Making the most of a shared inheritance

Fiddler Liam O’Connor and piper Seán McKeon, who play the Tradfest this month, come from two of Dublin’s most famous musical families, but their new CD sees them putting their own stamp on the tradition

UTAH PHILLIPS, the late American singer and folklorist, always insisted that our conception of time was faulty. Notions of linear progression from one moment to the next and from one decade to another simply don’t tally with our lived experience, he insisted. That packaging of time, he said, was simply a journalistic trick used to trivialise important events and ideas. Time, he concluded, is an enormous long river whose tributaries are populated by our elders, with every song, piece of music and poem they created there for the taking.

Traditional music has a canny way of navigating that river, riding its rapids and lolling in its whirlpools, in search of the melodies and rhythms with which to colour its complexion.

The Dublin fiddle-and-pipe duo, Liam O'Connor and Seán McKeon, see the past as essential nourishment for their present-day appetites. After a reflective two-and-a-half-year period, they're releasing their first CD together, Dublin Made Me. It's a provocative and imaginative collection that embraces not only the "big" tunes of the tradition, such as the slow air, Táimse I m' Chodladh Is Ná Dúistear Mé, but also more obscure musical snapshots, such as The Races of Ballyhooleyand The Drunken Gauger. This is music intertwined with social history, which can inform our sense of ourselves with remarkable precision, should we care to listen.

Both O’Connor and McKeon are former winners of TG4’s Gradam Ceoil Young Musician of the Year award, in 2002 and 2005 respectively. There must surely have been a temptation to capitalise on their laurels with solo recordings, but neither of them opted for that road too-oft travelled.

An Arts Council Deis grant enabled them to spend time with a number of older musicians they admired, from Peadar O’Loughlin to Vincent Harrison, Joe Ryan and Séamus Begley. Wisely, O’Connor and McKeon let the music percolate slowly. Recording as and when the appetite and the opportunity permitted, in the superbly renovated Dublin headquarters of Na Píobairí Uilleann (with flute player and pianist John Blake on hand to oversee the recording process itself), they built on the rich inheritance they shared, having come from two of Dublin’s most musical families. Liam’s father, Michael O’Connor, is a well-known flute player, a former member of the Castle Céilí Band and a peerless traditional music historian. Seán’s father Gay and brother Conor are both pipers, while his mother, Mary Corcoran, is a fiddle player and pianist. Their family backgrounds, along with the mentoring of more seasoned players, helped them to bridge the gap to the work of seminal musicians of yesteryear, such as Seamus Ennis and Ladd O’Beirne.

“As young musicians, people like Vincent Harrison give us a real connection to Ladd O’Beirne, who I’d been listening to for ages,” Seán McKeon acknowledges. “We never met these people, but because Vincent was so generous with his time, we made a real connection with musicians who we’d been listening to for years.”

Although Dublin Made Meis primarily a duet collection, the individual styles of O'Connor and McKeon both shimmer in the heat of the recording. McKeon, in particular, soars on his high-octane interpretation of The Ladies' Bonnet, replete with the "snapping cran" that epitomised the highly ornamental playing of Patsy Touhey. O'Connor's solo treatment of the Duke of Leinsterreel is equally compelling, his unforced, sympathetic and measured approach offering a mere taster of a musical identity that's had master musicians, from concertina player Noel Hill to piper Liam O'Flynn seeking him out as a playing partner. The flavour of each musician's style is inevitably tempered by the particular company in which he finds himself, O'Connor explains.

“A useful analogy for it might be the notion of having an ordinary conversation,” he explains. “If I was talking to Seán, we would socially interact in a different way to what I might do if I was talking to my girlfriend, or to my dad. It’s not so much a compromise, but there would be a huge difference between the way I would approach playing with Seán versus how I might play with Noel Hill or Harry Bradley. Dynamically, too, the pipes are strong, so there’s no point sitting back or taking it easy. I’d attack some tunes more aggressively than I would if I was playing with someone else.” McKeon adds further insights into the challenge of duet-playing. “When I play with Liam, I hear what he’s doing on the fiddle and I take that into account, so I play a lot differently”, he says. “It’s all about challenging yourself within the framework that’s there anyway. The framework is pretty solid in terms of how traditional music should be played, but you can be so creative within that framework.”

The thorny question of relating outside musical influences to those from within the tradition is deftly addressed by O’Connor, whose sporting background (as a Dublin footballer of considerable skill) has informed his thinking on the subject.

“We have so much to learn from the masters who are right here under our nose,” he says, “that I don’t even really understand the need to look outside the tradition. Having said that, I love classical music and I do believe you can learn a lot by studying its approach and techniques.

“It’s a bit like Gaelic inter-county football teams now. They’re always looking for that extra edge, which might be exploring how professional rugby and soccer teams train. But they still need to go out on to the pitch and have the basic skill of catching and kicking the ball fast, taking their points.

“Then the really creative ones, like Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper, who would probably be terrible playing rugby, develop new skills like bouncing the ball backwards – seemingly obvious, but nobody else spots it until he does it. All these things can help, but you have to have a solid ground under you first.”

“It’s about trying to push yourself,” McKeon adds. “But within that framework that traditional music gives you. Then you can put your own personality in what you play.”

Liam O’Connor and Seán McKeon play at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, on Fri, Jan 30, at 7.30pm, as guests of Temple Bar Tradfest.

Other featured players include Kevin, Séamus and Paddy Glackin, Solas, Michael McGoldrick and band, Paddy Keenan and Tommy O’Sullivan, and others. For details, go to www.templebartrad.com. Liam O’Connor and Seán McKeon’s new CD, Dublin Made Me, will be released by Na Píobairí Uilleann on Feb 2