get back to where we once belonged

chiselling away at the source is finally fashionable. Whether it?s Yossou ?N?Dour, Beth Orton, Utah Phillips or Kila that hijacks your eardrums, the fact is that the strands that were once on the perimeter are finally making it to the core of the tapestry. Cajun, blues, folk and traditional are fornicating like never before. Like a bride and groom who?ve been forced apart for too long, disparate genres are coming together and revelling in all manner of illicit unions.
Just take a look at the live scene in Dublin these days: octogenarian Reuben Gonzalez ambles into Whelan?s and leaves a rake of disappointed punters outside the door, so creaking are the rafters inside. Eric Bibb plays an afternoon gig in Temple Bar and the entire city centre comes to a standstill to listen. And Martin Hayes welds his East Clare fiddle to the acoustic guitar of Chicagoan, Dennis Cahill, and comes up, not just smelling of roses, but actually swathed in bouquets.
John Kelly, an established guru of eclecticism himself, grapples with this nebulous notion of what roots music is. Although The Eclectic Ballroom on Radio Ireland opens its arms gleefully at even a glimpse of an exotic musical visitor, he?s uncertain of roots music?s job spec.
?I suppose it means music that is somehow at the source,? he ventures tentatively, ?and I suppose that means traditional musics or folk musics, but then again, even these terms aren?t very satisfactory. I mean, what is folk music? A quote, which is sometimes attributed to Big Bill Broonzy and then to Louis Armstrong, seems apt: ?What do you mean ?folk? music? Everything?s folk music. I ain?t never heard a horse sing?. But I suppose it means music that is somehow ?real?. It?s hard to put your finger on it, but you know what it is when you hear it because it?s genuine, it?s real, it?s got a detectable source.?
One thing that this elastic term does do is allow punters, music lovers, and musicians alike to contemplate the music they like without the hindrance of labels. The genrefication of music has long been the remit of the music press, but roots music turns a deaf ear to such academic debate. Instead it urges its listeners to succumb, to bask, to revel in the delights of sounds uncorralled by the vocabulary of the establishment.
After all, what difference does it make whether we consider Mose Allison to be a jazz or blues singer? Who gives a damn whether Ani DiFranco conjures a folk or a funky lyric? Does anyone really draw breath when The Prodigy champion the music of Sheila Chandra? Somehow I doubt it. And so does John Kelly.
?They use terms like ?ethnic? and ?world? music,? he avers, ?and none of these terms are satisfactory ? other than in marketing terms, I suppose. ?World music? really means music from anywhere. Ultimately it means music that isn?t pop.?
So much for definitions then, what about the growth in interest in this thing we call ?roots??
?A lot of it, at least in England, is down to a man from Belfast called Roger Armstrong,? Kelly offers. ?He runs Ace Records, and is credited with coining the term ?world music?. He went off to places where no-one had been before to record music. Some people might?ve heard South African music, but he was going to Chad and Mozambique, and places where it was often difficult to find musicians, or to even get in to countries. But once communications between countries became easier, it all opened up. Walk into a record shop here in Dublin now and you can get records from anywhere: Peru, Iceland, Argentina, wherever you want.?
Pushing the outside of the envelope is surely welcome, but experimentation is something that Kelly found more appealing in his earlier days as a discerning listener than he does today. The sound stripped bare appeals more to his sensibilities lately.
?I notice this in my own taste, that although I loved Moving Hearts when all of that was happening, I don?t want to hear any more of that now,? he says. ?I just want to hear Johnny O?Doherty play the fiddle. I?ve come totally full circle on that. I?ve heard too many bongos and synths and so on. And the musicians are so good, that a lot of them can do it in their sleep now. Experimentation is great, and I love it, but I?ve got to the point where I?m happier listening to a sean nss singer, or a fiddle player.?
So players of the calibre of Eric Bibb, a bluesman who?s not afraid to strip the music to its core, with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a larynx made in heaven, must surely seduce the Kelly eardrums then?
?There?s so much of this music that I defy anybody not to be blown away by it,? he declares, with a defiant shrug of his shoulders. ?This is great music. If you?re open at all, you?ll love it. People like Eric Bibb are playing raw, straight music. You can?t put your finger on it, but when you hear it you know that it?s for real. You can detect it, just as you can detect fakery or someone going through the motions.?
Live performance has had a hand in the popularisation of a broad spectrum of sound too.
?When Reuben Gonzalez played here, the place was packed,? Kelly notes. ?And it was brilliant. Some of the best gigs I?ve been at have been roots gigs, and some of them have become legendary events, like: ?were you there the night that band from Mozambique played??. People mightn?t even remember their name but they were so good that people will go for it anyway.?
It might be all too easy to get carried away by the funk and fashionability of African and South American sounds, but there?s plenty of seriously popular music coming out of our own back yard too.
?Irish music is very hip now,? Kelly notes, ?and in fact, it?s getting so hip that it?s getting hard to hear it, unless you actually know musicians personally. So I find I?ll go along to hear a band after a gig in a pub, rather than jostling in a packed venue to hear them.?
Of course the corollary of hipness is a corresponding reduction in the cringe factor, something that was once a considerable hindrance to the growth in popularity of Irish music.
?The embarrassment is gone now,? he smiles. ?There?s a great album coming out now, called At The Racket, with Garry O?Briain and Brian McGrath. Now what they play is Flanagan Brothers stuff: it?s kind of corny. Ten years ago I?d probably have rejected it outright, but they played it at a party the other night and everybody was up and dancing and loving it. So, much like the rest of the country, I think we?ve all matured enough and come to terms with our music and we?re more comfortable with it now. Equally we?re mature enough to say what we like and don?t like. There?s not this blind loyalty to everything that comes out of Ireland either.?
Whatever the definition, it?s the effect that the music has that counts, as Kelly describes:
?I remember Begley and Cooney playing in Belfast, and Neil Johnson wrote afterwards in the Telegraph that after the gig he felt bullet-proof. And that was dead right. Anyone who?s been to a Begley and Cooney gig knows that feeling. Totally elevated by it and filled by this energy. I love to be impressed by musicians, and they certainly impressed me. I hate watching a band playing the same chords I could play at home. I love to see someone and feel: ? I don?t even know what?s going on there, but it?s great?.?
Maybe that?s as close to the best definition as we?re going to get. Or as Bob Marley put it: when it hits you, you feel alright.