Altan - Feile Artist Introduction.

Kevin sits down with Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh of Altan, to spend a few minutes getting to know more about the band and what audiences can expect at this year's Féile. We'll also share a couple of their songs to give you a taste of what's in store. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Tides That Tie, a podcast about all things Aaron Moore in Beaver Island. I'm Ron Gregg. Over the next few weeks, as we're counting down the days to the Emerald Isle Irish Phaela on Beaver Island, we'd like to introduce you to some of the incredible artists who will be taking the stage this September. It's a chance to hear a little bit about their music, their stories, and what inspires them before they arrive on the island. Today, Kevin sits down with Marae Nawini of Alton to spend a few minutes getting to know more about the band and what audiences can expect at this year's Fala. We'll also share a couple of their songs to give you a taste of what's in store. You can find more information about the Phaela and purchase tickets at the Beaver Island Irish Heritage Group website, www.bihg.com. Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

It puts the uh Emerald Isle Irish Pela in a whole nother world with Altan showing up.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Oh, well sure like like all my people, uh my father always kept telling me, you know, your people came from Iron Moore. We were boat builders, so the Moonies and the O'Donnells were uh Iron Moore people, and we were we we ended up coming around the coast and settling on Aronmoor Island and Tory Island. Okay. So that's how how how we ended up in County Donegal.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Really? Yes. Where were you where originally from then?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I think they they mentioned County Loud or Mooney is not really a big Donegal name. So there was a a Loud connection, but boat building would have been the the connection there with Armor. And then when I went to Kalaroshi Rua the first time I met the wonderful Johnny Duffy, and uh he told me, well, the first thing he said to me, welcome home. And then he said uh if you go into the church, he said, your people made the beautiful ceiling in the church on Armmore Island. So I'm very proud of that.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

That is great. Well, we have both O'Donnell and Mooney on Beaver Island still.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yes, I I heard that you had a Mooney there, and uh Johnny Duffy mentioned as well. Well uh when I met the Mooney clan on Beaver Island, I could I could rush see the resemblance with your father, he said.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

And and where on Erin would your people have been?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

We were uh just above Earleys on the mountain there, not too far from where uh Fiona, McGlynn and Jesse live. And uh they showed me uh the house. Uh there was a big tree growing through it. No no nobody there at the moment. But uh yes, there there's a moonie uh boat building people in Kelly Begs as well, which is on the mainland further south. So they must have been the same tribe that came around.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Wow, but the Greens are from that same area up in the Pitts Gregg area, uh same hill land, so we might have been neighbors and the gr the Green family around this area is very, very, very popular.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

That that name Maguiriana is one of the the the main names in the rosas here.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Well again, uh that I I think I hope what you'll see too uh Beaver Island and Aaronmore, but not just culturally and sort of but demographically they they're very much the same too. Little towns, I mean you know, Aaronmore has a population of 500, Beaver Island has a population of six hundred. And uh you know, it's we're kind of spread out too, but there's one little town area, so I think it'll be real interesting to I get be interesting to get your take once you see it.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Oh, and I'm really looking forward to it. It's it's it's gonna be the highlight of our year, I know.

unknown 4:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Oh it's nearly 42, 44 years ago now. Uh well, myself and my late husband Frankie Kennedy, who happened to be from Belfast, used to come to this area to learn Gaelic when he was at college, and that's how I met him. I was playing music with my father in Udybug's bar in Bon Beg when Frankie came in, and he didn't play anything at that time, but uh when we got to know each other, he kind of knew he had to learn some instrument because that's all we did. We played music and sang songs, so he ended up an amazing um flute player and whistle player, and uh we just decided uh we were both teachers in North County Dublin, in Malahyde in North County Dublin, and there was a scheme that the government of Ireland brought in the education section. They said you could take a year off and the promise of your your work was still there. So we decided this would be a really good way to um to to to you know to check if our music was good enough to play full time. So we took the first year off and then that went well, and then we took the second year off and that went well. And by the third year, if you took a third year, you had to make your mind up then if you were going to go back teaching or stay over the new job. So by the third year we had started recording and we were being invited all over the world, and you know, when you're in your twenties, that's all you want. So that was the beginning of Altan many, many years ago. And then poor Frankie got cancer, a man who never was sick in all his life, and then um but at that stage we had Mark Kelly and Kieran Kern playing with us, and um Paula Shocknessy, who's a beautiful fiddle player of Donegal background as well, but from Dublin. So his people would have been McBrides from Donegal. So Paul played with us for a long while, and Dae Sprawl used to play the guitar with us as well because Mark kept his own job and only worked with us for a while, but he's retired now, so he's playing with us full time. So Dae has retired totally from the band and um is living in Minneapolis very happily playing music around Minneapolis and pop. But uh Mark Kelly and Kieran Kern were our main uh backers, and then we actually recently Kieran Kern is taking their second seat, so we have a Kyle Kern, whom Kieran taught how to play the bazooka. So Kyle's coming with us to Beaver Island, and he's a wonderful musician, and it kind of is a full circle for me because Kyle's grandfather and my father were the two fiddle players in Ghidorah that played together. So there's a kind of a great connection here, and it's where we used to go to listen to songs and to play together and party and have Cayleys and uh when music wasn't when traditional music wasn't that popular maybe in the early 70s, you know, people weren't really listening to traditional music at that time, but we would go down to their house and they would come up to our house and that was the only uh that was the beginning of the music, you know.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

So your family has has had a long history though of of playing traditional music.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

My father is a fiddle player well, was God rest him, was a fiddle player. Uh he played the flute as well on a fife band, a marching band. And uh his mother was uh concertina player and uh box player. But when he was growing up, the music was always in the houses, hardly any music at all uh in any pub. There was hardly any pubs anyway. And then um he was one of the first people to start playing music out and about because there was a long history of uh putting music down by especially by a very puritanical Catholic priest called McFadden. And he lived around the turn of the century, the end of you know, when people started, you know, w after the memory of the famine we'll say, and everybody was were quite, you know, down, and the Catholic Church was very, very strong as well. But he he he he was very good as regards the land and trying to look after people's rights against the landlords, but he was totally against entertainment and he didn't like music nor dances and always tried to break them up. So really around the 20s, 30s, my father would have been the first person to start playing out in public again after the memory of Father McLaren. He actually used to break instruments and go around and disperse young people enjoying themselves. I don't know how we how we actually survived at all as a nation when we had three like that going around, you know. But uh so my father had that long line like lineage of music and song, and of course the Gaelic language is our first language, which it was on our moor as well, and it's coming back in our moor. And uh so that was very it's very important to me that the language and the music go together because there's an identity involved and um you know anyone can speak English, but uh if if our Gaelic language leaves us, um there's more than a language that will go, it'll be a way of thinking and uh I think that's really important to preserve.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Yeah. That's a great point. I I I was fascinated when uh not I'm not bilingual at all. But I was fascinated sitting in the um in earlies uh in that corner. And it was so interesting that you would turn to Jerry and start speaking in Irish and nothing to it. And then Sheila didn't have Irish, right? She's on the other side and you turn and speak to her in English. It was like a like a conversation going on on both sides of the language. I thought that was really fascinating, you know, to be able to switch that quickly and and uh also know your audience. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Well uh it it you know, it's it's it's one of these those things, you know, when you were brought up in a small little pocket where people speak Irish, but you you you have to be bilingual. There's no choice, you know, um you have to be able to have some sort of uh knowledge of English to to get to work even or to even emigrate. And that was um you know, it's still a big part of being from the guilt art is you do learn our English as well, and it's a beautiful language, you know. Um it's just that it's been uh it's it's it's just that the la our own language has been tried so much to be taken from us that I'm so militant now about it, you know. I just want this language to survive because there's so much beauty in the language and also we do think in a very different way. And if you look at some of our best English writers, uh like Joyce and Yates and Shamasini and all of these writers, uh you know, the reason that they are revered and and uh people enjoy them is that they have a turn of phrase that you would that an English person wouldn't describe a thing. Like these these writers have come from the the Gaelic language, you know. That's how they learned these turning the phrases and the way of thinking. And um, you know, I I think it's made our English hiberno English writers better writers.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

Yeah, and and how do you feel about this resurgence since we're on the Irish language, you know, that's happening.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

It seems like it's really putting back in the mode and young folks wanting to learn and well you see long ago people looked at the Irish language as being from poor and you know, it it was when they had had to emigrate and they weren't able to uh communicate in English and they looked down upon the language, but now it's completely different because Ireland is one of the richest countries in Europe and um you know it that doesn't come into it anymore. Everybody is you know I wouldn't say rich, but everybody is is is is well off and you know the the young people don't see it anymore as uh being associated with uh the doom and the gloom and with the poor and all of that. So it's it's not a poverty language anymore. Like some of the fanciest uh areas of Dublin City have the biggest uh Gaelic speaking schools, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

And what are your thoughts on the push by uh kneecap and other young folks to bring the language backward?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

I think they're great because they're expressing themselves in their their way, you know, they're doing their rap, whatever it is, and uh there's kind of a tongue in cheek about it, but they're but they're telling the truth as well. What they're saying is we've had 800 years of colonial, you know, you know, we have to break free. They're they're not against anybody, they're just saying what has happened to us, and they just want our language to survive, and they're doing that, and they're doing it in a very good way where all young people love them as far as I'm concerned. If that helps the language, and and there's other types of music as well, picking up on it, and you know, it's it's really strange when we go to Japan uh a lot of Japanese people who have no Irish background at all, they love the language, they want to hear the language, but they're they get so enthusiastic, and you know, if you tell people a general background about a song, they they they really get into it, and some people have actually in Japan have learned Donegal Irish. Would you believe that?

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Traditional music, uh traditional Irish music, right, uh uh has has been around forever, but how would you delineate being specifically from Donegal and having your own nuances up there, how would you differentiate Donegal Trad from say the rest of the Ireland?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Well you see uh Donegal traditional music was always very different to the rest of the country, partly because it was cut off by the uh Caledonian range of you know the the range of uh mountains that we have. They they start up in in Scotland and they come down and they they they they're actually part of the appellation as well, I think somebody said, but uh when we were all stuck together uh uh millions of years ago. But uh that kind of cut Donegal awful lot, especially where the music and the language have survived. And uh even with the common tunes that we play with the rest of the country, there's always an extra uh nuance with the Donegal version. And we also had this great connection with Scotland, and of course, Scotland is one of the Celtic nations. We we had the same language for years, and then kind of over the years they kind of the dialects changed a little, but they speak Gaelic, we speak Gaelic, you know, we're the same tribe, really. And uh we went to Scotland a lot too, like the the Donegal people would have gone to Scotland to work as labourers, uh, the ladies would have gone to work as nannies, my mother was a nanny over there. Um my grandmother was born in Glasgow of Donegal parentage. I was told by one of the Glaswegians uh this great uh singer uh years ago that Glasgow itself would claim 40% of its population as being Irish, and most of them would be from Donegal. So like like that connection was there. So the music came over. So we played Highlands, we still play Highlands, we split we play strat bays and all of those, and um there's a great connection with Scotland, you know. And it it's great. I I I love it. I love that idea that we were once the one nation, and I hope that we'll all get together again rather than being separated, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

So so your your new album, you name Danigal. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Well, we we're on the road, I suppose, for so long, and we were trying to figure out like any band, what are we going to call the album, you know? And um I was looking at Erigal, which is that conical shape of a mountain, which is made of quartz, actually. It's a quartz mountain. So the rest of the mountains are granite, so they were kind of uh softer looking, but then you have this amazing quartz. It's uh actually rose quartz Ergel Mountain, and um it's always been a figure there in our heads, you know. You kind of know where you are in the parish by seeing where the this amazing mountain is standing. And I was chatting to uh what would you call him? He was uh he he he's into mythology and all this, and he said, and archaeology is into archaeology and mythology, and he said that Ergal would have been uh a god for people who you know thousands of years ago, they would look at Ergal and see it as a god. So he thinks that's where Lu became Lu was one of the big myth mythological figures here in Donegal, Lu Lawad. We had the Femorians and we had the Tuhedan, and they were supposed to have been two tribes of two different uh completely two different peoples. The Famorians were the dark people, and the Tuhedidanen were the magical people, and Lou was there the head of the Tuhedid Danen, and they were the people that were created, and they were the poets and they were the musicians and the art people. The Famorians were the dark, and there was a man in charge of them called Balor of the Evil Eye, and he went around killing people with he was supposed to be in a cyclops. And uh when when I when I hear all these stories, when I was growing up, when I heard all of these types of stories, I just thought this is where Tolkien got his all his ideas from, you know, these mad stories of war and even the trees ended up helping the good people, you know, good against bad and all of that. But that's why, you know, I I just love that mountain because of all the stories about it. And um so I said, why not call it Donegal? And that's a symbol of Donegal. Ergall is one of the symbols of Donegal. So uh we we we we decided to be cheeky and claim it.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

And you have a song on there about Aaron Moore, who tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yes, uh I wrote a song because I was so taken when I first went in to the Fela Rosha Ruhe and uh she was one of my uh great heroes when I first went to the archives in Dublin many, many years ago. Actually, I didn't know she was recorded or anything, it was someone else that worked in the archives said you have to come in and listen to this lady from Donegal. So poor Rosha would have been dead for years, and I went totally fell in love with her singing and her her little chats in between. So I was listening to it on these reel-to-reel tapes, you know, like nothing digital that time, and uh picked up a few of the songs. I knew some of the words for from some of the songs, but I didn't know a lot of her versions. She had unusual versions of beautiful songs, and none of them were recorded. So I think on every Alton album I have a song from Aaron Moore Island, and that's why I wrote that tune part of Erin Moore, which is Aaron Moore Jake, the Arn Moore Jake or that.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

For someone who hasn't been to an Alton show, what would you tell them to expect?

SPEAKER_01 29:27

I don't really know what what people uh expect, but uh we just go on stage and play our music, the music we were brought up with. Um Donegal fiddle music, which is very, very strong. Uh my father being a fiddle player. And then I got so involved in fiddle music and became part of Cardis and the Fiddlery, which is the fellowship of fiddlers here in Donegal. And even at that stage, there weren't that many girls playing fiddle, it wasn't kind of uh socially accepted back in the old times. So I was one of the first uh lady fiddle players, and now it's really equal equaling out, you know. There's a lot of girls and there's a lot of boys playing fiddles, which is fantastic. And uh and then there was these unusual tunes that uh the old fiddle players would play, and you wouldn't find them anywhere else in Ireland, some of the tunes they're very odd, very odd tunes, and some beautiful tunes, and uh like people were so dedicated to their instrument, you know. They they would play all I suppose the winters were bad and long nights, so nothing else to do except play the fiddle and have a few people around to dance in the house, you know. Why not? It would it it it would pass the the long winter nights you know well and of course singing in between so that's how I was brought up and I I I just think you know people would we we try and make it an intimate night for people to come and see and give them a bit of an idea of what the songs are about. Sometimes I sing in English, sometimes I sing in Irish. Most of the time I sing in Gaelic and um but if I'm singing in Gaelic, I usually explain the songs or get people to sing along. You wouldn't believe how many people leave sing after singing a few verses of or choruses of Gaelic songs, and it's great because it's an achievement. But um so like what we hope to do is bring people joy. You know, um I I really can't uh explain what we do, but somebody uh explained it one time as when Alton played, I can smell the turf. So that's that's the biggest compliment of all.

SPEAKER_03 32:07

I I think that is absolutely right. That's amazing. And will will Claire be on this tour?

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Claire is coming. Claire Claire's a permanent member of the band.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah, and and your voices combined create this erethral air, I guess. Tell us about putting the two of you together, how that came together.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Well, I know Claire since she was a baby, really, and uh she she used to come at the parents used to bring her into the sessions with my father and myself, and my father took he he well, he was a teacher, so am I, you know, but uh he just loved young ones coming into a session and he would make a big deal about them. So a child would leave thinking and believing that they could play very, very well, and that's what the real sisters, like Claire and Sheila and Anna, they would come in. They were they were always very welcome by any young person that would join the session. My father made such a big fuss about, you know. And um, so like there is a saying in Irish Molanoya, I guess choppishy, which means you you praise the youth and they will bloom, and that's what that was one of the philosophies of um my father, and I I believe it as well because the more you encourage, the more the child will become you know, a feel they they they they can actually do this, and um so Claire loved her singing, loved her playing for years, and she knows every tune I ever played, so um she she would sit beside me, sit beside my father, and just and my brother played, and then my nephew Kira Nomini he he became a great friend with Claire and Sheila and Anna, and he actually produced one of their albums, and uh it's just uh a long friendship, and we don't even think about it. She knows what I do, I know what she does. Like um there's no thought put into it really as how will we do this, you know. It's uh I I always like music to be natural, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:35

You have a song on the on the Donegal, and I don't know how to say it in Irish, but it it's basically all the out there in the West.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Yeah, yeah. I will get solace.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

Right. Right. And that song to me uh is so well done because you you do, you just lockstep with each other, right? When you go back and forth on that song. Tell me about that song in particular. And is that one that you wrote?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

No, this uh it's actually a poem by a great uh Galway poet, uh Martin O'Gereng, and uh a friend of mine, uh Zoe Conway, who's a wonderful fiddle player from County Loud, she put the melody to it and I just loved it. And I asked I asked her, could I sing it? And actually I had it recorded before we got Claire in. And when Claire had joined the band, I said, I have a song that I can translate a verse and you come and sing the verse, and we just re-jigged the whole song again so that Claire could be part of the song. And I'm so happy because the the actual uh Zoe Conway loved it. She she she loved it so much that whenever she's working with uh an English speaking singer and they're doing that song, she always rings me up. I'm going to do your translation again, and I said, Well, I think it's your song, I think. But um it's it's it's a beautiful melody, and it has a very simple, simple story. It's just when someone from the west coast of Ireland, especially from he was from the Iron Islands. So you're brought up in this kind of wild rural area, and you have to go, all of us had to go to Dublin or Galway or to one of the urban main urban areas to go to college or to get some work. And you become used to the din of the city and the whole hubbub and all of that, and then you go back to to to the island or to the the seaside or the west coast where you're from, and that's silence, just you realize where you're from and who your people are, and it's this kind of it's it's nearly like a a little prayer, it's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

Do you have other songs that sort of you know are gonna get the crowd when you're playing them?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

I I um I don't think like that. I I always go for what'll get me and hope hope that people will understand, you know. Um but I I do love making people a part of it and making people as comfortable as possible, even though I may be singing in Gaelic, but I do sing in English sometimes, depending on the mood. I do sing in English as well, but um I I try and make it as entertaining as possible and that people will understand, even when they don't understand every word, that they will understand the emotion of the song. You know, and I think that's where I even get that when I hear other people we'll say other people with from different you know, backgrounds singing in different languages. I always get emotion emotional if I like the song and try and sing it phonetically along with but um it's it's it's just one of those things. It's trying it it it doesn't make it easier because you know, I suppose people used to say to me, Why don't you just sing in English and just forget about it? But that's not that's not me. That's not what we're about. We're about authenticity, integrity. We're our thing is this is how we were brought up and bringing that to our stage, and we're so lucky that we have been doing that this last 40 years. I I I I don't like pretense, but but it has got us on albums with the likes of Dolly Parton and you know the chieftains and you know Ricky Skaggs has brought us to the grand old Opry and you know it it has got us to all these uh other opportunities, so it hasn't really curtailed anything.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

And having seen your show in um in Franklin or Nashville area, the the thing that goes back to that authenticity that you're talking about is like you're having fun on stage and there's a lot of banter back and forth between the performers and sometimes laughing at each other, you know. It seemed real. It seemed like you were could have been in a pub anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah, well, I I think it would be silly to be on tour with somebody and not enjoy it, you know. So we do get on fairly well. Now we've been through a lot of different people in the band, but whenever we're a band, we always try and get on as well as we can. We're on tour together, it's like a family. You know, some days people are sick, some days people are in top form. But usually it's it's amazing how music can dissipate any problems at all. I I I just love music, it's so uplifting, and even on the darkest days it gives so much even the musician that might be low, it helps to raise them, you know.