Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Sean-nós

First of all go here and read this link.

I'm a frequenter at the link's mothersite.....No Depression, which is a music site devoted to Americana.

I read the entry on the music of Ireland and filed it away in my head until we decided to go to Ireland to see what we would see.  I wanted to make the Connemara one of the places we hiked and hoped to happen upon some music in the small towns of the area.


I have a firm rule when traveling for pleasure and that’s to go in the off season.  When my girlfriend and I decided to go to Ireland in December we got nothing but “it’s their rainiest month of the year. Why are you going then?”

We go then because 95% of the time we went into a pub outside the big cities in Ireland we were the only non locals in the place.

We had spent the day hiking in the mountains of Connemara with winds of biblical proportions and got to Clifden around 4.  We park the car and start to walk around looking for a good cup of hot Americano…maybe 4 or 5 minutes.. and go by a pub.  My girlfriend spots a couple of people playing inside and I say “let’s go in for a pint”.

Inside, it’s all old men and women.  The two players are a young man who we later find out grew up down the road aways in Cleggan along with his wife from Sweden, and an older guy on squeeze box we later find out is brother of the owner of the pub.  The young couple live in Sweden now but his wife tells us he misses the Irish music scene so much that they come back here whenever they can.

The scene quickly takes upon a surreal almost film-like quality of people coming off their bar stools to sing a verse or two, us interacting with everybody in the place once they find out we’re from San Francisco….you can feel the energy starting to build.  The young guy puts down his guitar and picks up his banjo, the owner of the bar comes around and picks up the guitar and sits down, an old guy pulls out a flute from his pocket and sits down and the music really takes off.  Thomas, the old guy sitting next to me is doing a running commentary in my ear on the history and significance of the songs.  One woman gets up and sings a cappella….she holds her Guinness in her hand, eyes closed…Thomas is telling me (I think, his accent is difficult for me to pick up) how important this song is to the Irish people….Damn, it was sending shivers up my spine.

They start to do a song with a nice beat and I get up to dance.  Everybody’s jaws drop, fingers are pointing.  Afterward the oldest of the old comes over slapping my back and yelling “That was fantastic!”  They want to know where I learned that.  I tell them my mother who grew up way back yonder in the hills of Kentucky taught me that. Kevin, the squeezebox player says “You dance in Shadow style...at least I think he said Shadow….he says that’s the very old style of dancing.  After getting back to the US and rereading the No Depression thread I realize he was saying "Sean-nós" or "Old Style"

A couple songs later, Kevin says I should dance to the next number…Old guys are trying to kiss my girlfriend, the crowd even gets her to sing a song…she settles on “This Land is Your Land”.  We buy a round of pints for the band, Thomas the whole time is still doing a running commentary in my ear.  At one point he sort of whispers “Do you know what this is?  It’s a session, fucker”.  For some reason he’s been calling me a fucker the whole time. “You’re lucky to be here”…I tell him the reason we came to Ireland was for the music…and to meet him.  He likes this.

By the end of the evening, we’ve met and made friends with each and everybody in the place.  I’m smitten…with the land that we hiked, with the pubs and the music within and especially with the very warm and gentle people.

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