Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)

Subject: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 03:31 AM

https://www.facebook.com/sliabheys?fref=ts

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 09:44 AM

I don't do facebook, so I found the band of YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRce_oax1sU

Thanks for the info.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 10:03 AM

'I found the band of YouTube.'

I am afraid you have you wires severely crossed. Sliabh Luachra is an area, and some would argue a state of mind, in Co Kerry. And the name has become synonymous with a particular regional style. Not a band.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 10:55 AM

Okay

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,slibowitz
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 12:23 PM

Not just Kerry, Peter, but parts of counties Cork and Limerick too.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 12:27 PM

Ofcourse, it doesn't stop at Ballydesmond.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 01:33 PM

Sliabh Luachra is a region in Munster, Ireland by the River Blackwater and borders the counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick.
Peter Laban, like many of us is a blow in, I had the pleasure of meeting and playing with Julia Clfford a lot, she was just happy to play music, with anybody.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 02:25 PM

Julia Clifford an icon of Sliabh Luchra music, moved to Thetford in norfolk, England, it was an area that was not very strong in irish music, it was Neighbours like George and Eileen Monger, Michael and Caroline Kilbane, myself, Johny Coakley, the late Martin McGrath, Nic Urwin, who went to the effort of going round to see her, and taking her out to play.
Some trad irish musicians are so far up their own rectums, and so precious, to argue that it is a state of mind,
Julia and John Clifford were forgotten for a long period, likewise Padraig O keefe who now has a statue, but during his latter lifetime was only allowed in one pub in CASTLE ISLAND. O keefe was not recognised during his lifetime neither was john clifford, julia enjoyed recognition but only in the twilight of her days.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: BrendanB
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 03:44 PM

We had the pleasure some years ago of spending an evening in the company of Johnny Leary, a great Sliabh Luchra melodeon player.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 01:41 AM

Yes a fine player, his grandson is carrying on playing excellent music.
I feel it is important that different regional styles are encouraged, in my opinion CCE encourage one style only, with their competitions, these competitions give high marks for ornamentation and the judges appear in general to go for a homeogeonised CCE style, which does not appear to encourage individuality or regional styles beyond the regional fleadhs.
Sliabh Luchra is not a state of mind, it is a regional style of trad music that has certain musical charecteristics which do not appear to be found much in other parts of ireland, the same could be said of Donegal and only one or two other areas.
however for any tradition to remain vibrant and not to become dead it has to evolve and change, it will be interesting to see if it changes and how it changes or whether it remains exactly the same.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: Stu
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 04:35 AM

I love sliabh luchra music, and we still play several polkas and slides in our session. They can go like the clappers!

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: Jim Martin
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 07:23 AM

Some would argue that this 'homeogeonising' of Irish trad music has been going on longer than even since the advent of CCE 60 yrs ago, ie. with the availability of 78's & radio 80 yrs ago (or to stretch it even further, ever since Irish people travelled overseas to find work)!

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 08:17 AM

possibly JIM,
some older musicians said that the advent of michael colemans recordings affected styles, but CCE have contributed to the homogeonisation, one of their aim was to preserve the tradition, wioth their marking system they have unconciously or possibly consciously altered it.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: Jim Martin
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 09:07 AM

Yes, indeed - interesting!

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: GUEST,Kim C
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 10:52 AM

Far and away my favorite style of Irish music. I love its earthiness and authenticity.

Subject: RE: sliabh luchra music
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 22 - 01:12 AM

I booked John and Julia at Bury St Edmunds folk club, a couple of times ,the first time they did a split booking with Steve Turner, I also brought her to my club after John Clifford had died so that she could get out and play some music.
However there were two couples, George and Eileen Monger and Michael and Caroline Kilbane, who were very supportive after John Cliffords death.
http://sliabhluachra.ie/the-music-of-julia-clifford-juliaclifford-eu/
and
https://katiehowson.co.uk/julia-clifford-project

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Jul 22 - 09:57 AM

Jackie Daly has just bought out a book of tunes
Jackie Daly Publishes Collection of Over Two Hundred Tunes
'The Jackie Daly Collection', edited by Matt Cranitch, contains well-known tunes such as 'The Fly Fishing Reel' and 'The Trip to Tuam' as well as many unrecorded compositions.

    THE JOURNAL OF MUSIC

The traditional Irish accordion player Jackie Daly, renowned for his work as a soloist, duettist and as part of groups such as Dé Danann, Patrick Street and Arcady, has published a collection of his tune compositions.

The Jackie Daly Collection, compiled, transcribed and edited by fiddle player Matt Cranitch, was launched at the Willie Clancy Summer School earlier this month.

The book contains over two hundred compositions divided into jigs, slides, polkas, reels, hornpipes, and miscellaneous (mainly planxties and waltzes). Among the tunes are the reel ‘The Trip to Tuam’, which appears at the end of Dé Danann’s arrangement of ‘Hey Jude’, which they released in 1980. There are also tunes such as ‘The Fly Fishing Reel’, which he recorded in 1995, ‘Jackie Daly’s Reel’, which was recorded by Arcady, and ‘The Rakes of Merlot’ and ‘The Living Stream’, which were recorded by Daly and Cranitch. There is also one song, ‘The Roadside Stage’, composed by Daly when he received the Kanturk Festival Award in 2009. Many of the tunes include notes on their origins from the composer.

A selection of his tunes have already been included by the Irish Traditional Music Archive in its ‘Saothar – New Compositions for the Tradition’ series.


Sliabh Luachra influence
Daly was born in Kanturk, Co. Cork, in 1945, and grew up immersed in the musical traditions of the area known as Sliabh Luachra. In the introduction to the collection, he writes:

    In my early teens, I used to play with the Seán Lynch Céilí Band, and one of the gigs was at a crossroads platform at Knocknacolan, about a mile outside Kanturk in north Cork. It was run by Bill O’Sullivan, a wonderful local man who used to show us how to dance as well. I got a lot of music from Jim O’Keeffe who played fiddle with us, and he had been a pupil of the great Pádraig O’Keeffe. So it was Sliabh Luachra all the way, and I learned to read that distinctive fiddle notation [a form of fiddle-music tablature that Pádraig O’Keeffe had used as a memory-aid for pupils].

In 1974, Daly won the accordion competition at the Fleadh Cheoil in Listowel and in 1977 released his influential debut album Music from Sliabh Luachra on the Topic label. He also began performing with fiddle player Séamus Creagh and they released a duet recording in 1977 also. In 1980 Daly joined Dé Danann and appeared on The Mist Covered Mountain, The Star-Spangled Molly and Anthem. He also released Eavesdropper with Kevin Burke in 1981, Domhnach Is Dálach/Many’s a Wild Night with Máire O’Keeffe, Paul de Grae and Garry O’Briain in 1995, and The Living Streamwith Matt Cranitch in 2010. He featured in the TG4 ‘Se Mo Laoch series in 2017.

Daly was presented with the TG4 Gradam Ceoil award in 2005 and he has also received the M.J. Quill Irish Cultural Centre Award in New York and the Patrick O’Keeffe Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Jackie Daly Collection: Original Irish tunes in the traditional style for all melody instruments is available to purchase from www.custysmusic.com.

Subject: 2023 Obit: Jimmy Doyle, Sliabh Luachra box player
From: Felipa
Date: 14 Jan 23 - 08:30 AM

Sliabh Luachra musician Jimmy Doyle died on 8 Jan 2023
imithe uaim = gone from us

https://gript.ie/jimmy-doyle-imithe-uainn-a-musical-giant-from-gneeveguilla-has-died/

Jimmy Doyle imithe uainn: a musical giant from Gneeveguilla has died
May he RIP
by   Niamh Uí Bhriain, published January 12, 2023

This week came the very sad news out of Gneeveguilla in Kerry that the renowned accordion player Jimmy Doyle, famed as much for his endless fun as his masterful musicianship, had died. Ar dheis lámh De go raibh a anam ceolmhar.

Jimmy Doyle played Sliabh Luachra music, gorgeous slides and polkas but also much more, completely at ease with that strong rhythmic pulse and lively, spirited, jubilant drive that is the hallmark of the style.

He was born in the townland of Gib, near Killarney, as was the great fiddle player, Dan O’Leary, who once described Jimmy’s family as “the most musical family I know around this side of the country”.

Jimmy said himself that his parents – his mother played the fiddle and sang, his father played both fiddle and accordion – would have disowned him if he had hadn’t at least tried to play.

He described their home as a “rambling house”, where people were welcome to come and join in the tunes and the songs around the fire, and where youngsters like Jimmy learned by ear from family and from their peers who included their neighbour, famed accordion player, Johnny O’Leary.

We owe a huge debt to such families who kept the beautiful music of this special place alive by dint of their talent and vision and wisdom and their hospitality. Imagine what would otherwise have been lost.

It gave Jimmy Doyle great joy that he had also passed onto his children and grandchildren the music of his people. Their last session in the house on Christmas Eve will stay in their hearts forever.

My father, Séamus, loved Sliabh Luachra and its wonderful people: musicians who were steeped in music, who wore their tremendous talent and erudition lightly, who shared their glorious tunes as easy as their irrepressible laughter.

These tunes from the album ‘Ceol go Maidin’ with Jimmy and their great friend Connie O’Connell capture some of the character of the many sessions they enjoyed together, tunes rolling one into the other, lost in the exuberance of the music and the fun until, as was once observed, they were partying until the cows came home and then partying with the cows.
= sound file on page =

Jimmy was playing with a local céílí band, the Desmond, at the age of twelve, off on his bike to the halls with his accordion tied on with a piece of hay twine. He saved up enough by staying up those late nights to buy a new Paolo Soprano in Caball’s in Tralee at a cost of £14.

His life was filled with music, even his short stint in London was busy with sessions with musicians over from Ireland to the building sites, but the call of home brought him back before long, to his place and his people, and his long and happy marriage to Joan.

This week, as we heard of his passing, my sister reminded me of when she first met Jimmy as a teenager. On the way down to a local fleadh with Dad, he seemed particularly excited that a certain box player was to meet them for tunes, but she didn’t take much notice of that.

“We were at the place by the afternoon, people drinking tea or having a glass of stout and there was a sense of rising excitement. Then the door of the pub opened and in came Jimmy Doyle, already playing the box and dancing away,” she said. “It was like a whirlwind of the best possible craic. They danced around the bar for hours, playing and singing and laughing and telling stories generally having the time of their lives – and then Jimmy danced back out the door still playing.”

“It was brilliant, mesmerising,” she said. “He was the very personification of fun.”

He was also, of course, a highly regarded and superb musician. Watch this performance from 1987 – forget the quality of the video, listen to the tight notes and beautiful ornamentation of the flying fingers on these jigs. His stepping feet are the only accompaniment needed.

The Pádraig O’Keefe Festival said this week that his contribution to the music of Sliabh Luachra had been enormous, noting that “his 1977 album with Dan Leary ‘Traditional Music From The Kingdom Of Kerry’ is considered a classic in the tradition.”
You can still find the album if you hunt around: look at the stylish cover, only matched by the class music from two Sliabh Luachra legends.

That award was presented to him by the the talented Bryan O’Leary, a former pupil of Jimmy’s, who was in turn a pupil of Bryan’s grandad Johnny O’Leary. Thus are the deep roots and inimitable sounds of our beautiful music handed down.

As Jimmy wrote himself: much of the enjoyment in playing music is helping others and exchanging tunes.

“His Sunday afternoon sessions in The Arbutus Killarney were the stuff of legend,” the Festival noted. “They were always swamped with youngsters, eager to learn from Jimmy and spend some time in his warm company.”

That was his magic, perhaps, the quality that made him not just an extraordinary musician but a man who brought so many to love music. He wrote that he had never seen anyone play music with a sad face, and that was certainly true of anyone in the company of Jimmy Doyle.

Comhbhrón lena chlann: deepest sympathies to his wife Joan and children Padraig, Eoin, Sean, Julia Mary, and Marguerite and all his family and friends.

At his funeral, the overflowing church heard that he was always a great family man and a man whose faith endured, remembering all those in need of prayer before sleep each night. That strength in faith and family, we were told, sustained them through the tragic loss of James, their son, who was sadly killed in a road accident.

His farewell was full of music, as befitting a giant of the tradition who made the world a better, happier place.

Solas na bhFlaitheas air, agus i gcomhluadar na nAingeal ag damhsa go mbeidh sé.   [the light of heaven on him, may he be dancing in the company of the angels]

recordings:
on tv programme Bring Down the Lamp, home recording by fiddler Denis Murphy, shared on Soundcloud = part of the https://soundcloud.com/pj-teahan-884614828 Handed Down Sliabh Luachra Archive

Handed Down on youtube
Jimmy Doyle playing jigs

Jimmy Doyle, Eoin Doyle, Sean O'Loingsigh - Slides

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: Felipa
Date: 14 Jan 23 - 08:45 AM

there are Jimmy Doyle tunes in Tune Archive, for example https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Jimmy_Doyle%27s_Polka_(1)

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30975749.html
I'm copying articles here because so often when I look at older messages on Mudcat I find links that no longer work. But you may wish to see the photos on the Irish Examiner page.

Sliabh Luachra's cultural riches:

Wed, 15 Jan, 2020 -
Pet O'Connell looks at the region on the Cork-Kerry border that is such a renowned repository of traditional music and dance

It’s a long way from Ballinahulla, but Denis Doody is big in Japan.

Nearly 6,000 miles from his home near Ballydesmond, the intricacies of the late Sliabh Luachra accordion player’s 1978 album ‘Kerry Music’ now come under the scrutiny of eager students in the Pacific.

Fellow box player Bryan O’Leary is impressed by the appreciation for the music of his homeplace on the Cork-Kerry border, encountered during his 2018 tour of Nagoya, Kyoto, and Tokyo.

“They loved it in Japan,” says Bryan. “I thought I’d have to fill them in on musicians’ styles and the next thing, I was being asked ‘d’you know on Denis Doody’s album, on track two?’And they had Johnny O’Leary, Jackie Daly tunes... I was amazed.”

Bryan shares their admiration for the musicians in whose footsteps he walks - the likes of O’Keeffe, Denis Murphy and his sister Julia Clifford, known as the ‘Waivers’, and his own grandfather Johnny O’Leary

Not alone was the 2014 TG4 young musician of the year born into the tradition, but his academic education also encompassed a masters degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Limerick, his thesis examining the Sliabh Luachra button accordion-playing of Doody, Daly, Johnny O’Leary, and Jimmy Doyle.

But while Bryan is a proud purveyor of the area’s distinctive polkas and slides, he admits the deceptive simplicity of its dance rhythms means Sliabh Luachra as a regional style “can sometimes get undersold” as a ‘poor relation’ of the jigs and reels of Clare, Sligo, or Donegal.

As Matt Cranitch, who wrote a PhD thesis on fiddle master Pádraig Ó Keeffe and the Sliabh Luachra tradition, observes, the relative ease with which the notes of polkas can be played may be “inversely proportional to the difficulty involved in creating the appropriate rhythm and ‘swing’. And, unless the tune is imbued with these characteristics, then much of its real essence is missing.”

Not only are Sliabh Luachra’s signature polkas and slides often misrepresented, adds Bryan, but they have become an overly narrow definition of a style which has a far greater breadth than is commonly appreciated.

Bryan agrees that “polkas and slides of course are a massive part of the tradition and people of the area are very proud of them”. But he points to a wealth of distinctive barn dances, waltzes, reels, jigs, and hornpipes in the playing of Murphy and Clifford, O’Keeffe, and his own grandfather. “You don’t hear too many people playing them outside of Sliabh Luachra. There’s common repertoire that we all share with different traditions but there’s also so much material that isn’t fully appreciated yet and it needs to get the recognition it deserves.”

He highlights the fiddle-playing of the late Mikey Duggan of Scartaglin. “I called up to the house before he died to listen to him play by the fire. I was amazed - he was playing lovely jigs, reels, slides, polkas, and then he took off playing unusual waltzes that you wouldn’t hear outside this niche. If people in other areas only knew the wealth of the repertoire. We’re probably the most cut-off regional style and maybe we don’t get the same level of promotion.”

The musical intonation of Sliabh Luachra is something Bryan passes on aurally to his own accordion pupils. “In a polka or slide you can’t do it justice by writing it out on a piece of paper. It has to be developed by ear. When the emphasis is on the offbeat you can’t write that down - that has to be developed from listening upon listening,” he says. “You need to make the rhythm yourself and lean on the long notes, otherwise it doesn’t sound anything like Sliabh Luachra music.”

Bryan honed his own skills from years of listening and playing with masters of Sliabh Luachra music, though never directly from his grandfather.

    My earliest memories of Irish music are in his company because when I was young I used to be taken to some of his sessions, and in particular the one in Knocknagree, in Dan O’Connell’s bar, which he played in for close to 40 years.

“He would have played there in the earlier years with the great Denis Murphy but at the time when I was young going there I didn’t fully appreciate that. I had a first cousin the same age as me and if the music was in the front of the bar, we were out the back doing our own thing.

So I have great memories of the place but unfortunately I didn’t play with him and didn’t have a grá for music at that stage.”

His grandfather did, however, have a profound influence on his musical career, though it was a career that almost ended before it began.

“Henry Cronin taught me tin whistle in first or second class. I was absolutely useless at it and couldn’t bring out a note,” he admits. “There used to be mornings when he used to come that I used to be crying going down to school because I didn’t want to take the tin whistle.”

After his parents acceded to his requests to give up the whistle, it was the death of Bryan’s grandfather that sparked his interest in the music which had been around him all his life.

“It was the day he died it really affected me and I was so upset by it. He was buried in Gneeveguilla and I said to my mother that day ‘I think I’m going to start the accordion’.

“She probably thought I was bluffing a bit, but the following week I went down to Henry again, only this time with a new instrument.”

Classes followed with Nicky McAuliffe, a living encyclopedia of traditional music, who with his wife Anne was last year awarded a TG4 Gradam Ceoil lifetime achievement award.

Years of musical immersion saw Bryan learn from the likes of his aunt Ellen O’Leary, Jimmy Doyle, and Julia Clifford’s son Billy.

“And I was always listening to Denis Murphy or Pádraig O’Keeffe or Johnny and I nearly forced myself to learn by ear. At the start I wasn’t getting them fully right, but what really helped me in learning by ear was that I came to a session in Killarney, religiously every Sunday all through my teens, with Jimmy Doyle, Joe O’Sullivan and Paudie Gleeson, in Buckley’s bar. With myself and Jimmy there was a special connection straight away because Jimmy had been a great friend of my grandfather’s and a great disciple of his music. They grew up neighbours and Jimmy would have learnt all his early music from Johnny so it was a nice link because Jimmy would have passed the local stuff on to me.”

This passing-on of the local tradition is its lifeblood, and while the vibrant music Bryan now plays, including with the group The Conifers, is anything but old-fashioned, it is informed by his knowledge of generations that went before him.

“Some people say you should stop looking at the past but I draw my inspiration from the past,” he says.

Bryan traces the tradition through his grandfather and the Waivers of Lisheen, via their teacher Pádraig O’Keeffe and another seminal figure on the Sliabh Luachra landscape, Tom Billy Murphy of Ballydesmond. Labyrinthine connections make up the area’s cultural identity, and back another generation, O’Keeffe’s teacher was his uncle Cal Callaghan.

Cal picked up influences from the music of Scottish fiddle players he worked with in America, and from Corney Drew of Dromtariffe, who also taught Tom Billy’s teacher, Tadhg Ó Buachalla, known as Taidhgín an Asail since he, like Tom Billy, travelled the roads by donkey, both being blind or partially sighted.

Though some also played other instruments they were, to a man, fiddle players - a not insignificant fact, even in an area where the button accordion is now firmly established in the tradition.

“The fiddle was always the number one,” says Bryan.

    A lot of the research I was doing was based on the accordion music of the area, but you’re always learning about the fiddle music while you’re doing that because everything the accordion players did in Sliabh Luachra was based on the fiddle.

Regarding his grandfather Johnny, he relates: “Pádraig O’Keeffe gave him two bits of advice when he met him first: First of all was to play C#/D style accordion tuning. He felt that it blended better with the fiddle music. It all came down to what fitted better with the fiddle. “The second thing Pádraig O’Keeffe said to him was to leave off the bass because he felt that would overpower the tightness of the duet between the accordion and fiddle. All the stuff we have of Denis Murphy and Johnny is very sweet, and his accordion was always tuned tightly, like Jackie Daly did with Séamus Creagh - they wanted their accordions to blend with the fiddle - and Johnny would never use the bass when he’d be playing with Denis.”

“When I was doing my research I was lucky enough to interview Jackie [Daly] and Jimmy Doyle and it’s amazing listening to them, that they were completely immersed in the fiddle tradition. Jimmy Doyle said when he was young he used to obsess over Denis Murphy and used to try and imitate the Waiver at everything.

“One of Jackie’s main teachers growing up was a man called Jim Keeffe, who was a fiddle player that was a pupil of Pádraig, so he was listening to fiddle music from day one.

“In Johnny’s music you can hear some of the double-stopping that fiddle players do, the chording. He might hold down two buttons at once which creates a kind of a chord, a bit of a drone, and that’s taken completely from the fiddle music.

“All the accordion players when they were growing up there were so many fiddle players around, so Jackie struck up the partnership with Seamus Creagh, Jimmy Doyle and Dan Leary; Johnny and Denis Murphy - they were all playing regularly with fiddle players.”

By experimenting with bass, Daly “broke barriers, because even on his first recording, ‘Music from Sliabh Luachra’, the way he uses the bass is outstanding... Jackie was the first to make the bass acceptable in polkas and slides. The CD with Seamus Creagh broke more boundaries because they arranged the music. It was exciting and it brought something new to the table.”

To survive as a living tradition, music must constantly adapt and change, just as the polkas and slides of Sliabh Luachra are thought to have originally accompanied the quadrille dances fashionable across 18th and 19th Century Europe.

Bryan’s own music looks both forward and back, the title of his 2015 CD with Colm Guilfoyle repeating the words of Pádraig O’Keeffe, who when asked to describe his townland of Glountane once replied it was ‘Where the Bog Is’.

It would be an admirable attempt too at describing Sliabh Luachra, which literally translates as The Rushy Mountain, but defies precise geographical definition. Trying to pinpoint its location is akin to asking Google Maps for directions to Tír na nÓg, the late writer Con Houlihan of Castleisland having famously described Sliabh Luachra not as an exact place, but a “state of mind” whose location had become “a moveable feast”.

Though its soil quality may be poor, the wild landscape which provided shelter for Rockites, outlaws and various other rebels has proved fertile ground not only for musicians but writers and artists.

Bryan says the “creativity of the place” is witnessed in the Irish language poetry of Aogán Ó Rathaille and Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, both from Gneeveguilla.

    I always think they must have drawn inspiration from the hilly landscape. I’m passionate about where I come from and I get inspired looking out my window at the hills and fields of the place.

The link between music, landscape, and people and is never more evident than in the playing of Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford, he says. “They kind of painted a picture in your head, and great imagery comes to mind for me when I listen to the older musicians - you’re nearly looking at the places they were from.

“Con Houlihan came out with a comment about Denis Murphy, something along the lines of ‘you can see the sun rising over Knocknaboul when you hear him play, and you can hear the cows being driven in for milking. He said he painted in marvellous colours, which a good musician should do because it should set you on a journey.”

Sliabh Luachra music and its musicians and dancers have indeed journeyed far afield. Though its heart may beat loudly around Scartaglin, Ballydesmond, Knocknagree, and Gneeveguilla, it is in the blood from Newcastlewest and Listowel to Rockchapel and Freemount, Killarney, Newmarket, and Kanturk, and its soul can be found wherever in the world its rhythms are played.

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: Felipa
Date: 14 Jan 23 - 08:49 AM

Sliabh Luachra's Cultural Riches article continued

The Dance

The composer of many tunes, Bryan wrote a polka of special significance this year, in tribute to a central character in the set dancing tradition of Sliabh Luachra, Anne Keane, who died in July (2020).

“Every year we used play for a set in Milltown Malbay and Anne used to be the main woman, inside at the Westbridge which used to be seen as the Sliabh Luachra bar in Milltown. My mother and father, Ellen my aunt, and Eileen Buckley and Ger Connor used to form the set and it was a reunion for them after Dan Connell’s [bar in Knocknagree] closed."

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: Mo the caller
Date: 14 Jan 23 - 09:10 AM

Great dance.

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Jan 23 - 08:49 PM

It was Jackie's album Music From Sliabh Luachra Vol 6 that got me playing Irish tunes on the diatonic harmonica. I'd sit in the kitchen after Mrs Steve had gone to bed and play along with those tunes for hours. To me that's a seminal album of Irish music whatever your leanings. I love Jackie's playing on the Patrick Street albums, as well as his on collaboration with Seamus Creagh and Arcady. Some of it is a bit remote from Sliabh Luachra, possibly, but to my ear it's there in everything he does!

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Jan 23 - 06:24 AM

And Buttons and Bows!

Subject: RE: Music of Sliabh Luachra (Ireland)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Jan 23 - 08:01 AM

Steve, Button and Bows eill be reforming for the Concertina Cruinniu next month. Looking forward to that;-)