Album Review- The Chieftains featuring Ry Cooder ’St. Patricio-Deluxe Edition’ By Neil O'Toole

The album is a musical concept which has been under fire in recent times. In fact, it is nowadays reckoned that those musicians with more temporal considerations, should pursue the live circuit rather than record. Behind this trend lies the sudden onslaught of musical playback technology over the past decade, the Unholy Trinity of mp3, iTune and iPod. These have led to what this author would term the ‘atomisation of music’, i.e. the breaking up of pieces into isolated files, without a story or context. Added to this is the quality issue; months of painstaking work in studios so everyone can hear the finished product on a device the size of a CD sticker. Music me arse.

In an unusual, if not Karmic way, the album ‘St. Patricio’ has been in gestation during these same 10 years. It arrives on the ‘Market’ at a time when people are dusting off their vinyl collection and rediscovering the fact that music you listen to while ‘tweeting’, ‘beboing’ ‘facebooking’ is just ear candy. It is in some ways an antimodern album, or better still, timeless and does this despite a very specific historical context. ‘St. Patricio’ is a classic and for me perhaps the Chieftains’ best, together with ‘The Chieftains in China’ (although yer man in Celtic Note in Dublin reckons ‘The Long Black Veil’).

So what’s the story? I’ll spare you the standard Wikipedia hotpotch version and put it in my own words. In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, a small battalion of Irish immigrants conscripted into the US Army defected over to the Mexican side. They recognised that they had more in common with their supposed enemy than with their unpopular commanders. Needless to say, they were rewarded for this call of conscience with humiliating punishment and the amnesia of historians. A forgotten chapter for academia, their story was resurrected in the 1999 film ‘One Man’s Enemy’, which didn’t exactly do as well as 2004’s ‘The Alamo’, if you catch my drift.

In a way, an album was always going to be a more accessible medium for this tale and with ‘St. Patricio’ Paddy Maloney and Ry Cooder have produced something which resonates with the experience of Mexican immigrants in the US today. The lads have definitely done their homework and have attempted to emulate the achievements of composer Elliot Goldenthal’s score for the 2002 film ‘Frida’. Renowned Mexican singers Lila Downs and Chavela Vargas feature on both albums. It also is clear that Ry Cooder’s connections in Los Angeles have managed to source some very accomplished and authentic musicians. There is a texture to the production that facilitates the musical fusions and overcomes technical challenges (the album was recorded at six different locations in Europe and the Americas involving countless musicians). Other contributors include Linda Ronstadt, Carlos Nuñez, Liam Neeson and Moya Brennan.

However, it is the Mexican musicians and groups who are the heroes of this album. Whether it be songs, ballads, orchestral pieces or instrumentals, they lay down a marker for us Irish musicians. The studio footage on the bonus DVD displays their laidback virtuosity and soul. Ry Cooder is back and forth from the soundbooth with ideas while Paddy Moloney works the room with the tin whistle, leaving the pipes for the overdubs back in Dublin. The recording is at its best in a live setting and for me the highlight of the album is Track 15 Canción Mixteca (That’s the only tip you philistine iTuners are gonna get from me!). Los Tigres Del Norte sound like they’re singing at a late night wedding in Yucatán. You can smell the silver tequila and homemade salsa, the whiff of coriander and lime.

There are so many other great elements to this album; the complex rhythms set to the tunes, the blended harmonies sung with passion, the inspiring artwork of Molsés Salceda. However, what ultimately gives this album its depth is the historical backdrop. Paddy Moloney and Ry Cooder have created something which helps us imagine how those poor conscripts must have felt out there in the desert night, far from home and facing a fate worse than death; oblivion. This album has finally redeemed those men and made them immortal. Paddy Maloney writes in the liner notes: ‘...in the music there is always another history, another way of remembering the past, an older remembrance concerned less with battles and imagined borders and more with the ageless themes of love, loss and dreams of what might be’. Listen to ‘St. Patricio’ as an album rather than a bunch of tunes and you’ll see what he means...

© Neil O'Toole

Celtic Mist by Frank Boyle ©

“We’ve got Michael D. Higgins in the Dáil” so sang the Roscommon/Galway band the Saw Doctors, many moons ago. Now they have him in Áras an Uchteráin. Recently I visited Ireland for the Halloween Festival. I wasn’t expecting too much and as usual I got more than I bargained for. I arrived late at night.

The news that we had a new Irish President (Uchterán) was everywhere and almost all seemed to be happy about the fact that Michael D. had topped the poles, or at least relieved that it wasn’t Martin or Dana or even David or ‘yer man’ who would be our next resident ‘up in the park’. It had been a line up, in the words of Dana’s Eurovision hit, of ‘All kinds of everything’.

Halloween or Samhain in Gaelic is the ancient Celtic festival of the dead. It celebrates the Harvest and the beginning of winter and the dying sun, which from now will wane only to be reborn ‘the king of light’ at the winter Solstice. This is the turning point, as we see from the Newgrange burial mound and its five thousand year old architecture, designed to let sunlight enter the inner chamber only at the dawn of the winter solstice, 21st December, each year. There is even a carving of the Solar Boat, similar to the Egyptian symbol of the journey to Immortality. The Celts believed that during Samhain October 31st the veil between the living and the dead, between the Sidhe or Faery folk and ourselves opens briefly and during that time they walk among us and can be perceived. They are not to be feared, as we seem to do in modern times but to be honoured. For myself, I, like the dead, have come home to walk among the living, to meet family, old friends and relatives and visit the places I grew up in and also to listen to the music and see the course of life run bye. And hopefully I am not forgotten and some kind soul will share a pint with me. (Mind you, not that, living in Finland, I would know how the dead must feel)

Talking of the dead, Christy Moore is back and doing gigs in Vicar Street in Dublin and around the country. (He has had more comebacks that Sinatra.) I saw a poster in ‘The Spirit Store’ as I was going in with my brother to see a gig by a young fellow by the name of Adam Cohen- son of the legendary Leonard. Great to hear the old Cohen voice reborn, the one I remember from ‘So long Marianne’ and ‘Bird on the wire’ with a new twist. Time seemed to stand still, as he wove a tapestry of his own songs and memories to a relaxed room. Mai Bloomfield ably supported him on cello with a voice like velvet. The phones were off and charmed by the music it seemed like just minutes had gone bye. The Dundalk venue above the pub is very intimate. So much so, you could spit on the musicians- a practice I would not advise, unless you’re a strong swimmer, as the Pub opens out on to the quays and the vast expanse of the bay. Beyond are the Cooley Mountains hidden in the darkness where the mythological hero Cuchalainn concealed the Brown Bull. (Táin Bó Cuailnge)

Samhain marks the borderline, between the day and winter/night between the living and the dead, between us mortals and the immortals. The Mythical race of DeDannan ‘who came out of heaven’, were, or are, immortal. It was they who fought off the invaders The Fomorians (Fir Bolg). De Danann were of the Light revering; science, poetry, music, knowledge, freedom of thought and creativity and the Celtic God the Sun was as much a God of the afterlife as he was of this. Lugh was their principle hero and seen as champion of the Sun God or son of light. The Firbolgs represented dullness, ignorance, tyranny, cruelty, greed and as such a moral darkness. At one point The Firbolgs stole the Harp of Dalga. The De Danann discovered it, hung on the wall in the Firbolgs camp, when summoned by Dalga (The Good) using an incantation invoking Summer and Winter, it flew through the air into his hands. This suggests that music itself was an invocation of the seasons. (Reminds me of many tunes and just now of Vivaldi Four seasons). Dalga then played the three Celtic strains of music; Joyful, Lament and Lullaby and the Formorians fell asleep under its spell and they escaped. “Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast” as the bard has it.

In later Celtic legend the De Dannan were defeated by The Milesians the original Celts perhaps, more human and mortal with a mix of light and darkness. However the De Danann never left Ireland but drew a cloak of invisibility around themselves and continued ‘to conceive without the sin of Adam and feast in sunshine and eternal happiness’. Henceforth there are two Irelands, the spiritual and the earthly. They continue and could see all about them but were not seen by mortals, except when the veil grew thin at Samhain and at other times when they chose to move in the mortal world under disguise. They live on in the same space but a different dimension, as it were, where Time too passes differently. It is said that music is not a human thing at all, it was their gift to the mortals ‘With the coming of Christianity they dwindled to The Faery Folk, The people of the Sidhe, the Good people. But Tir na Óg. The land of youth, lives on in the imagination’ of all true Irish Celts. Much of this comes back to me from stories I heard as a child and later from reading old books by O Grady and T.W. Rolleston on the Celtic Myths and Legends.

Still in Ireland, my mind drifted. The lights of the airport were behind me now and I was on the way home. Heading north on the motorway-It was a starry night and a slip of a moon was in the sky. Soon we were in the Boyne land and Drogheda. Not far from here is Newgrange, the home of Aengus Óg de Brú- God of love. He once fell in love himself and searched far and wide for his beloved who disappeared. As The poet Yeates wrote in the song of Wandering Aengus.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she is gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and tides are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The story did have a happy ending. He did find her, among the swans and joining her became one himself and they flew over the land to his faery palace on the Boyne and sang a magical song, so beautiful and enchanting, that when people heard it they slept for three nights and three days. The light shimmered on the water as we crossed the bridge and I look back on Drogheda. Cromwell the great ‘Defender of Liberty’ laid siege to the town in 1649 and slaughtered all its inhabitants-‘Good man Cromwell, I never liked Drogheda people anyway.’

Out in the open now and darkness and shadows on each side of the road. Every now and then, a small cottage or farmhouse rose out of patches of mist on the way to Dunleer and then on to Castlebellingham, where Swift stayed. Perhaps the mystical Voyage of Maeldun inspired his Gulliver’s Travels. Only one or two passengers left on the bus now as we wind through the village street. I watch out for Tony’s cottage on the right, (an old work-friend now passed on) and barely see it in the misty shadows as we fly out of town.

The mist clears and before us is the plain of Muirhebhna bathing in the starlight and the sliver of moonlight, where Cuchulainn dallied and roamed as a boy and later fought single-handed an army as a man. ‘Ulster says no!’ Beyond over the bay the Cooley Mountains and the hidden valley where the Brown Bull was tethered and hidden from the invading armies of Maeve. The bardic story is believed by some to be a symbolic Solar Myth of the champion of the Sun fighting the western armies who inevitably overcome him and capture it for a season. Cuchulainn was said to be the son of Lugh. Perhaps its so, but when I was a boy every word of the story was gospel truth. He and the Celtic Gods were as real to me as you are. As we approach the town the new Gods of Mammon have erected a Giant Don Quixote Wind Turbine and a multi-story Hotel. The only two blots on an ancient landscape. I descend from the bus like an Ossian returning from Tir Na Óg and the years come upon me. I climbed the hill to my mum’s place where ‘a nice cup of tea’ was waiting for me and ‘all the news’.

Earlier next day I dug the garden and cleared some weeds at my mothers place. I felt close to my father who enjoyed working the garden and always had it looking so well. I felt somehow he was near and smiling. It was Halloween later that night on Dowdallshill, (where the English camped before the Battle of the Boyne and where my sister now lives with her family and where my father grew up near the graveyard that now holds his mortal remains) we watched the Fireworks over the town. And a new thing, the lanterns floating ghostly in the sky borne by the southerly wind over our heads. The kids go house-to-house ‘trick or treating’ with parents in the background keeping a watchful eye. Halloween, All souls night, Samhain..

Bringing offerings/treats to the graves, do they ever think of the De Danann, the children of Dana, The Sidhe and that veil of invisibility that separates us mortals from the immortals? Who knows, when you hear the rustle of leaves and distant laughter, what strange folk may be drawing close?

Perhaps, just now, we do well to remember that there are two Irelands- and as the old Celt said when he fell of the barstool, ‘It’s always darkest just before the dawn’. So when you do hear or play a piece of music, particularly Celtic and that magic moves you again, either to Joy or Sadness or even to soft Slumber, remember. It’s the gift of the De Danann and they never left, they are, all around us…

© Frank Boyle November 2011

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