I AM Weldon, a beautiful singer and songwriter, died last November. Peter Browne's beautiful memorial to him was first broadcast during the Christmas rush; its repeat last week on Sounds Traditional (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) was as welcome as it was touching.
The pleasure came from hearing 45 minutes of Weldon's resonant voice (scarcely more resonant, mind you, than the sonorous tones of Browne himself - who bears, like Vincent last week, no relation to this column). Half a dozen songs displayed his musical and narrative gifts, both in traditional storytelling and in polemical works like The Blue Tar Road (about the treatment of travellers - we should be hearing more of it these days) and Dark Horse On The Wind.
The more surprising pleasures came from listening to that serious, reflective voice in interview material from two decades dug out of the archives. The social and political concerns of this Dubliner, native of the Liberties and, later, of Ballyfermot, were perhaps predictable - though no less admirable for this. His thoughts about his art were quirkier, engaging, full of a spiritual respect for the material, the songs he "borrowed from the tradition" demanding the same immersion as those he wrote himself.
Some of his comments emerge from a polite contempt for the pop balladry of the 1970s and 1980s. "The songs, for me, are the thing. I feel if you're going to go the other way and follow the ego trip, then you're betraying the songs - and not only the songs themselves, but the whole concept and the roots where the songs spring from.
"I believe literally that the song sings the singer. For me you should eschew all ego and submerge yourself in the song. Songs have souls. Till you capture the soul of the song you can't sing it truly."
Respecting these strictures, he noted, will only work in your favour with an "audience that hasn't been brainwashed" by the idea that "every Irish song should be funny and hilarious, stamp your feet, clap your hands, bang your head, whatever you do".
Now the singer, like the songs, belongs to eternity. "No one can own the earth - you can't own the songs either," he said. "But for some little period of your life, you and the possess each other." If the reverence and concern for artistic integrity of Liam Weldon - could have an opposite, one candidate would be Richard Herriott. The Last Replay (Anna Livia FM Thursday) was a highlights compilation of sketches from the The Last Word by "writer performer" Herriott and "producer producer" (sic) Adrian Smyth. Thoroughly irreverent, in a cool, understated way, Herriott is a knowing, media saturated satirist, and the best of his often hilarious humour is peculiar to the medium of radio.
Thus Fiction Of The Week surrounds a 30 second book excerpt with waffle from five different presenters; Adagio Al Dente considers a little known composer who reached the pinnacle of his career when his work was selected as theme music for the 1992 Winter Olympics; Stress Enhancers offers a few handy tips for setting your teeth on edge and garnering the benefits of tension; Thought For The Night features inane and increasingly narky philosophical debate; and Summer Schools follows the lead of "The Hibernian Times" in giving copious coverage to interminable fair weather musings from academics of questionable competence.
In spite of Herriott's cool demeanour, the strain at humour occasionally shows, and the performance doesn't always matching his excellent ideas. But he fills a real gap in the radio comedy market here, and is not nearly as sophomoric as programme titles like Beyond Post Post Modernism and The Neo Formalist's Lunch might lend you to dread: Let's hope we hear a lot more of him.
Poet Eavan Boland was subject of a curious documentary by Helen Shaw, A Woman's Voice (RTE "Radio 1, Thursday). This used Boland's experience as "writer in residence" at Holles Street, and particularly her work with parents of stillborn babies, to illuminate her writings and her character.
Her defence against male critics who regard the subjects of birth and children as "middle class themes" was excellent; but after listening earlier on Thursday to a Pat Kenny Show discussion on home birth, it was hard not to wonder whether Boland had engaged fully with the issues in a hospital whose "active management of childbirth" policy has been fiercely criticised by natural birth advocates and some feminists.
