Kerry fiddler hits the right note

Recognition for Sliabh Luachra musician Paddy Cronin at today's TG4 traditional music awards is overdue, writes Siobhán Long.

More often than not, a person's provenance can be defined by the shape and colour of his or her accent and for generations, Irish traditional music followed a similar rule of thumb. Those with a hankering for sprightly reels betrayed at the very least a northwest, and more likely a Sligo birthright, while those in thrall of the more feisty and muscular polka and slide were, in all likelihood, scions of Sliabh Luachra, that notoriously indefinable region that straddles the Cork-Kerry border, whose bellybutton might be located somewhere between Ballydesmond and Knocknagree.

These days, accents musical and otherwise have shifted and bent with the times. Musicians no longer tethered to their home place, imbibe disparate influences not just from neighbouring counties, but from everywhere else. So while it might not be as easy as it used to be to unearth traditional music's regional styles in their expected home place, there are still musicians whose accents and geography are inextricably intertwined.

For those who might think that they have accidentally entered a scene from Groundhog Day,and that the 10th TG4 National Traditional Music Awards (Gradam Ceoil TG4) seem to have come around this year with inordinate haste, rest assured that indeed they have.

The organisers have shifted their traditional autumnal slot to Easter, meaning that little more than six months have passed since last year's awards announcement. But with a decade's worth of awards to celebrate this year, and with a wealth of disparate musical activities slated to mark the occasion throughout the year, the big event has been rushed to the top of the calendar in time for Easter Saturday celebrations. And many would say that this year's lifetime achievement award (gradam saoil) winner, Sliabh Luachra fiddler Paddy Cronin, is long overdue this laurel.

Raised in a family of nine children in Kerry, Cronin emigrated to Boston in 1949, and lived there until 1991, when he returned home, his repertoire groaning under the weight of more Sligo reels than Kerry polkas.

CRONIN WEARS HIS82 years lightly, his south Kerry accent liberally peppered with unforced Americanisms, his allegiance to his first teacher, iconic Sliabh Luachra fiddler, Pádraig O'Keeffe, worn proudly on his sleeve. Although he makes no secret of his delight at the news of his TG4 Gradam Ceoil award, he wastes little time before bemoaning fiddle music's receding popularity on its home turf.

"I remember Pádraig O'Keeffe telling me that there were 10 fiddles [and fiddle players] in the village of Ballydesmond," Cronin recounts, "but today there's hardly any fiddlers there. When O'Keeffe died, no one took over the teaching. His loss weakened the town an awful lot. There's nobody playing there today, not a sound. I think the music lost a lot when they took it out of the houses and into the pubs. The best place to play traditional music is in a house. A pub is not the place: it's too noisy and it ruins the music," he says.

I venture to ask Paddy if he'll play a tune, possibly one he learned from O'Keeffe? As one of the Sliabh Luachra master's last surviving pupils, he rises to the challenge instantly, and quickly lays claim to The Doon Reeland Hickey's, two of O'Keeffe's tunes, stalwarts of his own repertoire for the bones of seven decades.

Music doesn't get more timeless than this. Cronin's style is full of lift: airy, and yet rooted in an immutable, enviable sense of place. Later on, he accedes to my entreaty to play Eibhlín O'Neill's, a hornpipe that west Kerry box player Brendan Begley has recently borrowed from Cronin, his lifelong hero.

Cronin's playing is gracious and unhurried, a far cry from the pace demanded of set dancers, both at home and in the US. Ever the pragmatist, Paddy had no problem rising to the challenge of putting a spring in the step of the dancer. How else was a musician to survive amid a hall full of foot stompers who would have held a tardy fiddler in the same regard as the IRS did Al Capone at the height of prohibition?

"Sets were always nutty," he declares with deadpan seriousness. "Anam an diabhal, they were crazy, mad fast. They [the dancers] thought I was mental too, but I had no choice. But I grew up polka playing and that gives you speed. If we played slow, sure, they'd all sit down. There wouldn't be a step taken. You have to have drive in the music."

DANCERS OR NOT, Paddy Cronin wouldn't inhabit the pantheon he does today were it not for his insistence on perfecting the detail of every tune, eking out its essence for the listener first and foremost, not the dancer. He's quick to acknowledge the wealth he inherited from listening to the great pair of Sligo fiddlers, Michael Coleman and James Morrison, and indeed some would say that Cronin surpassed his Sligo heroes with the sheer verve and pinprick precision of his playing.

"If you don't play for dancers, of course, you can perfect yourself, by slowing down", he notes. "Coleman had a shower of great old tunes, a barrel of them, but you couldn't dance to them, but Morrison's music was good. He put a hop and a swing in it, for sure. His jigs were fantastic, and you could dance to them no bother."

As one of Pádraig O'Keeffe's graduates, Cronin learned to read music using O'Keeffe's idiosyncratic notation style.

Far from proving a limitation to his ability to learn new tunes written in standard musical notation, Cronin quickly became conversant with this unfamiliar but standard notation method after he moved to Massachusetts.

"If you live in an area, it's like talking, you'll pick it up", he suggests. "It's the same with music. If you live in this country, you talk like 'em. If you go over to the States, you'll talk different to them, but you'll gradually pick up words, and music is the same thing. You fall into the ways of the place you're in."

Séamus Ennis noticed that Michael Coleman could take a bad tune and make it sound good. Paddy Cronin is no stranger to administering CPR to an ailing piece of music either. Like The Beatles' Hey Jude, he can take a sad song and make it better. He has little time for the preciousness that can prevent musicians from tinkering with traditional music. Age and reputation notwithstanding, music must be open to change if it's to survive and thrive, he believes.

"As long as you stay in line, I don't see why you can't play with the tune," he offers, waving his hand as if to erase an errant sweep of notes, replacing them with a sequence that's more to his liking.

"It's like the buildings: mud walls. If you stayed with mud walls, you were lost altogether. You have to move with the times and progress. A hundred years ago, people travelled on a donkey and car. Now they have cars and tractors. It's all about quality. If you want decent music, you've got to find somebody good to listen to. It's as simple as that. With a teacher like Pádraig O'Keeffe, we made out alright. He shortened the road for me no end."

Maith Thú: TG4 award winners

Traditional musician of the year: Liam Ó Floinn

Young traditional musician of the year: Fiachna Ó Mongáin

Traditional singer of the year: Dara Bán MacDonnachadha

Traditional composer of the year: Jim McGrath

Musicians' award: Ciarán MacMathúna

Lifetime achievement award: Paddy Cronin