For five years now, Altan, Ireland's most successful traditional band, have played a gig at the turn of the year in Ionad Cois Locha, among the mountains of Dunlewey (Dun Luiche), Co Donegal. The first time they feared they wouldn't fill the small hall, but manager and flute-player Frankie Kennedy held his nerve. The concert was mobbed and Frankie booked the band in for the following year; but by then he had died of cancer, and in his memory, the Frankie Kennedy Winter School had been founded.
The Altan concerts are a highlight of the school, a living example of the Donegal tradition the scholars have been steeping themselves in, proof that sawing relentlessly away on the fiddle can pay off. Lead singer Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh's brother, Gearoid O Maonaigh - who is married to Frankie Kennedy's sister - has built the school up to attract serious, off-season trad heads from the US, Germany, Japan and all over, and Tionscnamh Lugh provides a complementary package of concerts. This year, the Bumblebees, Begley and Cooney and Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill were among the attractions.
By the time Altan weighed in with their two concerts this year, the atmosphere was electric with word of Ni Dhomhnaill's concert, which was in reality a reconvening of the band Scarae Brae. With her brother, Micheal, and her sister, Triona, she tingled the audience's memory with some of the first experiments which were ever made in using accompaniment in the folk/pop manner with Irish traditional music. Ni Mhaonaigh and her father, Prionsias, had brought in half the locality for a singing session, which discovered new singers and old, old songs, some of them unknown even to Ni Mhaonaigh herself.
The Begley and Cooney ceili had thundered into the small hours, with Altan members joining the duo on stage. Still, Altan's New Year's Eve gig was being hailed as a triumph, which demonstrates again the old saying that the rock 'n' roll lifestyle is a Saga holiday compared with the trad one.
By the next day, Ni Mhaonaigh's voice was rested and extraordinarily clear. The band have developed a way of jump-starting concerts with Ni Mhaonaigh's bell-like voice, which hushes the audience into attentive silence. The concert was billed as a Runaway Sun- day Showcase, and she opened with a strong rendition of Suil Ghorm.
She revisited one of the highlights of this latest album in her Irish version of the simple Scottish ballad, I Wish My Love Were A Red, Red Rose, and wrought a spine-tingling spell with a new song composed with Mark Kelly, A Moment In Time, which celebrates a photograph of the fiddler John Doherty, as he strikes his fiddle once to round off a story. Throwing his head back in laughter in the background is box-player Dermot Byrne's uncle. The song and delivery are influenced by traditional singing, of course, but it, and particularly the harmonies with Mark Kelly, are obviously post-Beatles. While this provoked a struggle of longing in this listener for "the pure drop", it also evoked with eerie success the area's unbroken thread of music - and with it, the love, hope, laughter, fun and joy - which defeats time.
Ciaran's Capers saw bouzouki-player, Ciaran Curran bringing a new level of frankly Oriental jangle to his work, well counterpointed by masterfiddler, Ciaran Tourish. The band raised the temperature with wild sets like the Fermanagh Highlands from Island Angel, which starts tantalisingly slow, hiccupy and Scottish and suddenly roars into a reel, and the Clan Ranald set from Runaway Sunday, which drew whoops from the crowd as the fiddles of Ni Mhaonaigh and Tourish pulled away from each other and then danced madly together.
There are a lot of things about our response to music that we don't understand - why a sudden change of tempo or register is exciting, in what crevice of the brain 4/4 time is imprinted. Altan don't understand these things either, but they know how to make them happen.
