Successive generations, each fired by a love of traditional music, have kept the Kilfenora Céilí Band energised and evolving since 1909
BANDS AREN’T often in the business of celebrating their own centenary, although The Rolling Stones and U2 look like they’re hell-bent on heading in that direction. Longevity is literally the stuff of life in traditional music though, and the Kilfenora Céilí Band will be blowing out 100 candles on their birthday cake at the National Concert Hall this St Patrick’s weekend.
Occupying the third corner of a triangle that encompasses Ennistymon and Lisdoonvarna, and acting as a gateway to the Burren, Kilfenora has been a hotbed of traditional music ever since a conglomerate was convened to play its first official engagement in 1909: a fundraiser in aid of the local parish church. A natural evolutionary process underpinned the band’s changing membership and its ability to connect with dancers across the country and further afield. Radio played no small part in the Kilfenora Céilí Band’s early existence, with entire villages convening around a sole wireless to hear the band’s performances and dance a step or three in unison.
Céilí band music brings with it its own challenges, particularly for non-dancers who sometimes struggle to appreciate the finer points of its densely packed arrangements. Dancers, on the other hand, revel in its propulsive force, eking the most sublime steps from rhythm sections that can sound positively plodding to the uninitiated.
The Kilfenora Céilí Band’s now annual pilgrimage to Dublin for St Patrick’s Day, where they’ve fuelled the unlikeliest of dancers on Earlsfort Terrace, has become a linchpin of Dublin’s mid-March festivities. This year, it’s likely their shoes will be shinier, their piano keys flintier and their repertoire poised for flight when they take to the stage at the National Concert Hall on March 16th. After all, 100th birthday parties aren’t exactly 10 a penny.
Garry Shannon has been a member of the Kilfenora Céilí Band since 1992, so, although he has 17 years’ membership under his belt, he’s still merely an apprentice. Having grown up in Corofin, just 15 minutes from Kilfenora, in a family steeped in music (his sisters are Sharon and Mary Shannon), he was long acquainted with both the band and its long-time leader, the indomitable Kitty Linnane, who was at the helm of the Kilfenora for four decades, until her death in 1993.
“My first memory of Kitty was of being brought to hear her play with some other musicians in a local bar when I was a teenager,” Shannon recounts. “I sat up beside them and played the tin whistle – and they tolerated me, and even encouraged me, for the night. At the end of the evening, Kitty put a fiver into my hand, which was a lot of money at the time, in the late 1970s.
“I said to her ‘What are you doing? I was only playing for the craic’, and she replied to me: ‘Put that in your pocket. We’re all only doing it for the craic’. I will always remember her for that. She was a very hard worker and committed herself totally to the band, and I think that the band owes its significance very much to her.”
SHANNON ACKNOWLEDGES that any band with such a lengthy existence must inevitably experience its own creative peaks and troughs, and he was keenly aware of these when he was first invited to join the Kilfenora in 1991.
“My perception of the Kilfenora in the 1980s and early 1990s was of a band in decline,” he admits, “and I had heard them when they were not at their best, but they were definitely a repository of a wonderful tradition and there was a huge heritage there. When I got the invitation, it was an honour, but it was also a curiosity for me to see what it might develop into. I saw it as a great opportunity to play more music, because every invitation one gets to play music, one takes it up, within reason. The more you play, the more enjoyment you get from it.”
The Byrts, Lynches and Wards were families who populated the Kilfenora Céilí Band with ferocious loyalty down through the years, during a time when the band was bagging All-Ireland titles with the consistency of a Kerry football team. In fact, to this day, a strong blood line runs through the band, sometimes connecting members without even their knowledge. At one time, Shannon explains, seven of the 10 members of the band were related to one another. Even in the current line up, Garry Shannon discovered that he was related to a number of band members, only after he had joined.
Competition has long been a measure of success in the world of traditional music, but Shannon is quick to point to the band’s success in both touring and recording as evidence of the importance of creative expression for the Kilfenora band members.
“In the 1990s we left competition behind us and branched out into recording and touring,” he recounts. “Of course the band was proud of its achievements in competition, and as well as that, there weren’t any other avenues of validation for a band at the time. Opportunities to travel and tour weren’t there in the past either, whereas that’s all changed now.”
Daithí Ó Dronaí, who has been playing electrifying fiddle on the All-Ireland Talent Show recently, is a grandson of another Kilfenora stalwart, the sublime Chris Droney, who plays concertina with the delicate finesse of a seamstress in Jane Austen. It’s proof positive that the music is evolving as it passes from one hungry generation to another, each one’s appetite fired by the evolving influences of its own peers as well as by the music itself.
Garry Shannon, through his work with the Limerick Meitheal summer school, has recently taken the opportunity to re-create the instrument combinations and the arrangements of a selection of céilí bands. It was a telling exercise which highlighted the distinct features of each ensemble, to a far greater extent than Shannon had anticipated.
“It made me realise that bands were much more diverse in style in the 1930s and 1940s than they are now,” he says. “They have become more homogenised, definitely, in recent times. Competition has done that. Of course they’ve become better in standard, but it has also caused a movement to the middle, as happens in politics too.”
The raison d’être of céilí music is céilí dancing. Does Shannon feel that the band takes a markedly different approach to playing concerts where the audience is seated, in comparison to playing in a dance hall where the step is all that matters? “Every year, on St Patrick’s Day, we play an outdoor gig on Earlsfort Terrace for five or six thousand people,” Shannon offers, “and very few of the crowd are dancing sets. It’s more of an interactive situation between the bouncing masses and ourselves, and we have learned how to interact with that audience, just as we do when we play in Paris, as we will be doing when we play to a seated audience later this month. Of course there’s a difference in that we have to intersperse the music with talk and chat, and we also use audio visuals as a backdrop, which helps to put the band in context.”
THE KILFENORA CÉILÍ Band has encompassed fiddle, flute, banjo, keyboards and accordion as well as double bass, saxophone and a full drum set at times. It’s a mark of the band’s appetite for testing the music’s boundaries and a sign of the potential diversity of their repertoire.
“We know the band’s heritage is very precious really,” Garry Shannon acknowledges. “We see our current membership as only another passing phase in a much greater scheme, and we feel it’s our responsibility to hand over the band in good condition when the time comes, to the next generation. Kilfenora as an entity is bigger than any musician or musicians.”
The Kilfenora Céilí Band centenary concert takes place in the National Concert Hall on Mar 16 at 8pm. www.nch.ie, 01-4170000. In The Blood, a documentary on the Kilfenora Céilí Band, will be broadcast on RTÉ1 at the end of the month
