Hobo of the States

My car packed in recently so I’ve been bumming lifts and borrowing cars. The upside of this (I’m a silver lining kinda guy) is that I get to listen to CDs – my car didn’t have a CD player – while I’m driving.

Being a big Seasick Steve fan I’ve been listening to his new record, I Started Out With Nothin’ And I Still Got Most of It Left quite a lot. It’s rather a thought-provoking listen at the minute. I had always thought that a big part of the attraction of Seasick Steve (leaving aside the blindingly obvious fact that his music sounds great) was that here was a guy who was probably the last of the genuine itinerant blues singers, a man who had spent most of his life choke picking and riding the bumpers (if you don’t know what either of those phrases means you haven’t heard the album yet) rather than someone whose wanderings were simply from one venue on the circuit to the next.
His blues are earned and learned first hand – they’re farm blues, sore back, insect-bitten blues, not some smooth handed urban version. This ‘last of a dying breed’ authenticity is surely the reason why someone like Nick Cave wants to be on his album. He’s desperate to get a rub of the relic.
And of course with America staring into the abyss of the worst financial crisis since The Depression one wonders if we aren’t going to see a whole new generation of outcasts making similar music in the years ahead. Don’t think I’m getting misty-eyed about this – we get plenty of pain and hardship to write about in any case and when a man writes a song like ‘Chiggers’ about basically having to boilwash yourself to kill off insect eggs on your skin I can appreciate that he is not looking back on that part of his life with a warm, rosy glow. I have a world of time for authentic blues but I wouldn’t want to think we’ll be driving people back down to get us some more of it.
As iconic in his own way, Andy Irvine has spent 40 years wandering the world, absorbing influences from other musical cultures and transmitting them through his own playing without ever letting them obliterate what was there before.
Having been a central plank in some of the most significant Irish bands – Sweeney’s Men; Planxty; Patrick Street – he now exudes a powerful musical presence by himself. He plays this Saturday 25th October at the Cherrytree in Walkinstown.
Ireland’s own native blues tradition has never really been vocal, because it is not the sean-nos singer but the uileann piper who best captures the gut-wrenching pain of humdrum human existence in the way that great blues music can. The William Kennedy Piping Festival, now in its 15th year, takes place in Armagh City from Thursday 13th to Sunday 16th November and it brings together pipers from around the world.
Although the pipes are mostly associated with Scottish music, where they’ve suffered dreadfully from a long association with military music, and our own far more anarchic uillean pipe tradition, there are in fact piping traditions in a surprising number of countries and the festival has brought these together in Armagh. This year’s festival features acts from Cape Breton on Canada’s Eastern sea board, Brittany, Sweden, Bulgaria, from Galicia, Portugal, Mallorca and Asturias on the Iberian peninsula, and from the Mediterranean islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.
The Sardinian piping tradition is the oldest, dating back over two thousand years, beyond the era of the bagpipe and Luigi Lai, who has played at the festival on previous occasions is the most highly regarded performer on the launeddas, a mouth blown triple pipes consisting of a chanter playing melody, another chanter playing counterpoint and a single drone.
Ghjuvan Ghjacumu and Christianu Andreani of the band Caramusa have been almost single-handedly responsible for saving the folk tradition of their native Corsica. Since 1984 they have traversed the island collecting almost forgotten songs and melodies, learning to play instruments on the verge of extinction. Accomplished musicians, they perform on flutes made from animal horn and reed, and bagpipes of pelt or gourd.
The bagpipe is not an instrument you would necessarily associate with Sweden, but the säckpipa has been played there for a very long time indeed and has experienced a popular revival over the last few decades. Dråm, which means “drone” in a Swedish dialect, is an apt name for the talented duo of Erik Ask-Upmark and Anna Rynefors, who have both received the title of Riksspelman (official master musician) for their playing and exposure of the Swedish bagpipes. Dråm’s other instruments include different Swedish folk whistles and the rather unusual Nyckelharpa, a unique Swedish keyed fiddle.
Also taking part is the 38 piece ensemble Bagad Cap Caval from Brittany who will be the biggest band ever to play the festival as well as a supergroup of sorts comprising their fellow Bretons Jean-Michel Veillon, Jacky Molard and Patrick Molard, who between them have played in every significant Breton band in the last 30 years.
And in case you think there’s no room for our own tradition the festival also has performances from Dermot Mc Laughlin and Robbie Hannan, Sean McKeon and Liam O’Connor, At First Light, Ronan Browne and Lunasa – who headline the Friday night concert in Armagh’s Market Place Theatre.