Folk Column: At The Club

When Ry Cooder put together a number of the best Son players in Cuba for the 1997 album The Buena Vista Social Club he was name-checking an institution that had existed 40 years previously, when the Havana dance club had become a favourite place for local musicians to meet and play.

At that stage it wasn’t a band as such but following on from the album and Wim Wenders’ documentary about the making of the album, the name stuck as an umbrella term for the musicians involved: they have toured under that flag of convenience ever since.
Now, given that some of those taking the stage at Sligo Live on Sunday October 28 have been playing since the days of the original club in the 1940s and ‘50s, this may well be the last opportunity Irish audiences have to see what remains of the original group of players. In the 10 years since the album was made such high profile members of the ensemble as Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo and Ruben Gonzales have died and their places have been taken by younger musicians who carry on the same tradition and style of playing. The evening will be started off by At First Light, who must be regarded here as the young guns warming up the crowd for the old guard.
The Buena Vista Social Club also take part in ‘Some Days Never End’, a seven day festival running in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham where POD Concerts have put together a great week of gigs to celebrate the link between art and music. The Buena Vista Social Club play on the evening of Tuesday October 30 when they will follow Kila onto the stage in one of the heated tented structures that are being built specially for the series of shows. Whether they’ll be kitted out with floating silver pillows in homage to Andy Warhol remains to be seen.
October is going to be an uncharacteristically light month for the workaholics at Kila Towers but there are a couple of chances to indulge in some O Snodaigh spotting as Ronan O Snodaigh plays a solo show in Macs Bar in Roscommon on Saturday October 6 and brother Colm with Na Scribnori Oga will be singing some songs and reading from his book Pat The Pat as part of the IMRAM festival in Club Na Chonarta on Wednesday October 10. Meanwhile piper Eoin Dillon and his band, fresh from wowing the Electric Picnic, will perform in The Madison in Rathmines on Thursday October 11.
Given that you can’t keep a good thing down, the band will be re-entering the fray with a mini-tour to promote their new Gamblers Ballet album in November.
Coinciding with this year’s Ennis Tradfest from November 8 – November 12, the Clare Arts Office is running Cruinniu ’07, which is intended as a gathering of people concerned with the business of being a musician, and will be attended by musicians, performers, entrepreneurs and people working in the area of music performance, promotion and development.
Contributors to this year’s event include Martin Hayes, Paddy Moloney, Donald Shaw, who now heads up the Celtic Connections festival as well as his musical duties with Capercaillie and Bob Donnelly, the New York based lawyer who has represented musicians in a number of very high profile cases over the years. Twenty-five bursaries to attend the event are being offered by Clare Arts Office and are open to any musician living and performing in County Clare or orginally from the county but working as a musician elsewhere.
Chicago-born fiddle player, Liz Carroll has been making a visit to Ireland to play a series of concerts in the stellar company of great guitar player John Doyle, formerly of Solas. There are still a few chances left to see the duo, both highly regarded instrumentalists in their own right, but regarded as practically incomparable when teamed together. They perform at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray on Thursday October 4 before undertaking the long drive down to Baltimore in West Cork where the play the following evening at Dun Na Sead Castle. Not daunted by a spot of heavy touring they nip across to London where they play on Saturday October 6 at the Hammersmith Irish Centre before returning to perform at the perhaps appropriately named Airfield Centre in Dundrum the following evening.
Harpist Maire Ni Chathasiagh and guitarist Chris Newman haven’t been seen live in these parts too often of late but they seem set to remedy this with a number of Irish dates at the end of October and start of November as part of a broader Ireland and UK tour. First of the Irish dates comes on Wednesday October 24 in Ballymoney Town Hall with another Northern Irish date the following evening as they take the stage at the Market Place Arts Centre in Armagh. There is a Dublin date at the Airfield Centre on Thursday November 1 (following a brief detour to Arles in the South of France where Maire plays as part of the XIIiemes Journees da la Harpe) after which the duo take off around the country with a series of dates in Tinahely’s Courthouse Arts Centre on Friday November 2nd; Cul na Smear Hall in Dungarvan on Saturday November 3, the Village Arts Centre in Kilworth on Sunday November 4. Tuesday November 6 finds them in the University of Limerick’s Performing Arts Centre while the following evening they visit the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar. They perform on Friday November 9 in the Ionad Culturtha in Ballyvourney before wrpping the Irish leg of the tour up weith a performance on Satuday November 10 in Virginia’s Ramor Theatre.
In 2004 composer Luke Daniels read an article about a set of six carved yew wood pipes that were found lying together in order of pitch in a wooden trough during excavations at Greystones. A theory amongst musicologists was that they were part of an organ fed by a bag. These “bag-pipes” are believed to have been played some 4,000 years ago and, together with a newly awakened interest in the Donegal fiddle tradition as explified by the archive recordings of Con Cassidy, served as the inspiration behind ‘Islands’ a piece of music that combined players from all over Ireland and the UK in order to celebrate both the distinctive expressions and the shared sources of these cultural communities, taking tunes from the Northumbrian small pipes tradition and opening them up on the fuller sounding uilleann pipes. Islands will be performed at the Elmwood Hall as part of the Queens Festival on Saturday October 27.
Also taking place as part of the Queens Festival is Turas na Taoiseach/The Flight of The Earls, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of that epochal moment in Irish history featuring new works by Micheal O Suilleabhain and Niall Vallely and featuring performances by Iarla O Lionaird, Karan Casey, Cillian Vallely and Mel Mercier which premieres in the Grand Opera House on Thursday October 25.