Folk column: Culture Club

The seafront in Dun Laoghaire will once again be taken over from Friday August 24 to Sunday August 26 by the Festival Of World Cultures which has grown organically over the last few years into a touchstone for the kind of multicultural society that Ireland is rapidly becoming.
The headline acts this year include Portuguese Fado diva Mariza, who performs on the opening night. Born in Mozambique and brought up in Portugal, Mariza began her career in a restaurant on the back streets of Lisbon. Catapulted onto the global platform of world music stages her cross-continental journey has embraced the musical heritage of her African homeland, fado laments and the contemporary cultural influence of gospel, soul and jazz. Her rich and original sound has enthralled audiences from the Hollywood Bowl to the Sydney Opera House.
This show will be in Monkstown Parish Church and in the Purty Kitchen on the same evening you’ll find former Jah Wobble collaborator Natascha Atlas whose sound weaves undulating Arabic vocal melodies with a mix of traditional and electronic instruments. Her most recent album Mish Maoul returns to a more traditional Moroccan sound albeit with an eltronic shimmer. Down the road at the Pavilion theatre the stage will be heaving, in true Festival of World Cultures style, as the Rhythms Of Uzbekistan combines the creative energies of Lyazgi, the Uzbek State Vocal Choreographic ensemble with Shod, the state music troupe and solo performer Karen Kafurdjanov in a performance called A Wedding In Khorezm which seems to be the Uzbek equivalent of Riverdance.
You’ll have to wait until the following evening for the first of the big outdoor gigs on the seafront at Newtownsmith. This year the Saturday evening headliners are the Super Rail Band, the Malian supergroup which has at various points featured Mory Kante and Salif Keita on lead vocals. Although the instrumentation is a mix of traditional and electric the music blends jazz, rumba and native Manding traditions in pursuit of the band’s core impulse to get an audience up on its feet and dancing.
Sunday evening’s outdoor headliner is Rachid Taha, probably best known for his high octane Arabic re-working of the Clash’s ‘Rock The Casbah’. Coming from a punk background and with a bass heavy soundtrack this is roots music at its most out there and in your face and it is probably the must see gig of the weekend.
Meanwhile back inside Saturday night sees the Pavilion Theatre play host to Fanfare Ciocarlia, favourites of film composer Danny Elfman. With traditional dances from Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia this 12-piece gypsy orkestar are the speed demons of brass with horns, trumpets, saxophones, tubas and clarinets. In 2005, after 20 years playing together, Fanfare Ciocãrlia found themselves at the top of the European World Music Charts with their fourth album ‘Gili Garabdi’, winning the BBC 3 World Music Award for Europe in 2006. The Purty Kitchen will be hosting Vieux Farka Toure, son and musical successor to Ali Farka Toure and an extremely gifted performer in his own right.
For the final night Mangal Singh will be bringing a little bit of Bollywood to the Pavilion. In the Purty Kitchen Yilila bring their fusion of Aboriginal sound and raw reggae to the stage, while in the Methodist Church three different throat singing traditions are explored as singers from Tibet to the Tundra perform.
Keeping a pretty low profile on this side of the Atlantic while they’ve been beavering away on tracks for album number two, the Guggenheim Grotto [pictured] have been working away steadily in the United States where their devotion to all things Apple seems to be paying dividends with them virtually becoming the computer giant’s house acoustic act.
Having landed the much sought after iTunes ‘Single Of The Week’ recently the band’s debut album has travelled to the top slot on the iTunes Folk section, beating off competition from the likes of John Prine and leaving miserable old duffers like Bob Dylan languishing at number 9. The band is currently wending its way around the US and a few extra dates have been stuffed into the schedule which can only mean good things lie ahead. Added to that the placement of Philosophia, one of the stand out tracks from Waltzing Alone..., the band’s self produced debut, on every demo model of the iPhone, probably the most eagerly anticipated piece of hardware ever to hit the streets and you can see a rosy hue glowing around the guys.
Meanwhile back at home their old pal Paul McDonnell is gearing up for the release of his single ‘Josephine’ under the moniker Pal Steelo. He has supported the Guggenheheim Grotto in some of their Irish shows earlier this year and is due to reprise that spot in October but he has also supported the likes of Jools Holland, Eddie Reader, Kirstie MacColl and Máire Brennan of Clannad. He wrote and recorded previously as part of the Cellar Club and he has songs covered by artists of the calibre of Tommy Fleming, who recorded his song ‘Life Like Mine’ as the title track to his platinum selling A Life Like Mine album.
He has one of those warm buttered toast voices that wrap you up and take care of you and his singing and writing carries obvious links to acts such as Sting, Joni Mitchell and Clifford T. Ward. The inspiration for the song is an old love of author Jean Dominque Bauby. As Bauby fell ill with Locked In Syndrome he wrote his literary masterpiece The Diving Bell and the Butterfly while dictating to his nurse Josephine with his only moving body part – his right eye. ‘Josephine’ is a tribute to this powerful and patient lady.
The single is released on download on September 7 and you can catch him live in Dublin that night at the launch in Radio City. The previous evening he’ll be ramping up with a show in the intimate surroundings of the Seamus Ennis Centre in Naul.
The Pal Steelo name, in case you’re wondering, comes from a memorable family friend – Mike a steel worker in the States from Rialto, Dublin. He became known as Steelo from Rialto and was fondly referred to as “My pal Steelo…”.
For nearly two decades, The Baltimore Fiddle Fair has been synonymous with first class traditional music and any make the long trek to Baltimore every May and find it very hard to leave, whilst many more have heard about it but haven’t quite been able to get down there, yet! For those prevaricators, the Fiddle Fair is coming to town. Baltimore Fiddle Fair has taken the initiative of putting ‘Fiddlepalooza’ on the road – a line-up of five “heavyweights” from the contemporary traditional scene – in a tour down along the west and south coast billed as the ‘Fiddle Fair Showcase’.
Altan members Ciaran Tourish and Dermot Byrne join with flute genius Michael McGoldrick, guitar virtuoso John Doyle, and bodhrán magician John Joe Kelly in an inspired musical concoction for a very special series of concerts in Donegal, Galway, Clare and Cork. On Monday 27 August they’ll begin with a show in Ionad Cois Locha, Dunlewey, Co. Donegal before moving south to Galway’s Black Box Theatre the following evening. The next evening finds them in Ennis where they’ll perform in Glor and the tour climaxes in the Cork Opera House on the evening of Thursday August 30.