Reinventing the reel

Seán Ó Riada's Gaiety concert marked the moment that traditional music took its place beside classical, writes Siobhán Long

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. And if 20/20 vision is at times a blessing and at others a curse, then Seán Ó Riada's impact on the music of our tradition has probably been exposed to more forensic analysis than all the musicians who have chanced a traditional tune over the past five decades put together. Musician, composer, historian, world music aficionado, raconteur, fisherman and a formidable imbiber to boot, Seán Ó Riada set the bar high, and usually aimed higher.

His film score for Mise Éire, George Morrison's 1959 film which traced the development of the Irish revolutionary movement between 1896 and 1918, set imaginations, not to mention tongues, wagging wildly. Here was a musician and composer hell-bent on unpicking the complexity of traditional tunes and affording them orchestral settings.

At a time when native music was often adjudged (at least by the chattering classes) to represent mere "peasant" music, Ó Riada's melding of classical and traditional styles was the pivot on which the tradition turned dizzily, as it stretched itself beyond anything previously imaginable, and found sudden acceptance in drawing rooms and parlours just as readily as it had been in snugs and back rooms for generations.

This month sees the re-release of a seminal concert recording dating from 1970, Ó Riada Sa Gaiety. Directed and arranged by Ó Riada, it featured Ceoltóirí Chualann with vocalist Seán Ó Sé. Ó Riada Sa Gaiety is a who's who of traditional music: Martin Fay, Seán Keane, Seán Potts, Michael Tubridy, Paddy Molony, Peadar Mercier, Éamon de Buitléar and John Kelly. With Ó Riada himself attempting to emulate the old Irish metal-strung harp using the harpsichord, and the Ceoltóirí Chualann musicians using fiddles, pipes, whistle, flute, accordion and bodhrán in unprecedented and formalised settings, interspersing ensemble playing with highly rehearsed solo pieces, it's a pristine snapshot of a moment in time when the tradition stood cheek by jowl alongside its classical cousins, and puffed its chest out with a newfound confidence.

Gael Linn's re-mastering of the original recording, and their release of an additional three tracks, including An Spéirbhean Mhilis and An Buachaill Caol Dubh, featuring vocalist Seán Ó Sé, represents a milestone in traditional music recording. Ó Riada's peerless imprint is tangible throughout, and the collection's sheer musical creativity goes a long way towards explaining the immense influence which Ó Riada had on subsequent generations of musicians.

Iarla Ó Lionáird, sean nós singer and native of Cúil Aodha (where Ó Riada made his home from 1962 until his premature death in 1971 at the age of 40), has ruminated long on Ó Riada. As well as being a long-time member of Seán's son Peadar's choir in Cúil Aodha, Ó Lionáird has recently completed a thesis on Ó Riada in fulfilment of his masters in ethnomusicology at the University of Limerick's Irish World Music Centre.

"As well as being a superb musician, Ó Riada was a social activist," he declares. "What he was able to bring to Cúil Aodha, in terms of industry, by the power of his presence, was incredible, because he was a huge cultural figure. He had within his gift the ability to talk to anybody. His mother was from the neighbouring parish of Kilnamartyra, and she was a traditional player. He championed local musicians and singers, like Peataí Tadhg Pheig Ó Tuama, and I think what he discovered in Cúil Aodha was a very small place full of under-utilised linguistic and musical treasure."

Unsurprisingly, Ó Riada has been mythologised, according to Ó Lionáird, given the sheer inventiveness of what he did with the music. "To be honest, I would say that his work in the classical end of things would have been terra incognita to most people in Cúil Aodha," he suggests. "They wouldn't have had the cultural machinery to assess it. They saw him as a polyglot, with loads of panache, who spoke impeccable Gaelic, albeit with a literary-type accent. His real fame came from his settings for film music, which were immediately accessible to people invested in the traditional cultures, because they were largely settings of important old airs such as Róisín Dubh. In some ways he was a classier version of ourselves!"

Ó Riada appreciated the potential for innovative structural changes in the way traditional music was presented. It was this appetite for change that appealed to Seán Keane, Chieftains fiddler, and the last and youngest musician to join Ceoltóirí Chualann in 1964, at the tender age of 17.

"Here was a new way of looking at the music," Keane recalls. "It was nice to be involved in something that got up the noses of the cultural police! Seán Ó Riada introduced me to a lot of the big airs of Munster, and to the O'Carolan tunes. It gave me a taste for ensemble playing, and it was a natural progression for me to join The Chieftains in 1968. I think what he did was make traditional music 'respectable', in that before him, it wouldn't have been listened to in certain quarters. The music before that had associations with the country kitchen, and I think whatever 'respectability' it gained was to do with Ó Riada's stature as an academic."

Iarla Ó Lionáird is insistent that Ó Riada's real impact was far greater than merely a musical one. "He created a new social context for the music," he maintains. "He was developing society's capacity for understanding this music, and it required a complete re-presentation of how the music was to be seen and heard by the audience. The very fact that Ceoltóirí Chualann were presented in monkey suits on stage was a very big step in a new direction, in terms of trying to re-orientate what we were looking at. Instead of hearing this music in a pub, where a fella might be scraping away at the fiddle, Ó Riada gave us back this music, with the same timbre, in a new place, where it began to be seen as 'art' music. To move the music from being seen as beleaguered, laughed at, pauper's culture to an art music is of course, a very clever card trick. It's a massive achievement, and a very powerful cultural move on the chess table."

Seamus McGuire, Sligo fiddler and member of the West Ocean String Quartet, cites Ó Riada's influence with similar verve. "Seeing Mise Éire had a great impact on me," he admits, "because the music had such drama and tension to it. I remember being impressed by the big orchestral sound, even though I was only nine at the time. And I think my work with the West Ocean String Quartet may be an example of one aspect of his legacy: the willingness to disregard musical barriers, and to explore the ground in between. I gained from him a great sense of confidence and adventure and much-needed courage to explore new ways of interpreting and presenting traditional Irish music."

Oisín MacDiarmada, fiddler with young traditional group, Téada, is unequivocal in his enthusiasm for Ó Riada's achievements, despite the fact that he was too young to have any memory of Ó Riada as a living musician.

"I think that Seán Ó Riada left a very important legacy to Irish traditional music," he avers. "His passionate belief in the cultural significance of traditional music and his efforts to make that music engage with attentive theatre audiences were a very important counterbalance to the relative isolation being suffered by traditional musicians within the wider Irish arts scene, often left to express the subtleties of a unique musical art form solely within the confines of noisy pubs."

Ó Riada's approach is still hugely tangible, MacDiarmada insists.

"He recognised the fascinating stylistic subtleties in the musicians with whom he worked, and strove to present that within an attractive ensemble format. That concept has had a major influence on the development of group playing in traditional music over the past 30 years, and remains an integral part of the ideology behind the band with whom I play, Téada."

Ó Riada Sa Gaiety is now available on Gael Linn records