Journalist, Commentator and Blogger
I don’t know if you can put a primal scream to music but Josette Bushell-Mingo’s show, Nina – A Story about Me and Nina Simone has all the power of a holler against racism, whether it is in her native London or in Simone’s North Carolina or anywhere else in the world. Bushell-Mingo comes from …
Continue reading “Re-kindling the fire and fury in the Civil Rights-era music of Nina Simone”
It’s very rare that a song takes up a baseball bat and hits you on the head with it, but that is what happened metaphorically to me sometime in 1971, one eye on my homework and the other watching The Old Grey Whistle Test. Then a song came on that blew me away. The song …
Last year, I heard an album that left me hyperentilating. Almost. It was From Tallagh to Halle by a band called Aldoc, named after the head honcho and guiding spirit, Alan Doherty from the People’s Republic of Tallaght in County Dublin. So taken by the band was I that I spend a whole day driving around in …
The thing I love most about watching Tim Edey playing either the guitar or the melodeon, is that he seems to be enjoying it so much and when you see someone do that, you are drawn in even more to the joy of the music being played. It’s obviously more than a job to Tim …
It must have been around 35 years ago that the usual bar staff of an Irish language club in west Belfast were all off in Donegal. Being someone who often helped out in the bar, I was asked to look after affairs for the night. Cumann Chluain Ard was a place visiting Irish language …
If you were to ask me to put together a folk/trad line-up of my favourite artists, then I would probably come up with the same one that will be on the stage of the MAC on Monday night in A Stór Mo Chroí – A Musical Gathering. The duo that make up Lumiere is probably …
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, Oh I do like to be beside the sea … Bangor on the north Down coast has turned into Festival City, with something exciting happening nearly every weekend for the past month and arguably, the best of the bunch still to come thanks to the Open …
Tá Liam Maonlaí le bheith ag seinm ag The Hay Festival i gCeanannas Mhór, ach cupla mí ó shin labhair sé le Robert McMillen fá na pleananna atá aige don am atá le theacht.
Last year, I had a spellbinding conversation with Eugene Dunphy when the shared his knowledge and passion for Karl Hardebeck, the blind organist, composer, Gaeilgeoir and champion of Irish music. Hardeback was of the opinon that Edward Bunting got it all wrong when he transcribed the music played at the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival. The 19-year old …
This weekend one of the most talked about contemporary folk bands, Lau, are in the north for a couple of gigs in Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry, Thur 6th June, 8pm; in the Black Box (Fri 7th June, 8.30pm) in conjunction with An Droichead; and at Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick, on Sunday 9th June, 8pm. Coming …
