Drawing from the Well: Back to a deep source of Irish tradition

The living tradition is a phrase we often hear bandied about when people talk about our music, song and dance. But what does that mean? The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is intent on mining its vast riches to support a vibrant tradition that’s living and breathing with greater gusto now than it ever has.

ITMA director and renowned fiddle player Liam O’Connor is the force behind a forthcoming concert at the National Concert Hall titled Drawing from the well, that celebrates past and present, ensuring that legacy colours the future of our traditional arts too. Anchored by poets, Vincent Woods and Moya Cannon, the evening will feature dancer, Edwina Guckian, musicians Cormac Begley, Aoife Ní Bhriain and many others.

“Our philosophy is to connect artists with archival material to inspire new works”, Liam O’Connor explains. “Because the archive has the largest collection of song, dance and traditional Irish music in the world, we’re dealing with a living tradition and a living archive that should reflect that, one that’s evolving all the time. It’s not a static art form or a static archive. There’s no start, middle and end to it.”

O’Connor has ample experience of how the Irish Traditional Music Archive has fuelled his creative energy, down through the years.

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“Before I started in my role as director”, he says, “the most personally fulfilling and enjoyable experiences for me were when I left my laptop at home and brought an instrument [to the archive] and learned something.”

Drawing from the well is another great example of an innovation that emerged during the pandemic.

“We had this idea that we would like commission artists to spend time in the archive: let them freely roam and see what might spark their interest and support them on that journey”, O’Connor explains. “We didn’t know what the outcomes would be. Louise Mulcahy was the first person to do it, and Edwina [Guckian, dancer] was hot on her heels, and she set a very high standard. We know that there are no better ambassadors for a living archive than living artists.”

Vincent Woods, poet, playwright and broadcaster, has drawn deep from the well over many years. It provides sustenance that can’t be found anywhere else. His journey of discovery began in 1980 and pre-dates the 1987 founding of the archive. But he returns again and again to ITMA to mine its riches.

“Thomas Moran died the year I was born, 1960, and when I heard his voice it sounded so familiar to me”, Vincent recalls. “It was something of a gift to me. For me that’s an example of precisely the kind of thing we can dip into in the well that is ITMA, where you hear voices, stories, song, music that are somehow beyond you, yet familiar, that gel with something in your own mind.”

Woods went on to use some of Thomas Moran’s songs in his plays. Moran’s version of The Ballad of Lord Leitrim was a key song text in his play, At the Black Pig’s Dyke. Woods has also collaborated extensively with dancer Edwina Guckian.

“We did a performance piece, Open Room, with Danny Diamond and Leitrim-Kurdish-Syrian musician Mohammad Syfkhan in 2018″, Woods recalls. “We also made a film together last year, Bealach an Fheir Ghortaigh/Hunger’s Way, which used poetry, song and music to explore the landscape of loss, hunger and memory around Strokestown and the National Famine Museum at Strokestown House. We also do Jenny Put the Kettle On for ITMA, where I interview and chat to musicians, singers and dancers in their own place: they perform and Edwina films it all for the ITMA archive.”

Woods is nowhere near done yet. There are many more rich seams to be mined over the coming years.

“I’m determined one day to write a poem for Edwina to dance to!” he says, smiling. “I have to get the rhythm right, but it’ll happen.”

As I began to research Jack Laffan, I saw that he had been referred to in Ulysses. It’s literally a one-line dance reference: ‘I’ll make you dance Jack Laffan.’

—  Edwina Guckian

Edwina Guckian is a dancer with a deep-rooted love for not just the steps, but the relationship between dancers and the tunes that shape their steps. In her most recent project, she explored the work of dancer Jack Laffan.

“Liam approached me with an idea about Jack Laffan,” she recounts. “And I felt like I was jumping into the sea rather than a well because there was just so much I wanted to cover! As I began to research Jack Laffan, I saw that he had been referred to in Ulysses. It’s literally a one-line dance reference: ‘I’ll make you dance Jack Laffan.’ I had studied Ulysses in college, so I went back to my college notes and it took on a life of its own from there. I retraced his footsteps and I used the locations he would have passed through, and his character to inspire a new dance to the tune that he was said to have written.

“For me working with ITMA feels like the dream team. It’s a dream place for an artist to work in the traditional arts. They’re so free thinking and really supportive because as dancers, we just talk with our feet. We never actually get to speak about our work. By Liam giving me the platform to tell a story about a dancer, it was a real eye-opener for the audience and it was also a huge vote of confidence for me as a dancer.”

The archive is a gift that keeps on giving, as we’ve seen from the many artists who’ve drawn from the tunes they heard on the Goodman collection, for example.

“It is, and has to be much more than an archive that records what’s there for posterity”, says Woods. “It has to be a centre for making new, and I’m a firm believer in making new. You look to what’s there as inspiration. It’s there to feed us, to make new material, with the greatest of respect to what has been there before.”

• Drawing from the well. National Concert Hall Sunday, September 11th nch.ie