Loose Leaf Notes

Irish reels are fun, but I like laments the best, songs sung without accompaniment and with a haunting rhythmic lilt, airs that make pathways to the past, pied piper penny whistles that call me to my heritage, other-worldly uilleann pipe that cry for lost memories and lyrics that tell my family’s history.

“We Irish like pain,” I leaned over and said to Joe. He, also Irish American, had tears in his eyes too.  It’s not really that we like pain, but more that – like Italians can cook, Germans are efficient – the Irish have the capacity to feel deeply.

It’s an emotional thread that tugs, the memory in my DNA of my ancestors coming to America, oppressed, poor and hungry, grieving the loss of their homeland.  My grandmother was said to have come on her own at the age of thirteen to be a house servant in South Boston, Massachusetts.  When I was a teenager, one of my aunts gave me a platter that my grandmother was said to have carried on the ship from there to here.  Now I carry it. I’ve carried it from Massachusetts to Texas, and then to the Virginia mountains, the same mountain range as the one in Ireland and Scotland, all one range pre-ice age.

The people who settled here in the Blue Ridge over eight generations ago were largely Scots Irish and the musical heritage of Ireland and Scotland and Appalachia share roots.  Is that why Sean Keane of the famous musical Kean family from Gallway, who played at the Pine Tavern Sunday night, was so heartfully received?  Is that why his traditional singing style hit home?

Post Note:Look for my story on Sean Kean’s performance in the Floyd Press this week.  Watch the videos of him singing above and another of his rendition of From Gallway to Graceland HERE.   Listen to his band mate Fergus Feely sing a song he wrote HERE. Band mate Pat Coyne laments that nothing is free anymore HERE.