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They’re making a musical about John Hume in Derry, as you might have heard.
No doubt the portrayal of the politician and Nobel Prize winner in the upcoming production will be more serious than John Travolta’s strutting star turn in Grease, but I do like the idea of showcasing Hume’s musicality and that of the town he loved so well.
“Peace is the word,” as Travolta almost sang.
Growing up musically mediocre in a place full of melodious talent is daunting, let me tell you.
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We saw lots of musicals locally as kids in Derry. A night at Oklahoma! was a particular highlight. The next day one of my classmates, Stephen, who’d been at the same show the previous evening, sat down at the teacher’s piano and belted out all the best numbers from memory: Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’; The Surrey With The Fringe On Top, and so on, with not a scrap of sheet music in sight.
As his uncle was Phil Coulter, perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising.
Our teacher Mrs Connelly certainly passed no remarks. Her son, Tony, RTÉ’s Europe editor, told Miriam O’Callaghan last year how his mother had played piano in the dark when she was pregnant with him. He’s been playing guitar with his friend immunologist Prof Luke O’Neill for years.
Brigadoon was the most memorable, being about a place that disappeared and reappeared, much like the London that was regularly obliterated and reinstated on signs around our city
The cello was my instrument. I knew how beautiful it could and should sound, but couldn’t make it sing with my incompetent hands, and wasn’t disciplined enough for all the practice required to improve.
I would record myself in my bedroom practicing scales on my little tape deck, and then play the cassette over and over while I lounged around reading.
I was one of many young Catholics and Protestants bussed to a neutral venue on a Saturday morning with a bunch of instruments bashing each other out of tune in the boot.
The idea must have been that we could overcome any differences by producing beautiful music together, or off-tempo approximations of the classics at the very least.
I soldiered too in our school orchestra. Mo Hume, as beloved as her dad, lead the violins along with her friend, Elizabeth. They were Sixth Formers, and we were utterly in awe of them.
Great fun ensued when school musicals were produced. Brigadoon was the most memorable, being about a place that disappeared and reappeared, much like the London that was regularly obliterated and reinstated on signs around our city. The school went all out and hired a smoke machine to obscure activity on stage whenever the “Scottish village” was supposedly fading mysteriously into the highland mists.
Derry's joyous festival of music and dance was, for the likes of me, wilting under the glare of the stern adjudicators, a terrifying experience
Unfortunately, the haze seeped into our makeshift orchestra pit, obscuring the scores on our rickety music stands and making our orchestral manoeuvres somewhat tricky. The cello part wouldn’t have been the most challenging anyway, so we just sawed away blindly with our bows, shoulders shaking as we tried and failed to stifle laughter, our poor conductor spluttering as she waved her baton frantically.
During quiet moments between musical numbers, when the more forward girls – some dressed as boys – were strutting their stuff on stage, a gentle rustle would indicate a bag of Kola Kubes or Brandy Balls approaching from the other side of the orchestra.
The bag would pass around the first violins, second violins and violas, towards the ragtag assembly of various wind, brass and percussion instruments, before finally making it to the most useless of the cello players. I was very much a backbencher.
But if there was a lone sweet stuck in the corner of the crumpled paper by the time it reached me, it felt like a lottery win.
Another teacher was the statuesque Mrs Casey, whose entrepreneurial son, Peter, would contest the 2018 Irish presidential election, and was a judge on the Irish television version of Dragon’s Den.
She advised that my quavering singing voice should be “trained” so I went to a music school in town but it was another world, one for the ultra-talented and confident, and I knew in my bones I would not be back.
The idea of being asked to perform a “party piece” still fills me with dread.
Every April Derry’s musical youth took to the stage for an event that was for many a joyous festival of music and dance but for the likes of me, wilting under the glare of the stern adjudicators, a terrifying experience. The Derry Feis has just celebrated its centenary year.
In my day it took place in the Guildhall, a landmark red sandstone building sitting between the exterior of the city’s historic walls and the west bank of the River Foyle. One of playwright Brian Friel’s masterpieces, Translations, starring Stephen Rea, premiered there in 1980.
The IRA bombed the magnificent building in 1972.
Home to the city council, the Guildhall had been a unionist bastion in a nationalist town. Friel’s father, Paddy Friel, a schoolmaster, said in the late 1960s: “There’s not even a Catholic cleaner employed in the Guildhall. It’s a policy to keep Catholics out of the Guildhall itself.”
Things can change when good people stand up. Beyond Belief – The Life and Mission of John Hume will be performed in the Guildhall in April 2023, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement.