[caption id="attachment_70227" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Mick Moloney will perform at Symphony Space tomorrow."]
Ah, the St. Patrick’s Season, the time of the year when gigs are plentiful and traditional musicians take center stage. As you’re well aware, St. Patrick’s Day is this coming Saturday, which means that the multi-week season of Irish-themed festivities (which began, as far as I’m concerned, with Joanie Madden, John Whelan and Anna Colliton’s cameo on the Feb. 27 episode of “Gossip Girl”) is winding up to culminate in a full day of celebratory excess. I’m sure it’ll be great craic, especially since the day of recovery is already built into the weekend.
However, such craic sometimes obscures the spirit of the music. Most casual St. Patrick’s Day listeners aren’t privvy to its deeper history and significance, and occasionally see traditional music as little more than a curio, rolled out for the season and then put away for next time, like a holiday decoration, or the Shamrock Shake. What these people don’t appreciate is how active trad musicians are year round, and how high the standard of Irish music is in the United States. Here in New York, not only are many of our locally-grown musicians considered top players (All-Ireland champions, even), but we also boast an almost unfair share of exceptional musicians from Ireland living in the five boroughs. The abundance of sessions here means that everyone can get out and play together regularly, and that musicians passing through from abroad have well-tilled and vetted landing spots for tunes.
Looking beyond simple seasonal fare shows how much more more complicated the music is than one might typically think. While the core, inner game is one that bears on the past, the tradition is flexible enough to allow players to move beyond maudlin repertoire and basic session playing to explore serious ideas and sounds. Lunasa (which I will talk about next week) and Mick Moloney, in his various recent projects (including this week’s “Celtic Appalachia” concert), are two timely examples of this approach.
At the same time, the tradition is built for wit and humor. One of the great moments I’ve seen at a session happened in Dublin a few years back at the Palace Bar, when a younger gentleman sang “Girls on Film,” a pop song by the 1980s group Duran Duran, as a traditional ballad. The performance brought the place to a standstill and afterward everyone – crowd and musicians alike – had a good laugh. It was hilarious and fit in perfectly. (And before anyone recoils in horror at the cheek, I will remind that there is a recording floating around out there of East Clare fiddle legend Paddy Canny playing the Mariachi classic "Cielito Lindo," and that our own legend Msgr. Charlie Coen plays a brilliant version of “The Galop” from Jacques Offenbach's “Orpheus in the Underworld,” a piece known to most as “The Can Can.”)
Just a couple things to keep in mind this St. Patrick’s Day: Have fun and definitely stop into any bar or restaurant that is featuring traditional music – you’ll love what you hear and it’ll help keep the music in good graces. And if you really feel the need to shout a request at the musicians, make it "free the Tarbolton three" – it’ll be totally unexpected and they might even thank you for it later.
