The Art of Atmosphere

Masters of Tradition Festival 2005.

An age-old question: where’s the best place to listen to traditional music? The pub? Nice atmosphere, maybe; good camaraderie, if you’re lucky; but most often too noisy. Pubs are for drinking, after all. The concert hall? Yes, but concert hall performances are often adjusted and filtered – either by the musician or the promoter – to suit the perceived tastes of the audience. What about Seán McKiernan’s kitchen? Now we might be getting somewhere.

The energetic and eternally optimistic team that runs West Cork Music saw Bantry House as a viable venue for traditional music when, back in 2003, they invited Martin Hayes to act as Artistic Director for Masters of Tradition. This five-day festival, which ran this year from August 17th to 21st, sets out to create ‘a quiet and intimate atmosphere in which Irish music can be performed in a good acoustic environment and where listeners can appreciate the subtle details of the music’. The emphasis is on small-scale performance – solo, duet and occasional trio. And it works both commercially – as evidenced by the sell-out crowds throughout the week – and musically – as testified by their reaction.

The audience is an interesting mixture of locals and visitors; certainly not a typical traditional music gathering. Old colonel look-alikes merge with the middle-aged weathered types who were once the West Cork hippies of the sixties and seventies. There are solid citizens and young tearaways, plus a good smattering of the bedrock Cork support. There is a group of Japanese who, like many others, have based their holidays here in each of the three years of the festival. As we sit beforehand in the faded ornate grandeur of the Library, there is an air of slightly puzzled expectancy.

The uncompromising sean-nós of John Flanagan, who opened each of the evening concerts, went straight over the heads of most of the audience, but served as a statement of intent. This is not a synthetic tourist entertainment, it said. If you can’t handle the real thing, look elsewhere.

Each night is divided into two parts – the main concert at 8pm and the ‘Níos Déanaí’ slot at 10:30pm. On Friday, the main course offered a smorgasbord of Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden and Donal Lunny. Martin and Máirtín opened with a blast of reels. Rather than tracking each other slavishly, this traditional M&M are casually mindful of each other. Dennis then replaces Máirtín and we switch to the familiar mixing and matching of metre and key, tempo and dynamics. The long journey through ‘The Britches Full of Stitches’/ ‘Tommy Coen’s’/ ‘The Whistler of Rossleigh’/ ‘Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie’ shows Martin as a master weaver of atmosphere, while Dennis does more with a single chord than other guitarists can do with an entire bookful. Cathal, Máirtín and Donal join for the stimulating finale. There’s no lack of energy, although increased traffic obscures the fine detail of the earlier pieces.

Níos Déanaí
The Níos Déanaí slot is described, just a little pompously, as ‘a spontaneous coming together of musical experience to encapsulate the artistic spirit of the day’. The standard lamps at the rear of the performance area are turned off and the candelabrum in the centre of the room is lit. On Friday night, a novel outfit comprising Steve Cooney, Arty McGlynn, Dennis Cahill and Donal Lunny took the stage. There was much speculation as to the most appropriate collective noun for a group of accompanists. Máirtín O’Connor comes up with ‘backer pack’. It’s an accomplished ensemble performance with the focus switching to each player in turn. But, after just forty minutes or so, they run out of material. They’ve miscalculated. Forgivable, perhaps, for a beginner boy band, but surely not for a team of road-hardened pros such as these. To flesh out the time, they revert to guitarist mode, with a deliciously loose version of Django Reinhardt’s ‘Nuage’ and a rolling, crowd-pleasing twelve-bar blues, complete with a bizarre bodhrán solo from Lunny.

Seán McKiernan’s Kitchen
On Saturday, Nollaig Casey opened her set with the self-penned ‘Lios na Banríona’, a stately piece, well suited to the surroundings. Séamus Creagh and Matt Cranitch then took us on an exhilarating twin-fiddle tour through the musical territory of Sliabh Luachra. Like all the best duets, they fashioned a comfortable unison. Polkas and slides formed the foundation but the slow airs – ‘Táimse im’ Chodladh’ and ‘Aisling Gheal’ from Cranitch and the extraordinary ‘Lament for Oliver Goldsmith’ from Creagh – stood out.

Níos déanaí, Máirtín O’Connor comes on stage, declares himself ‘a nervous wreck’ and then proves himself anything but. Joined by Steve Cooney and, later by Cathal Hayden and Colm Murphy, he generates enormous power. ‘Óró Bog Liom Í’ and ‘An Rógaire Dubh’ undergo a clever transformation; ‘Inse Ghil’ is a brilliant mix of tradition and hippiness. By the end, the speed limit is exceeded and the cheap tricks have become enormously expensive, but no-one cares.

Back to Friday night and Seán McKiernan, of Boston, Carna and Cork. Exceeding his allotted twenty-minute slot by a factor of three, McKiernan created a cosy, informal, eccentric environment through a mixture of tunes and stories, speculations and reminiscences. ‘My background is all kitchen,’ he declared at the outset. We soon saw what he meant as he compressed the cold splendour of Bantry House into the warmth of an old kitchen. By the power of word and music, he had crafted the ideal venue. Francis O’Neill, from just up the road in Tralibane, would have approved.

For more information on West Cork Music, visit www.westcorkmusic.ie or tel 027-52788

Published on 1 November 2005

Pat Ahern is a musician and producer. He lectures in mathematics at Cork Institute of Technology.

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