with Rings on Their Fingers and Bells on Their Toes . . .

shered into a cosy sitting room, I see two guys with flowing locks yawning a welcome to the day. They re still rolled up in their blankets. I d anticipated some initial confusion, to be sure; you don t meet a band like Kmla arguably the most vital incarnation of Irish traditional music around and expect to find strict law and order. In these shaggy heads, trad s spirit of playful shambolics runs amok, so it s no wonder the van for Cork isn t here yet, and neither are half the band.
Rossa S Snodaigh, one of Kmla s seven members, raises his head in a cloud of soft baby curls. Poor fella hadn t received news of the change in driving time and, turning up at bassist Brian Hogan s flat at 6.30 instead of lpm, spent most of the morning trying to sleep in the bath. He introduces me to Liam, photo-artist, friend and flatmate to Brian, also crashed out in the sitting room (his bedroom ceiling having recently descended). More and more folk arrive, mid-afternoon breakfast is finished, Liam discreetly manages to get dressed with eight people in the room, and then it s time to follow Barry out to his van. We re s posed to be waiting for a journalist, someone says. I ve been sitting round talking for an hour; I wonder do they think I m some arbitrary stranger who happened in off the street by chance . . .
But now it s out with the dictaphone, identity revealed, to have a chat with Rossa s brother Colm, who I sit next to on the bumpy road to Cork. Colm, Rossa and Rsnan (yet another S Snodaigh brother) write most of their lyrics in Irish. I ask Colm whether he feels that Irish expresses the invisible side to life? His eyebrows raise dubiously; a question like that veers towards the mystical, and phoney Celticism is what this band do their best to avoid.
Irish is a very beautiful language because there s a lot of S s, and that makes it flowing, says Colm. You can have a lot of fun with it just by changing the case like fuinneog turns into fuinneoga, and -eoga is beautiful, there s a lovely lilt in the word. Some of Kmla s songs (particularly those written by Rsnan) are extended chants backed up with huge percussion. Is this a nod to the Eastern and African tradition where the spoken word can have semi-magical meaning?
Well, there s a tradition of it in Ireland too, Colm replies. In the 15th and 16th century, poets would stand up and recite huge mad long bits of poetry, and get people roused up before they went to battle. So in a way that kind of rapping was the same, and it s in the tradition of music too.
In India they ve three types of music, morning, afternoon and evening music. In Ireland there s also three types of music: there s goltram, which is lament music, geantram, which is happy, up music, and suantram quietening down music. Now all of them together are called An Uaithne , and that s what Anzna were called first of all. Music does influence mood, and vice versa. And time of day, and seasons as well in winter it d be darker music, in summer it s more happy and bright.
Johnny Cash songs wail from the tape recorder and the light outside grows dim.
We re part of a new wave of people who ve started writing in Irish, continues Colm. There s been a lot of poetry written in Irish over the past few decades, but very little music, only the likes of Clannad, and maybe Enya a bit . . .
Good show! interjects Brian, praising an oak-dotted field on its loveliness. Everyone in the van (it seats ten people and all their gear) claps encouragingly, until shock horror the roof window bursts open, screaming motor way winds tear through the interior, and an inspired Rossa stands up, roaring, And the Lord made his presence felt!
Rossa looks like an old fan of bedlam. The sudden gale harnessed, he entertains us reading quotes from The Book of Liff, which supplies the world s obscurer phenomena like the bits of fluff you find in the turn-ups of men s trousers with real names. Islesteps, he reads. Cautious movements towards the bathroom in a strange house in the dark. Other books lie around: It s a Fact, The Joy of Stress and a Catalogue of Extraordinary Objects containing designs of a bizarre nature, like the all-in-one tie-cum-underpants which receives general admiration in the van. Like his brothers, and, it seems, everyone else in Kmla, Rossa writes poetry and prose as well as songs. He s written a book called The Joy of Pissing; its title reminds me of Rabelais, that 15th century French satirist who wrote comical tracts On the Dignity of Codpieces and the like. Rossa plans to serialise his book, its first printed manifestation being a essay on The Most Amazing Shite I Ever Had In My Life . This kind of irreverent humour I like.
Experienced and versatile, the members of Kmla are highly talented, each playing several instruments with ease. They all write, sing and play drums and percussion, which alone includes shakers, kabassa, scraper, wail-a-phone, Llama nails, rain-maker, bones, coconuts, darabukka, flexi-tone, cuica, bongos, congas, drum-kit and, of course, the ubiquitous bodhran. Are Kmla, I ask, making the living that they deserve? Colm, who s getting a sore backside after four hours in the van, thinks it s tough on musicians trying to make money.
But there are a lot of avenues, he notes. Like even from film: we ve four pieces of music in the new Noel Pearson film, Golden Streets. And that s a big step; we ve credit on it, and that means we can go to the States and say, Here yeh go, that s our CV .
Film s a familiar area, because several members of Kmla studied it in art college. Colm tells me about the film work of Dee Armstrong, the only member of Kmla who s not playing in Cork tonight (just about to have her second baby, she decided to forego the journey). Her film Changelings in which a human and a fairy child are swopped at birth contains the image of a beautiful, big white horse. It seems to embody visually the feeling I get from her particular music; an amazing fiddle player, Dee dresses the songs she writes with scarves of deep emotion, touching on archetypal sorrow or joy with the symbolism of her notes. I m disappointed that I won t be hearing her play Dusty Wine Bottle later on, her own brilliant four-part instrumental. Though not here in person, Dee s chosen Aoife a brilliant young fiddle player who s spent the journey learning Kmla songs on her Walkman to stand in for her tonight.
It s an ancient Egyptian excavation! No, a hunchback! An Irish Christmas pudding, that s what it is! Cruising into Cork we pass a half-built roundabout, whose huge dimensions provoke the band s minds to excessive metaphor. I ve been hearing about how, when Liam and Brian s ceiling fell in, a couple of mummified rats from years ago plummeted to the floor as well. Ratatouille, suggests Rossa, who gets threatened with a yellow and then red card for his joke. As we pull up outside The Metropole, our final destination, Brian mentions his former band PAMF. Doesn t that mean something rude, I ask? Yeah, pussy-assed motherfucker, he replies, though I d heard that to pamf meant to sniff other people s underwear too late now to look it up in The Book of Liff.
Huge amounts of gear are unloaded from the van. Instruments are tuned, soundchecks are accomplished, pizzas, fruit and Chinese take-aways are eaten. Outside the window, the river Lee rushes by. Having tea by the Lee you see, intones Rossa; I feel a poem coming on, Aoife laughs. I fear a poem coming on, warns Eoin Dillon, expert on the uileann pipes. Kmla gel well; they seem to really know and like each other, which isn t surprising considering there s two sets of brothers in the band.
I get talking to Lance Hogan, Brian s brother, who like everyone else plays loads of instruments, guitar, drums and dulcimer predominating. Lance studied film and worked on soundtracks in college.
I sorta had to make a choice, he says, and music started paying my rent. It s much more quick, music, I find; you can get an album done and get it out, whereas with film it takes you a good two or three years to see it through and get the money back. So I m hoping that music will allow me to make film, eventually.
I ask Lance what he feels the future holds for Kmla.
It s a gamble, but I feel confident with the people and with the music, and I know we d do it anyway. This is the first time we ve decided to really put our music out into the industry, and try and get some kind of a turnback. So it s a new venture really. Whereas before we were very low-key; Mind the Gap, the last album, sold quite well, but it took a good two years before the money trickled in. And that went straight in to buy the studio equipment, so we didn t see much of it!
I know it ll work, I can feel it in my bones. People really get off on the music. I d love if Kmla could start being self-sufficient, so we could be allowed to keep recording, keep doing gigs when we want to, at our pace. Then I d be happy.
There s sudden movement under the table we re sitting at; Rsnan s been getting some kip before the show, and now he rises like the Kraken from its maritime slumber. When Rsnan sings he goes into a trance; his feet are bare and adorned with bells, the bodhran an extension of himself. Wild Irishman epitomised, you can usually spot several women at the front of the crowd falling into rapturous trances at the sight of him, too.
Hey Jeoff, shouts Eoin, you re looking interesting tonight. He s addressing Kmla s sound engineer, whose musical career and electric shock hair-do are very interesting. Having toured for years with big acts like Blur, Pulp, Soul Asylum, Belly, Dead Can Dance and other 4AD bands, Australian Jeoff has chosen to work in Ireland with Kmla, who also have personal and professional links with Dead Can Dance, those avatars of the avant-garde.
The Metropole is filling up fast: crusties, techno-crusties, punks and veggie-punks flock through the door in their hundreds, flanked by ravers, hippies and older-generation folk. Every shade of woolly jumper, an abundance of lustrous hair, and people of all ages, from all walks of life, are adding their own special ingredients to the night. The mood is buoyant as Kmla take up their instruments. Their gig s as exhilarating as a mardi-gras, and the fans go wild with joy. A happy-looking guy in stripy top and dungarees stubby dreds on his head, neat beard on his chin, silver sparkle where I suppose his third eye would be dances over wondering if I d like a comment. I love them, and I m not even Irish! he laughs. Noticing my notebook, fan after fan approaches me with heartfelt praise for the band; all except one skinhead, who s angry that Kmla aren t singing about the Ballymun flats. Albert Reynolds would like these langers, he growls. They should be playing to a coachload of Americans in Killarney. I remonstrate, stressing Kmla s authenticity, but Class War politics stand in the way and disgruntled, the skinhead stalks off.
An intense but drunk-looking guy approaches, insisting I make a record of his observations. Paganism reinvented, he whispers, waving towards Colm, Eoin and Rossa. Beyond the devil s grasp lies an innocent voice which speaks. I recognise a confabulator and make a valiant break for it, but he lurches forward again, shouting, Behind society s dance this trad wears a mask! I tell him he sounds like James Joyce, and satisfied, he blunders away, leaving me to enjoy the rest of Kmla s dynamic, beautifully varied set of new-wave trad (for want of a better definition). The gig s over late, but Kmla s party carries on till dawn.
Cookin musicians, Kmla are also down-to-earth, funny, imaginative people who really know how to enjoy themselves. With Tsg Go Bog E just released by the independent and innovative Key Records, and big gigs lining up all over the place, this band s future looks very bright indeed. And deservedly so. n