The Suffering Ducks
Ciaran Carson
How has a Belfast flute sound evolved in such a short time?
Or, more accurately, delivered in a staccato Belfast accent, ‘The Sufferin’ Ducks’, the name of a tune played by the Belfast flutists Harry Bradley and Michael Clarkson on their forthcoming CD, The Pleasures of Hope. I’ve just been listening to a demo of it, courtesy of Michael. The music is hard, punchy, driving, full of devilment and ‘crack’ if not craic, and I’m wondering how that characteristic Belfast flute sound has come about in what, in terms of the long run of traditional music, seems a comparatively short time, maybe thirty or forty years.
In the mid-1960s there were, as far as I know, only two flute-players of any prominence in Belfast, Tom Ginley and James MacMahon, whose music would have been at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of repertoire and technique; indeed, they played different instruments. Ginley, a native of Belfast, played a silver Boehm-system flute and was fond of tricky hornpipes, tunes beyond the ken or inclination of most traditional players. I never heard James MacMahon play his fabled ivory simple-system flute, but I gather his style would have been typical of his native county of Fermanagh, and a lovely jig attributed to him on Charlie Piggot and Gerry Harrington’s CD The New...Why not subscribe? VISA, Mastercard and Laser all accepted.
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