Dublin and Kerry’s sporting ties are well documented, whether it’s the rivalry of the counties on the pitch or the camaraderie that has bound their footballers together long after the final whistle at Croke Park.
The musical ties that bind the two counties are less well known, but now their shared passion for music, song and dance is being highlighted with the launch of an album by two of the finest musicians in the tradition, Cormac Begley and Liam O’Connor, and with the publication of books by each of their fathers, Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich and Mick O’Connor.
Cormac and Liam’s album, Into the Loam, is a full-throated, visceral excavation of our tradition through the coalescence of concertina and fiddle. It’s a collection that’s intuitively familiar and gloriously groundbreaking, the musicians searching for new meaning in old forms.
Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich, a box player and singer of renown, has written a rich personal account of his life in music, in culture and in the Irish language. Clann na Seanmhuintire, whose title he translates as Of My People (and which has editions in both Irish and English), is shot through with west Kerry wit, spit-polished and honed by Breanndán’s richly textured bilingualism.
Mick O’Connor is a Dublin flute player and traditional-music historian whose life’s work interviewing, recording, photographing and documenting the capital’s vast musical tradition has culminated in the publication of In Safe Hands.
The book reflects on the city’s tapestry of influences and contributions to our musical tradition, beginning with the Gaelic Revival in 1893 and culminating in the formation of Na Píobairí Uilleann in 1968.
Mick refers to it as his Satanic Verses, but it’s in fact a lovingly nurtured portrait of the great, the good and the downright brilliant artists and characters who have shaped the tradition – and one that halts, perhaps wisely, at a juncture at enough of a remove from the present to allow for insightful appraisal.
Cormac Begley and Liam O’Connor borrowed the title Into the Loam from the late Tony MacMahon, who, upon hearing Cormac’s playing some years ago, used the phrase to describe how he was delving deep beneath the surface of the music and making the tunes his own.
“We wanted to record tunes we both resonated with,” Liam says. “We wanted to explore different combinations of instruments, and we were trying to push a little further than our natural boundaries, in terms of being a bit more organic or rougher around the edges. To leave the earth in there, so that it wouldn’t be as clean or crisp – exploring a different spectrum, I suppose.”
They recorded the album in the studios at the Irish Traditional Music Archive, on Merrion Square in Dublin – Liam’s professional home, as he has been the organisation’s director since 2019.
[ ‘A beast of a musician’: Video showing concertina master Cormac Begley goes viralOpens in new window ]
“It’s trying to explore what’s in the collective subconscious of what we inherited from our families, everyone we played with or met,” he says. “There are countless experiences from Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy where you have a cacophony of noise, and we wanted to explore some of those experiences on the album and be a little braver in our approach together.”
Into the Loam is about creation, not just recreating the music the duo inherited.
“I think it’s important to develop your own style,” Cormac says. “It’s something my father always encouraged me to do, and the same for Liam. The goal is to try to find your own voice, your own style of playing, and I think we’ve dug into that, in terms of exploring the meaning of tunes.
“Every tune has a different emotional world, a grittiness and a way of describing it. The more you open up to that, and listen, and see what the potentials are in your instrument, the better the shared sounds that we create are.
“That’s our way of thinking about it. A lot of the people we’ve listened to over the years who inspired us have done it in their own ways, and that’s informed our approach, to step into that for ourselves musically.”
To what degree has geography played a part in their tune selections?
“Geography comes up a lot,” Cormac says, “and for me there’s a west Kerry side, but I’m very strongly influenced by Clare music as well. More broadly, geography for me is an emotional geography. Different tunes tap into different feelings and experiences, and it’s about trying to be as honest as you can with that.”
Breanndán’s delight in hearing what Cormac and Liam have created is palpable.
“I’ve never heard playing like it. It’s completely individual,” he says. “Two individuals coming together as one – and, by the same token, being individual in their playing as well. It’s almost ón saol eile” – otherworldly – “but still very true and very traditional.
“If tradition is alive it has to move – and it has moved to a place that’s completely new and yet an-traidisiúnta ar fad”, or very traditional altogether. “It’s of itself. It’s going deeper into the world that they’ve come from.”
Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich’s musicianship has been a magnet for musicians and visitors to west Kerry for decades. His autobiography will be the first book to be published under his son’s Airt imprint. Writing it played a central role in his recovery from the untimely death of his friend Danny Sheehy, the poet, when the boat they were in capsized off the Iberian coast in 2017.
“I found writing the book therapeutic,” Breanndán says. “I got great encouragement from [the poet and academic] Tadhg Ó Dubhsláine and from [the book’s editor] Tracey Ní Mhaonaigh. There were some – very few – bad memories, and I wanted to settle my score with them, but I found it very healing.
“I keep a diary every day, whether it’s a bad or a good day. The road can be very lonely if you’re travelling on your own, but if there’s something bothering you, and you go to the trouble of writing it down, you’ve shared it with somebody and it’s not stuck within you any more.”
Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich might be regarded as someone with the most mellifluous Irish. Perhaps surprisingly, he says of writing the book, “my fluency in both languages improved, because you have to work to find the right words. I’ve always loved Hiberno-English. I would hate to see us lose that or to lose all the canúintí ceoil [musical dialects] and canúintí cainte [spoken accent or turns of phrase].”
Breanndán’s memoir was launched at Listowel Writers Week. Mick O’Connor’s book will be launched at the Teachers’ Club in Dublin on June 27th. Both men will be at Vicar Street in Dublin for their sons’ album launch on Friday, June 6th. It seems that the histories and tunes of both counties are destined for reinvigoration for generations to come.
“It’s essentially about my community,” Mick O’Connor says. “I remember showing visiting pipers from America around Dublin, seeing where all the different musical families lived but don’t any more: the Rowsomes, the Potts and the Recks.
“Then we went on to Kerry – and the music was flying. There were no buildings, but they had passed the music on intact. It’s great to think that the music has survived.
“Some things are lost, but I think it’s in a much better place. Recently I was playing with my family and grandkids, and there were 13 of us up on stage, and all their friends are friends with the Mulligans and the Kellys and so on.
“That’s a magnificent place to be: they’ll be connected and friends for life now. You couldn’t ask for better than that.”
