Howard Marks at CQAF

Sometimes we make mistakes. I thought Ardal O’Hanlon would be a better evening’s entertainment than Howard Marks at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival last night and booked my ticket accordingly. However, the way things worked out, I called in to see the first half hour of the self-appointed Mr. Nice, just to see the cut of his jib.

Well, when it was time to head for the date with Fr. Dougal, I found it hard to leave the Black Box. The man I expected to be a boorish self-publicist was hugely entertaining.

For those in the audience who might not have known who Howard Marks was – I doubt if anyone fitted that description – the man himself played a short video from a news programme in America looking, at his criminal past as he faced a long stretch in the slammer for narcotics offences.

Hello! Magazine don’t do news programmes but if they did, this is what they would look like.

Even the cops seemed to be fond of the man who at one stage was said to have controlled 10% of the world’s hashish trade. Marks told his audience of mostly fans that the stuff he dealt in was of the finest quality – unlike the stuff being pedalled today – earning him a round of applause from the aficionados of the weed in the audience.

After graduating with a degree in nuclear physics and post grad qualifications in philosophy, Howard became one of the world’s biggest drug dealers in the 1970s, was on the run for seven years – “the happiest time of my life – and e ended up in a Texas jail.

After a lifetime involved in illegal drugs, providing and consuming, and seven years in the slammer, it only took a millisecond for Marks to be rehabilitated. The miraculous recovery was brought about by a cheque for £100,000 from a publisher keen to cash in on the Welshman’s new-found celebrity.

“If we give you a cheque for £100,000 do you promise to write the book within a year, Howard?”

“Yessss, I promise,” was the inevitable reply.

The Welshman does a nice line in self-deprecation, with career moves from getting a degree in nuclear physics at Oxford University to the life of a drug baron, from jail to becoming a best-selling author and now he has finally ended up as a standup comedian.

Well, he’s more of a raconteur actually and the message he sends out are worth listening to.

One of Mark’s jobs was to judge the quality of the ten strongest cannibis joints in a competition run in Amsterdam.

They paid for his flight, gave him a hotel for a week and told him to smoke the lot for the seven days and come up with a winner!

He tells of Switzerland a country where buying, selling and consuming drugs is illegal, but to grow it isn’t! So he and his mates went to the country and grew “forests of skunk” and there was nothing the police could do about it. And because you had to physically put the marijuana into your body, by smoking it or by other means I won’t go into – you could lie in this forest of weed and get high by just smelling the stuff!

Damn! It was time to go. When I got round to the Marquee, Ardal had already started and was coincidentally talking about Switzerland. Now Ardal O’Hanlon is a very funny man and the audience loved him and there were many laugh out loud moments. But all he did was tell jokes. Marks had lived the life and was, to my mind, on a totally different level.

So next time, I’ll go for the outlaw instead.

Lumiere at CQAF

La Dolce Vita. Life is sweet. Despite their short lifespan, I’ve probably seen Lumiere – Pauline Scanlon and Éilís Kennedy – more often than most other acts. The simple reason is that the duo make you realise that the simplest things are often the best.

Two stunning voices joined together in holy matrimony by Apollo, the God of Music, with the songs of their native Kerry and a few blowy-ins as a dowry.

The songs from their eponymous debut album are all jewels on the same crown with not a weak link from start to finish and the packed audience at the John Hewitt on Sunday afternoon at 3pm – an unusually successful time for a gig – heard the cream of the crop.

It would be hard to pick out a highlight – apart from the seismic smack Pauline hit Donogh with after an unscripted aside! – but I swear, as soon as the girls started singing the absolutely gorgeous Fair and Tender Ladies, the sun started to shine through the stained glass windows of the Hewitt. Somebody up there likes Lumiere too.

The West’s Awake, Fill, Fill a Rún Ó, Edward on Lough Erne’s Shore, An Maidrín Rua – oh, every song was sung to perfection and for a beautiful finale, it was great to hear the audience sing a long to the delightful Oró mo Bháidín.

While we’ve heard these songs many times before, it was an eye-opener (an ear-opener) to hear Éilís’ version of Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes.

That’s just what the audience thought as the gig drew to a close.

It’s time now to pay tribute to Donogh Hennessey, formerly of Lúnasa, who left the band because of the travelling but also to play music with maybe less of a polish but more musically interesting. There’s no doubt the big Dublin-born guitarist lives and breathes music and his accompaniment of Pauline’s whispering soprano and Éilís’ lyricality was pitch perfect.

Tomorrow the girls head to London to start recording their second album. I, and many others, can’t wait.

Fair play to the band, the Hewitt and the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival for a memorble Sunday afternoon in Belfast.

West Ocean String Quartet

‘Twas fitting that the West Ocean String Quartet should play at St. George’s Church in Belfast. Between 1817 and 1821, Edward Bunting, the man who recorded the music played at the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival (thereby saving a huge part of the national repertoire for posterity), was organist in this very church.

One of the stained glass windows shows a king playing the harp – if anyone knows the story of the window, I’d like to hear it. So, St. George’s was the perfect backdrop for the musical talents of Neil Martin, Seamus Maguire, Niamh Crowley and former punk Ken Rice for an evening of exquisite music, both classically traditional and newly-composed.

The evening of many highlights kicked off with Planxty Stockallen, a piece written by Neil Martin to commemorate a fine meal in the county Meath townland of the title. The evening was a musical journey taking us from Meath to Sligo and from Donegal across to Quebec; and even to the great beyond.

‘Space for Dreaming’ was inspired by a photograph Neil saw of ‘the earth in all its glory’, taken from space yet there were, and are, wars happening all over the beautiful planet we live on.

The first half set piece as the three-piece suite (eh?) called ‘A Vague Utopia’, where Neil pays homage to William Butler Yeats. The first part looks at the multifarious interests of Yeats; the second part was a gorgeous love theme to celebrate the love affair between Yeats and Maude Gonne and it finished off with “a diseased reel” alluding to Yeats’ relationship with Ireland. A truly wonderful piece.

Other highlights of the night were ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’ which defined the Sunday mornings of a generation; the title track of the new album, an instrumental version of the Robbie Burns song, ‘Ae Fond Kiss’; the languid ‘Cailín na Gruaige Doinne’, and another suite, ‘The Guiding Moon’.

As night enveloped the church, the music gave a backward glance to Bunting and forward to new compositions from Martin, played with grace and skill by four superlative musicians.

You can watch the West Ocean String Quartet play one of the pieces they did last night, The Happy Camper on YouTube You can also buy their brilliant new album featuring Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill at the West Ocean String Quartet Official Website.

We are children of the stars

We are stardust, we are golden …

Little did I think the line from the Joni Mitchell song about Woodstock could be taken literally! We humans actually are all made up of stars.

I’d heard the theory before, a TED lecture probably, but watching the wonderful first programme in the Beautiful Minds series on BBC on the iplayer Belfast-born astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell told us how we and the universe are made of the same stuff.

“The kind of chemical elements you find inside the human body – hydrogen and oxygen in the water, carbon in our tissues, calcium in our bones, iron in our bloodstream, they’ve come basically from the earth because that’s where the plants got them from. The earth and the sun, because they formed at much the same time, got these elements from preceding exploding starts. The material goes through a stellar cycle, explodes, gets incorporated in the sun and the earth and into us. And when we die, the atoms will get returned to the earth.

“We are ultimately and intimately, children of the stars. We are made of star stuff. So when we look at the night sky, we are looking at the environment we came from, that the atoms from which we are made come from, the roots of our being and that’s why I find astronomy so fascinating.”

You’d think that an in depth knowledge of astronomy – the fact that humans are made of cosmic materials, knowing how galaxies are formed, change and die, how the universe behaves – you’d think that Bell Burnell would be a card-carrying atheist, but she is in fact a practising Quaker. There is a revelatory interview which Joan Bakewell (who’s speaking at this year’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival) did with her here (BBC Religion) in which she describes her scientific work and her beliefs.

Personally, I think the fact that we are made up of the universe’s debris debunks any belief in a religious explanation for the origin of life. Religion, as a set of morals aimed at encouraging people to love one another, is a great thing to have, but do we need the all the paraphernalia of organised churches to do the most basic of things?

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was one of the people who discovered pulars, bodies in the sky – stars – which “emit radio signals in short, very evenly spaced bursts, or pulses. “ (You can find out more about pulsars on this page [Space.com])

She was overlooked for the Nobel Prize for Physics which her male superiors won even though it was she who actually identified the phenomenon but she was gracefully philosophical about it all.

Another thing I love about Jocelyn – she failed her 11+!

You can still get to learn a lot from Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a beautiful woman in many ways, on the iplayer for the next few days.

Agallamh le Edna O’Brien

Foilsíodh an t-alt seo i bhFoinse i mí na Samhna, 2007.

Tamall ó shin, scríobh Anne Enright léirmheas ar an leabhar is déanaí ó Edna O’Brien, The Light of Evening. Scríobh Enright  gurbh í Edna O’Brien an chéad bhean Éireannach riamh a raibh gnéas aici – roimhe sin, ní raibh ag mná na hÉireann ach páistí.

Inniu is doiligh linn a chreidbheáil gur chuir  leabhair ar nós The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl (nó Girl with Green Eyes mar a tugadh níos maille air) agus Girls in Their Married Bliss alltacht ar an tír sna 1960í luatha.

Tír a bhí faoi smacht na hEaglaise Caitlicí, tír an-choimeádach, tír arbh fhearr lei an rún ná an oscailteacht, an bhréag in áit na fírinne a bhí ann agus seo an timpeallacht inar fhás Edna O’Brien aníos i dTuaim Gréine in oirthear an Chláir.

Is furasta dearmad a dhéanamh fosta go raibh O’Brien 30 bliain d’aois nuair a scríobh sí a céad leabhar The Country Girls i 1960. Níor gearrchaile ar bith í ach bean a bhí ina ceimicí sular thosaigh sí ag scríobh.

Ag an am, bhí O’Brien pósta ar fhear as Czechoslovakia mar a tugadh air ag an am, scríbhneoir cumannach darbh ainm Ernest Gebler. Bhí beirt pháiste acu ach i ndiaidh iad scaradh i 1964, thóg Edna an bheirt ghasúr lei féin. Bhí a tuismitheoirí go dubh in éadan an phósta ón tús, a máthair ach go háirithe.

Deir Edna gur bean í a máthair a raibh an dúfhuath aici ar an fhocal scríofa agus a bhí náirithe ag ceird a hiníne, go háirithe nuair a thosaigh tuatach agus cléir ag maslú a chéad leabhair. Leoga, dódh moll mór The Country Girls ag teach an phobail ina sráidbhaile dúchais.

“Dóú deasghnách a bhí acu – deir siad anois nar tharla sé ach tharla – ar thailte theach an phobail,” arsa Edna. “Dúirt mo mháthair liom cad a tharla agus rith gach mothúchán fríd mo chorp – eagla, náire, iontas ina measc.

“‘Thit mná i laige, Edna,” ar sí agus uafás ina glór.

“B’fhéidir gurbh í toit na móna ba chúis leis sin,” a deirinn mé, freagra nár thaitin le mo mháthair ar chor ar bith ach sílim gur fearr greann a dhéanamh nuair atá duine feargach leat.

Scríobh Edna The Country Girls taobh istigh de thrí seachtainí – glacann sé trí bliana anois, a deir sí – ach caithfidh go raibh a fhios aici go mbeadh rí-rá ann agus go gcuirfí cosc ar an leabhar. Ag an am sin, a mhínigh sí, má shíl triúir duine go raibh leabhar graosta nó ar dhóigh ar bith eile do-ghlactha, chuirfí cosc air. Nár thuig sí sin agus í i mbun The Country Girls?

“Do scríbhneoir ar bith, nó do dhuine ar bith cruthaíoch, nó do lucht aislinge féin, má bhíonn tú ag smaoineamh ar dhaoine eile, ar cad a shílfidh siad fút nó fá do shaothair, tá tú críochnaithe,” ar sí. “Is cuimhin liom gur dhúirt cara liom, Philip Roth: “Cé hé an léitheoir foirfe? Cé a léann leabhair mar ba mhian leis an scríbhneoir go léifí iad?”

Má bhí Edna beag beann ar fhearg naofa mhuintir an Chláir, bhí stoirm ag séideadh thart uirthi. “Fuair mé litir ón bhean rialta a bhí ina múinteoir sa scoil ina raibh mé – d’aithin mé an scríbhneoireacht ar an toirt agus fanfaidh a súile dorcha i mo chuimhne go deo – ach scríobh sí sa litir: “We are giving credence an open mind, but we believe you have written a novel.”

“Bhuel, ba beag oscailteacht aigne a léirigh siad agus roinnt mhaith blianta ina dhiaidh, bhuail mé le cailín a bhí sa scoil chéanna agus dúirt sí liom: ‘An bhfuil a fhios agat, gach uile thráthnóna dúirt muid an paidrín ar  do shon.’

“Dúirt  mé lei: ‘Bhuel, an ndearna sé aon mhaith dom?’

“Cúpla bliain eile ina dhiaidh sin, chuir duine eile leabhar chugam, beathaisnéis Archbishop  McQuaid agus léigh mé ann an comhfhreagras fá The Country Girls idir an tArdeaspag, Aire an chultúir ag an am, Charles Haughey agus Ardeaspag Westminster agus iad ag aontú d’aonghuth, ba í an ola ar a gcroí acu é, nár cheart go mbeadh an leabhar seo i dteach ar bith Críostaí sa tír.

“Inniu, níl na húdaráis ag cur cosc ar leabhair ar bith, ach tógann sé sin an cheist, an léann siad leabhair anois ar chor ar bith?” Tá an caidreamh atá ag O’Brien lena tír dhúchais casta. Shilfeá go mbeadh an dearg-ghráin aici ar a bhfuil ar an oileán iathghlas seo ach dalta duine a tógadh san fhasach, tugann siad a luach don uisce. Nó mar a dúirt sí féin:

“Tá mé iontach sásta gur tháinig mé as áit measartha Dia-thréigthe – b’fhéidir gur Tidy Town na bliana atá anois ann – ach tá mé sásta nach raibh mé millte ag saol ar dhóigh ar bith cultúrtha nó liteartha. Ba é an tírdhreach agus na scéalta a chuala muid nó a leathchuala muid fán aimsir anallód cultúr s’againn. I bhfoisceacht don teach inar tógadh mé, teach a mbím ag brionglóidigh faoi go han-mhinic go fóill féin – bhí coill ann, áit dhorcha, áit mhiotasach agus coinním cuimhne ar sin fosta mar caitheann muid na rudaí a chothaíonn muid a chaomhnú.

“Ó mo thaobh féin de, ag fás aníos faoin tuath agus gaoth, geataí ag dioscadh, fearthainn, bóithríní, locha a raibh finscéalta ceangailte le gach ceann acu, shíolraigh sé sin tnúth ionam le rud éigin níos uileghabhálaí ná an saol a bhí a cleachtadh againn.”

Faigheann Edna an “rud éigin níos uileghabhálaí” sin fríd an léitheoireacht, gníomh thar a bheith pearsanta agus príobháideach ach gníomh a shaibhríonn an léitheoir, conradh dofheicthe idir  an léitheoir agus an scríbhneoir, dar lei.

“Cad é thugann an léitheoireacht dom?” a d’fhiafraigh sí di féin. “Dúirt TS Eliot tráth: ‘Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” Agus tugann an litríocht réadúlacht dom ach méadaíonn sé é, saibhríonn sé é, tugann sé scóp dó.”

B’fhéidir go raibh ráiteas Eliot in intinn O’Brien nuair a scríobh sí In The Forest, úrscéal bunaithe ar dhúnmharaithe Imelda Riney, a mac trí bliana d’aois, Liam, agus an sagart Father Joseph Walsh, a bhfuarthas a gcoirp sa choill in aice leis an áit inar tógadh O’Brien.

Fuarthas Brendan O’Donnell ciontach as na dúnmharaithe ach chuir sé lámh lena bhás féin agus é ag caitheamh príosúnacht saoil i gcarchair. Chuir an leabhar isteach go mór ar dhaoine a chreid nár ceart an t-uafás a athchruthú in úrscéal ach ní dhéanann O’Brien leithscéal.

“Níor ghlac mé an cinneadh go furasta an leabhar a scríobh,” ar sí. Shiúil sí an ceantar inar tharla na dúnmharaithe le “dul isteach in intinn an dúnmharfóra.”

“Ní raibh sé furasta agus bhí sé trom ar an intinn agus ar na mothúcháin ach sin a choinníonn ag dul mé,” ar sí. Measann Edna ar ndóigh nach bhfuil mórán gnéis ina cuid leabhar ar chor ar bith agus nach raibh an ceart ag Ann Enright ach ag  deireadh an léirmheasa, dúirt buaiteoir an Duais Booker Man nárbh é an gnéas a bhí i leabhair O’Brien ach ionracas.

Tá O’Brien breá sásta sin a chluinstin.

“Tá fuath agam ar an mhí-ionracas,” ar sí. “Na leabhair a bhogann mé, a léim arís agus arís eile, is leabhair iad a phléascann an cleas éalaithe. Tugann siad mé chuig croí éigin, chuig an áit is doimhne a dtig leis na carachtair sin nó an scéal sin mé a thabhairt.

“Faighim litreacha ó strainséirí agus bunús na strainséirí seo, tá siad i “heightened state” de chineál éigin – tá bás sa chlann acu, tá tinneas nó eagla orthu, tá siad ar an imirce – agus tá a fhios agam go mbeadh uaigneas orm – níl mé a rá nach mbíonn uaigneas orm – ach ba mhó an t-uaigneas a bheadh orm mura raibh leabhair le léamh agus le athléamh agam.

“Déanann sé cúpla rud – is siamsaíocht í, cuireann sé faoi dhraíocht mé, athraíonn sé an dóigh a mbím ag smaoineamh, ach an rud is tábhachtaí a dhéanann sé ná go ndéanann sé teagmháil leis an rud ar a thabharfaidh mé – ceal focail eile – an t-anam.”

Bhí O’Brien i mBéal Feirste d’ócáid a reáchtáil Comhairle Ealaíon Thuaisceart Éireann, imeacht dar teideal Art at the Heart, imeacht lae ar théama “socially and politically engaged art” agus mheas sí go raibh a raibh i láthair ag iarraidh an rud céanna a dhéanamh, an t-anam a spreagadh in aois ina bhfuil an litríocht ar an taobhlíne.

Tá O’Brien ina cónaí i Londan le corradh le 40 bliain anois, scoite ó Éirinn ar bhonn tíreolaíochta ach deir sí mar scribhneoir go bhfuil tuigbheáil aici ar a bhfuil ag titim amach sa tír.

Cibé, is tír í Éire an lae inniú nach n-aithneodh Caithleen Brady agus Baba Brennan, The Country Girls.

Diversion at CQAF

I love the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. For the past ten years – 2011 is the 11th festival – it has provided evenings and afternoons that live in the memory to be buffed up and shared on long, dark, wet July (sic) nights.

It has everything from the glamour of Glitter and Sparkle to the laughter of the Crossroads céilí,the erudition of Germaine Greer to the ditziness of Dan Eggs, 80s rock fests and explosive trad nights, side=splitting comics and the simply indescribable.

Many’s a night I’ve spent in awe, in stitches, in heaven or in bewilderment at the extraordinary people who come from all over the world to share their ideas, their creativity and their joy.

The CQAF may have changed over the years but the philosphy stays the same.
“We started off a little bit anarchic, left-field, challenging festival with an irreverant attitude to things and I like to think that that’s still there,” says Sean Kelly, CQAF director. “We probably get a bit more funding these days but I think our world view and our valvues and the ethos of the festival remain challenging and questioning and unafraid of taking a poke at our sacred cows.”

Needless to say, it’s very hard work for Sean and his staff, but there must be times when he thinks, “yea, this is what it’s all about.”

“Yea, sometimes there are dark and lonely days in the office when you’re worrying about funding or about a band you’re trying to book and it’s not happening and you do feel a bit frustrated, but then it miraculously comes together and you’re stanging at the back of a room and Eliza Carthy is singing a beautiful songs or you’re in the John Hewitt and Lumiere are playing or you’re in the wonderful marquee and Sharon Shannon or Sly and Robbie are lifting the roof off, and you know than, this is why I do this’ because evryone is totally engaged and electrified by what’s happening on the stage for throse two or three horus and all your cares and worries are completely lifted off your shoulders and that is reward in itself.” Everyone who knows the festival will have festival memories of evenings like that and this year has it’s own anticipations.

Having catholic tastes (that’s catholic with a small c!) highlight for me will run the gamut of Joan Bakewell, Lumiere, the West Ocean String Quartet, Mark Kermode, Hot Club of Cowtown, Glitter and Sparkle, Ardal O’Hanlon, Toumani Diabate, Paul Durcan, A Night with George and the wonderful jazz singer, Claire Martin. Maybe even Bertie Ahern.

Others of you might prefer Echo and the Bunnymen and the Divine Comedy but there is so much in the programme that you will no doubt be enticed by many of its sumptuous wares.

Anyway, more of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in future posts, all the bizz and tickets can be got from cqaf.com

Aontroim Abú

He no doubt knew it was going to be a bumpy ride when the the Baker decided to shape the future of footballing in Antrim, but he couldn’t have imagined it would have been so exciting.

On Saturday night, the senior football squad secured promotion to Division 2 by beating Louth after being in Division 4 for what seemed to be an eternity and sweeping their way through Division 3 like men on a sublime mission.

At times on Saturday night, the Saffrons played sublime football under the floodlit glare, tearing the Louth defence apart with speed, strength and intelligence. Kevin Niblock played out of his skin – until he was injured: Michael McCann was magnificent as he soared to catch high ball after high ball; Paddy Cunningham was, well, Paddy Cunningham, scoring 1-06 of Antrim’s 2-16; Justin Crozier was forcefull in the half-back line.
Score after score piled up. Now, not only do Antrim score freely (6-79 in six games) but they are scoring beautifully-crafted points and goals on top of Paddy’s superlative free-taking. The first two points were indeed things of beauty.
Everything went Antrim’s way, they got all the breaking balls – I’m sure this was due more to planning than to Lady Luck – and Louth looked more like the audience at a masterclass than a feared opposition.

However.

At times, the Saffrons seemed intoxicated with the way they were playing and passes started going astray and, worse still, Louth scored a couple of goals themselves.

Alhtough, they were 10 points ahead at one stage, the Wee County kept chipping away and at half-time, Peter Fitzpatrick’s men must have thought, if they got off to a blistering start in the second half, that anything was possible.

In the end, Antrim, stopped the showboating and put in an effective if not an enthralling second half performance to keep a respectable distance between themselves and the Louthmen and so the game fizzled out in a bit of an anti-climax.

But the importance of the win cannot be understated. Antrim are now a Division 2 football team. I’ll repeat that. Antrim are now a Division 2 football team. We’ll be playing the like of Kildare and Laois and who knows who else when promotion and relegation are sorted next week. Baker’s home county of Derry? Tyrone? Kerry? Armagh?
Mouthwatering ties whoever we get.

But it’s “just the league” -The Championship starts on May 23 with the visit of Tyrone to Casement Park. What a day that is going to be! But Antrim are in unknown territory. The understandable confidence mustn’t turn into complacency. Liam Bradley has rightly said the current set-up is a work in progress, but, wow, what a work in progress. How far can Antrim go? To win Ulster? To get to an All-Ireland semi-final? An All-Ireland final? Only time will tell but what a wonderful prospect.

A great few days of music

A great week with two great gigs at the Black Box and Down Arts Centre in Downpatrick, both part of the Moving On Music Festival.

Moving on Music is a bit of a hidden gem in the avalanche of festivals that Belfast boasts of. Small but beautifully formed, it gives off different light depending on how you look at it. The traditional music fan will see the warm glow of Buttons, Barrels and Bows – Michael Ó Raghallaigh’s concertina as it teases out Anach Cuain or Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh’s dTigeas-sa Damhsa played on Norway’s national instrument, the Hardanger fiddle or flautist Catherine McEvoy as it echoes tunes heard and composed and danced to in Ireland’s west.

The trio’s music seemed to have a choreography – unsurprising given that so much Irish music is dance music – with each individual performance wonderful of itself, like the dancers in Swan Lake, but greater for being part of a bigger artistic endeavour.

The setting in Down Arts Centre was perfect for the slow airs while the audience played its part with some vigorous foot-tapping for the livelier numbers.

Often, you’ll hear traditional groups praised for having the energy of a rock band but BB&B’s energy is of a different nature, less forced and more natural as if it could run a marathon without sweating.

Rhythm was never sacrificed for speed, there was no guitar to act as a jockey’s whip to gee the music up and a bodhrán woud be an insult.

Instead, we got the timbre of music as it was meant to be played, as it has been enjoyed for centuries and will be for centuries to come.

The previous night, I was at the Black Box for another great gig.

It is unusual for a support band to be praised as much as the main act but on Friday night, Jonny and Lucy from the northeast of England won the audience over with songs of the most beautiful simplicity, Jonny’s beautiful guitar playing and Lucy on the fiddle. Expect to see them back in Belfast again.

However, the main act proved why they are just that, the main act. The Unthanks, Rachel and Becky, have astonishing voices and a repertoire not heard much on this side of the Irish sea, but the full house at the Black Box loved every minute. While Jonny and Lucy’s music was sweetness and light, the Unthanks was bold, full of drama and darkness. Highlight – for me – was Anachie Gordon, a beautiful song that is well-known over here but there were so many great songs, some so powerful they would stop even Malcolm McDonald in his tracks.  And they do a mean clog dance!

The two gigs I saw were only part of the Moving On Music festival. There was something for, if not everyone, then for every discerning music lover.  Keep in touch with them at Moving On Music.

Caoimhín’s album ‘Where the One-eyed Man Is King’ can be bought or downloaded by clicking here.

The Absence of Women

Má bhaineann dráma deora asat, caithfidh go ndeachaigh sé i bhfeidhm go mór ort.

Bunús an lucht éisteachta a bhí i láthair ag premiere domhanda dráma úir Owen McCafferty, The Absence of Women, ag Halla Elmwood i mBéal Feirste, bhí siad ag cuimilt a súl agus iad ag aithint rud eigin iontu féin a léirigh an drámadóir iontach seo as Béal Feirste.

Baineann The Absence of Woman le cuid mhór ábhar, iad fite fuaite ina chéile go deismir, néata. Bhain sé le Béal Feirste nó le meon cúng Bhéal Feirste leathchéad bliain ó shin agus an dóigh ar theagasc sé – agus a theagascann? – dá bhunadh bheith ina dtost, ní sa chiall pholaitiúil (amháin) ach ar bhonn na mothúchán. Ná déan caidrimh, ná gabh sa seans, coinnigh do chomhairle féin.

Chruthaigh an mheon seo fadhb go háirithe i bhfir Bhéal Feirste, fir chiúine, láidre ar túisce leo dorn ná póg, Belfast men don’t dance.

Sin mar atá beirt phríomhcharachtar an dráma Iggy agus Gerry, fir a bhfuil a saol caite acu ag obair ar láithreáin thógála Shasana. Ba mhaith le Gerry (Karl Johnson) pilleadh uair amháin eile go dtí a chathair dhúchais ach tá leasc ar Iggy (Ian McIlhinney). Tá rún dorcha aige a léiríonn meon druidte Bhéal Feirste ag an am. Ta Gerry ina stuaic ag an rún seo ina bhfuil íomhá fhir óig ina chompánach buan aige ó d’fhág sé an baile.

Ta Iggy ina stuaic ag gné eile dá shicé. Tá radharc thar a bheith cumachtach sa dráma – aoinneoin chomh coitanta, suarach is atá sé ar leibhéal amháin – ach tá mé cinnte go ndeachaigh sé an oiread sin i bhfeidhm cionn is gur aithin bunús an lucht éisteachta na mothucháin a bhi i gceist óna dtaithí féin. Deirtear gur “hightened reality” atá sa dráma agus sin an fáth gur éirigh chomh breá leis an radharc agus radharc eile gaolmhar níos maille ina bhfuil cailin óg ó oige Iggy, Dotty.

Ba iad na radharcanna seo a chuaigh an oiread sin i bhfeidhm orainn uilig agus arbh’eigean an Kleenex fána choinne.

Ní nach ionadh, tá an t-aisteoireacht thar barr – McIhinney agus Johnson ar ndóigh ach tá moladh ar leith ag dul don bheirt aisteoirí óga – Conor MacNeill agus Alice O’Connell

Is dráma é seo a fhanfaidh sa chuimhne ar feadh tamaill fhada, dráma a léiríonn muintir an bhaile seo beag beann ar na Trioblóidí, ach a théann go croí a saoil.