Dolores Keane comes storming back

The house I was reared in is but a stone on a stone

And all around the garden the weeds they have grown

And all the kind neighbours that ever I knew

Like the red rose they've withered in the May morning dew, The May Morning Dew

Singing star Dolores Keane has a steely determination as evidenced by her comeback tour “A Storm in the Heart Tour”, currently gathering momentum. She’s down Munster way this month when she plays the University Concert Hall, Limerick, on the 18th of September as accompanied by a band of handpicked musicians including fellow-Galway native Don Stiffe.

Only someone with a heart of stone from the wall alluded to in the song (above) couldn't have been moved by Liam McGrath's superb film about Dolores Keane, also titled A Storm in the Heart as shown on RTÉ not so long ago. It wasn't just hearing the depth of Keane's distinctive and soulful voice again or the fact that few Irish artists of the past half-century could interpret the death of culture and the fathomless loss of emigration in the space of a four-minute song as well as she could.

People were also incredibly moved by the brutal honesty of the story she related to the camera, the long years she battled with alcoholism, depression and more recently, breast cancer. Dolores grew up in Caherlistrane, Co. Galway an area with a rich musical and singing tradition, an area where the English spoken by the local people is still shrouded with the textures of the Irish language that was once spoken in many of the abandoned cottages there.

Like the musical style of Dolores, her brother Seán and as influenced by her aunt’s family, it is difficult to categorize their unique sound. “What is it? What is it they have?” people asked one another in relation to the Keanes after the documentary a few months ago? Her sound and indeed the sound of the entire Keane family is not something that’s easy to pin down or put into words. Some musical websites define Dolores more haunting songs asas “sean-nós” or “sean-nós in English”.

We live in the era of categorization, of “boxes” and “judgement” – ideological, cultural, philosophical and otherwise. How many of the reality shows we see on our TV screens today echo the colosseum of old, with the competitors put to the sword by the public vote, ably abetted by the views of the experts – those who sit categorize or sit in judgement. If we can’t put the person in the right box – if they don’t fit into it – we feel that we have failed somehow?

Our modern-day obsession with “experts” and categorization is nothing new of course, even in the musical sphere. It’s not that long ago since Taylor Swift herself reacted to this constant trend within the culture when she said: “For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.”

Even in a genre as then-marginalized as traditional singing – often referred to as “sean-nós today – there was a good deal of heated debate on the correct ascription for this ancient art-form as far back as 1939. In fact, the Oireachtas of that year organized a symposium so that a number of talented singers from each of the three Gaeltachts – in Connacht, Munster and Ulster – could respond to the then-recent trend of referring to this category of singing as “sean-nós”.

As excellently elucidated in Liam Mac Con Iomaire's biography of Galway singer Joe Heaney – Seosamh Ó hÉanaí – Nár fhágha mé bás choíche (Cló-Iar-Chonnacht) – the participants in this symposium were uniformly against the term "sean-nós" being ascribed to this form of singing as learned within their extended families and local communities.

Connemara singer, Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, perhaps the finest female exponent of sean-nós ever, was very dubious about this drive towards categorization and could see the danger of circumscribing an art-form, the roots of which are so ancient as to defy questions of origin and classification. She opened her contribution to the debate with the following bold statement – “’Sé an sean-nós nó Traditional singer an séala is measa a cuireadh ar an h-amhráin Ghaedhealacha ariamh.”

It wasn't just Keane's honesty in relation to her life and the way that she exposed the same ordinary human failings – as we all have – to the camera that people loved about the documentary A Storm in the Heart. This isn't the reason why the tickets for her comeback tour of the same name will disappear quicker than the May morning dew. It is also the complete lack of egoism she eschewed towards her one time star status.

People were particularly moved by the scene in the aforementioned documentary where Keane forced her way into the shed at the back of the house and found the posters of her halcyon days strewn higgledy-piggledy all over the place. Like Sorcha Ní Ghuairim and others, Dolores Keane is a representative of that Gaelic tradition wherein the song is part of the culture one belongs to, an impetus that runs completely contrary to the zeitgeist of the present era. To the Gaelic mind, the songs and the tradition are yours to pass on to the next generation.

Nothing more, nothing less. In fact, it was this very aspect of the tradition that enabled Dolores Keane herself to pull her back from the brink and get her life together again. As she said in the film – who was she to jettison what had been passed onto her? She had no “right” to do so. It was only by immersing herself in the tradition again that she could begin the healing process and be herself again.

Few people – other than Dolores – could express how dark it really gets when the light goes out. Dolores Keane’s “power” – as they say in certain parts – comes from the fact that, as with all great art, it can’t be categorized or defined. You can’t “box” it or shelve it away. Thankfully, we now have a chance to see this power of hers in action once more.