Mark Connelly

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Side B contents:

Comments:

In the 1990's, on many Saturday afternoons, I was on Cape Cod running errands to help my elderly parents who had moved there to West Yarmouth upon retirement in 1974. When I was out in the car going from bank to store or whatever (and taking occasional side trips to the beach) I usually had the radio tuned to the "Irish Hit Parade" on WROL - 950 Boston, or to one of the other similar shows available.

For those who like the spectrum of the Celtic world's music from pure traditional folk to modern mergers of that music with rock and country, Saturday afternoon radio in eastern Massachusetts is a veritable "treasure trove". First there's WROL's great show, a fixture on the Boston dial since the 1960's. In the old days it was John Latchford's program; now it's ably run by Matt O'Donnell, Paul Sullivan, and others. There's another good show, "Celtic Twilight", simulcast on WFPB - 1170 Orleans and WUMB - 91.9 Boston. "The Sound of Erin" on WNTN - 1550 Newton is a third Saturday afternoon choice (though a bit harder to hear on Cape Cod than the other shows). On other days of the week, especially Sunday, Irish programming can be heard on a number of other stations including WUNR - 1600, WEIM - 1280, and WNBP - 1450.

Boston is the closest major US city to "the old country" and it was the landing place for many immigrants from Ireland, especially in the 1800's (and even still to some extent today). The contributions of Boston's Irish to politics, religion, the arts, the sciences, industry, education, etc. are known around the world.

In the 1950's, at a very early age, I heard my mother singing Irish songs and I frequently heard older people talking about the singer John McCormack with a reverence usually reserved for the clergy or for James Michael Curley, the Boston Irish politician who inspired the novel "The Last Hurrah" by Edwin O'Connor.

In my school days of the 1960's, I became more immersed in rock 'n' roll and black R&B. I wasn't paying much attention to Irish music and culture since it seemed to be in a rut, not reinventing itself.

Changes came in the 1968-1973 era when Celtic folk influences were becoming very evident in much of the rock music I liked. Unlike the American-style folk that fuelled the domestic folk-rock boom (B. Dylan, J. Baez, J. Collins, T. Rush, P. Ochs, the Byrds, and even Sonny & Cher) of the early/mid '60s, the late '60s and early '70s influences were from the British Isles. The blend there was of Celtic, Germanic, and medieval French folk origins with admixtures of classical music that ultimately drew much from the same sources among the common people in northern Europe.

Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Lindisfarne, and Richard & Linda Thompson were among the artists showing the most obvious influences, but aspects of the music also touched the Moody Blues, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, and even the ostensibly blues-driven British bands like the Rolling Stones ("Lady Jane"), Led Zeppelin ("Battle of Evermore"), and Traffic ("John Barleycorn"). A surprising number of heavy metal bands included album cover artwork, lyrics, and music having a Middle Ages feel that was Norse, Gothic, or Celtic in derivation. Science fiction writers (and, nowadays, video game developers) often look backwards for similar imagery and sounds to frame visions of other worlds, or of the future in this one.

During the late '60s, the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, and C. S. Lewis were very much in vogue. Many people had become frustrated with modern urban life and the trashing of the natural environment. Moods of mysticism, whether "new age" or derived from established faiths, fused well with forms of music descended from Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Druids. By the mid '70s, there were more bands on the scene. Most, like the Strawbs, were from England, but Ireland did have a couple of bands (Horslips, Tir Na N'Og) that were popular in the US, at least here in the Boston area where we tend to be on the "front end" of imports from across the Atlantic.

The local Irish-American radio scene in the '70s was in a somewhat stagnant state, not usually appreciative of how many younger people were going "straight to the well" for the traditional fiddling and piping (and bypassing the more schmaltzy "Danny Boy" and "My Wild Irish Rose" stuff of their elders).

Radio shows catering to the older folks would turn a deaf ear towards bands like Horslips that incorporated electric guitars. Fortunately, college stations such as WHRB - 95.3 (Harvard U.) picked up the slack and played Planxty, Boys of the Lough, the Chieftains, and Steeleye Span right along side compatibly folkish / Tolkienesque rock by Led Zeppelin or Gentle Giant. Donna Lee Halper, then on Cambridge's low power WCAS - 740, offered similar folk and rock blending on her excellent '70s-era show.

By 1977, when my wife and I took a two-week trip to Ireland, I was hooked on all the variations of Celtic and British traditional folk and rock amalgams. The trip afforded opportunities to check out some great live performances as well as to tune in awesome talent on the local "Radio Na Gaeltachta" broadcasts in the rural Gaelic-speaking sections of Ireland's western coast. There were fiddle-playing farmers and fishermen unknown to the outside world: they could have filled major music halls if they got the right promotion.

In the late '70s, Ireland had successful conventional rockers in Boomtown Rats and Thin Lizzy. By 1980, the world became aware of U2 when "I Will Follow" hit the airwaves with a big splash. Creativity thrived despite - or perhaps because of - the country's long history of continuing struggles. The floodgates were soon open and, over the ensuing years, artists such as Sinead O'Connor, Hothouse Flowers, the Cranberries, and many others have put Ireland on the pop music map in a league with the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Besides rockers of every conceivable style, fresh new faces have entered the more traditional folk scene as well. These include DeDanaan, In Tua Nua, Altan, Clannad, Cherish the Ladies, the Saw Doctors, and Dolores Keane. The newer folk performers are apt to draw in more non-Celtic "world music" influences (from India or Africa, for instance) than their predecessors in the '60s and earlier did.

As time went along, those who liked things on a grand orchestral scale enjoyed "Riverdance", the Irish tenors, and collaborations involving the Chieftains, Van Morrison, and James Galway.

In the '90s, the local Irish-American radio scene (including WROL's "Hit Parade") became much more accepting of new music. You could hear the Cranberries one minute and the old chestnuts like "The Wild Colonial Boy" and "Southie is My Home Town" the next.

Canada, always close to its traditional Celtic, British, and Acadian French roots, gave us Loreena McKennitt, Natalie MacMaster, Great Big Sea, the Irish Descendants, and many others. Long before the '90s wave of Canadian talent, Gordon Lightfoot's music drew strongly from the old world's folk heritage.

The tape gives a cross section of some of the music I have come to know and love. It's a bit more slanted towards rock than "pure" folk, but it doesn't stray too far from roots in "the holy ground". It's not even 1% of the outstanding material out there. Many more tapes would have to be made just to scratch the surface. The music on the tape has personal meaning to me as it brings back memories of those Saturday afternoons when my parents were still alive. Both of them were fond of anything - art, music, literature, religion, and even horse racing - that reminded them of that cherished land across the sea.