The Tulla Ceili Band: "A Celebration Of 50 Years"
Green Linnet, GLCD 1178 (45 mins) Dial a track code: 1201
In the 1950s and 1960s the excitement generated by the Fleadh Cheoil ceili band competition was something akin to the pre match fever on the eve of an All Ireland. Two of the great bands of the time were the Tulla and the Kilfenora, legendary rivals for the national title, each with supporters numbering into the thousands. Ceili bands were largely, though not exclusively, a rural phenomenon - and coincidentally beloved of educational establishments promulgating the institutional version of Irish culture. These imprimaturs, plus emigration, rapid social change and O Riada's famous put down ("bees in an upturned jam jar") nearly killed them off altogether.
The best survived and that included the Tulla. The renewed popularity in set dancing in the late 1980s offered the Tulla a new lease of life, and second generation players like Martin Hayes, son of the Tulla patriarch P.I., offered new blood of the bluest hue. "Participatory democracy" is how Martin Hayes describes the band's modus operandi, and indeed the ceili voice is a collective one the individual voice is subsumed, although all of the main bands fielded exemplary solo players and still do. Ceili was and is about playing for dancers, and developed to accomodate traditional music in a dancehall setting in the 1940s and 1950s. Piano and drums, much derided by O Riada, provided the percussive power demanded by the larger venue, and gave the music a contemporary thrust. Here they accompany a host of fiddles, two flutes and two accord ions. Highlights include a tremendous rendering of Jenny Picking Cockles/The Sligo Maid, a rhythm and swing rollercoaster, and a final uplifting flurry of reels, P.Joe's Reel/The Mountain Lark.
The Mary Custy Band
MCB 003 (47 mins)
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Dance is the imperative on most of the tracks on this third album from fiddle player Mary Custy. The source is traditional fiddle tunes from a variety of ethnic traditions; the presentation is resolutely contemporary in instrumentation, arrangement and mode. Guitar bass and drums underpin Mary Custy on fiddle, while her long time musical partner Eoin O'Neill accompanies on bouzouki. She is a player with an identifiably individual style, raw and attacking, fired in the crucible of many concerts and sessions, most notably as a player in Sharon Shannon's band. There is quite a range of genres in play on the album, from the funky Plight Of The Refugee where she plays a spacy keyboard to accompanying bass and drums to Swing Easy, an inventive reworking of an old Sly and Robbie piece with the fiddle speaking a very convincing reggae dialect.
Flatbush Waltz, written by Andy Statman, is an evocative interpretation of Yiddish dance music; Indianola is an Appalachian groove gleaned from a migrant female saxo phone player, and the cryptic F. Y.D. is a hard and fast set of traditional tunes flying along on a jazzy backbeat of drums, bass and riffing saxophone. The only solo piano piece, Diamond Skulls is a haunting slow dance presided over by Chopin's ghost; more piano next album, please.
De Dannan: "Hibernian Rhapsody"
Bees Knees, PED 9601 (62 mins)
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With a fine record in idiosyncratic makeovers, this has to be the most idiosyncratic album yet released by the Galway blazers. The first and title track, a mystifying (why did they do it?) version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - itself a dog's dinner of operatic high camp - has none of the fiery inventiveness of Hey Jude or the exuberant grace of The Queen of Sheba's Arrival In Galway. Fios Na Siochanna is a strident Irish language version of Nessun Dorm a which seriously over extends the expressive capabilities of singer Tommy Fleming. Eight of the 16 tracks are songs, an unprecedented allocation for this band. This is unfortunate, because Tommy Fleming's penchant for vocal drama becomes tiresome eventually. Of the eight instrumental tracks, Noel Hill's and The Lark On The Strand suggest a return to the old form and The Donegal Reels see off the case for relegation. Great band: shame about the album.
