap and traditional straight-armed Irish styles. The crowds swelled each time Mr. Geaney shuffled effortlessly to the backdrop of a tin whistle before unleashing a blizzard of staccato steps and athletic leaps.
The next day we drove along the winding Slea Head Drive with its frothy beaches, precipitous cliffs, primitive “beehive” stone huts and views of mist-dimmed islands. We even chanced upon sheepdogs at work.
We were back in Dingle town by evening to attend a concert at St. James Church, a sanctuary with a simple yet inviting interior.
The concert began with a simple, meditative solo on tin whistle, followed by a poignant duet of Bernie Phaid — who in sang in a dulcet, bluesy style and played a banjouke (yep, a blend of banjo and ukulele) — and Dave Clancy, with equally mellifluous guitar and vocals.
Then came a trio of fiddler Remy Spencer, guitarist John Brown and uilleann pipes virtuoso Eoin Duignan. The pipes (named for the Irish word for elbow) comprise one of the most complex hand-held instruments around and take years to master, so it was a treat throughout our trip to hear performers such as Mr. Duignan make them sing.
The group offered a free CD to the first person to get up and dance, and after some hesitation our daughter went into the aisle and showed her Irish steps.
The concert setting was welcome, where we could focus on the music. The pubs are fun and certainly a native home to Irish music, but they can be noisy and busy. At one crowded pub, I found myself wedged inescapably next to a loud American talking over the music.
Speaking of Americans, this is as good a time as any to note that Dingle and Doolin have both been thoroughly discovered by tourists. You hear enough Boston accents to think you’re on Cape Cod.
But for the most part, they’re an appreciative lot, having traveled all that way to explore Irish roots and culture. Even the guy talking over the music was at least talking about it.
Doolin
From Dingle we made a long drive north to County Clare, arriving late in the evening for a dusky view from atop the spectacular Cliffs of Moher.
Doolin — despite its shared musical abundance — looks nothing like Dingle with its huddled streets. Doolin, in contrast, has just a few roads and buildings, surrounded by fields swept by salty winds.
At Gus O’Connor’s Pub, we had an outstanding meal of salmon, tender vegetables and other servings. No mere pub-grub there. A large circle of musicians began playing a varied set in an adjacent room. It was particularly fun to hear them perform the Ralph McTell ballad, “From Clare to Here” — because here we were in Clare.
The next morning we took a ferry out from the Doolin terminal for a too-quick day trip to Inishmore. It’s the largest of the fabled Aran Islands, redoubts of traditional Irish language and culture. Even the Arans’ welloiled tourist machine could only partly distract from the spectacular cliff views and rugged landscapes, the overheard Irish patois and the remarkable stone ruins of an ancient fort and a medieval monastic settlement.
We were back in Doolin for dinner at McDermott’s pub. After a traditional fishand-chips meal, the music began.
We crowded in as closely as we could to hear Blackie O’Connell and his crew. They played a pulsing jig followed by a traditional ballad and back again on their pipes, flute and strings — serenading the dark coastal night with a joyous answer to the fierce landscapes and ancient mysteries we had explored by day.