"Who Fears to Speak" (RTE CD 209)
Sanitised by cease-fire, these terrific 1798 memorabilia in traditional, ballad, choral and classical song styles take the `B' out of "rebel" by filtering 19th-century agit-prop through parlour lace and placing it on a grand stage. Len Graham is metered in Henry Joy and in Eithne Carbery's Roddy McCorley, Deirdre Masterson is herself sung by the magnificent Dunlavin Green.
Richard Stevens's Wind That Shakes The Barley evokes Sarah Makem, Aine Ni Cheallaigh mouths Munster in Maidin Luan Chincise while Liam Clancy alone remains true to genre. The songwriters' names are mostly absent, but song-choice, lyrics and history-notes shockingly remind that there has been more to the creation of Celtic Tiger liberty than 20th century Euro-money.
Fintan Vallely
Kathleen Loughnane: "Affairs of the Harp" (CD 5 034167 039295)
Like The Bumblebees this harpist brings the ancient instrument yet further into mainstream traditional music by here blending with Alec Finn's three-string bazouki, Mary Staunton and Sharon Shannon's accordions, and Sean Ryan's whistle. The instrument's note-for-note pedagogy is manoeuvred beautifully solo on President Garfield's hornpipe and in the Bunting-transcribed Wild Geese air, where neat fingering is silhouetted delicately by unobtrusive box drone. Battling as it does for ear-space with modern instruments of considerable reputation, here the harp's achievement is to break out of the standard "Carolanism", yet exploit a surprising variety of old, unexplored material like Connellan's Lord Iveagh, the wonderful, 18th-centuryO'Farrell-sourced Waterford Waltz, the latter, like Mistletoe Waltz, a sweet and timely suggestion of the season that is in it.
Fintan Vallely
Martin and Chris Dowling: "A Thousand Farewells" (CM 001)
Altan guitarist Daithi Sprol backs this superb, unadorned and interesting flute and fiddle that evidences a path of emigration and music-search from 1950s to 1990s, Gurteen and Tullamore to Chicago, Wisconsin to Minneapolis, Dublin and back to Belfast.
Fiddler Martin is a meticulous style-pedant, has a Sligo solidity in Sean Ryan's title track, a Liz Carroll, wholegrain intensity on his own Hegel Helman's. Flute-player Chris rises to a Peter Horan, abandoned swing on Fred Finn's polka set, in unison on Martin Ansboro's and Girl That Broke My Heart reels. Her a cappella singing underscores the journeying of this music - for the transported Open The door and Banks Of The River are forthrightly Irish - this in contrast to the ponderous waltz finale that evokes more the ad-man's turf-smoke.
Fintan Vallely
