A pinch of "Sult"

From Bringing It All Back Home to Sult, Philip King has helped redefine the parameters of Irish music

From Bringing It All Back Home to Sult, Philip King has helped redefine the parameters of Irish music. His next plan? To invent some new dance music in Jamaica after co-producing a film with Aidan Quinn. Patsy Murphy blesses his energy.

AND now some good news for those seasoned riders of white elephants among us. You can jump down from your saddles and rest for a moment, at least. Suit, the eloquent 13-part Irish music series made originally for TnaG, has been sold to BBC network television as well as to the US Ovation channel, and the programmes are also to be distributed worldwide by NVC Arts of London.

RTE director general Bob Collins said recently that RTE must be able to make programmes that can sell worldwide - well, here is a successful export commissioned by TnaG, no less.

Philip King has clearly preferred wild horses to white elephants over the years - some would say he has galloped headlong through the sometimes staid and dusty world of traditional music since he started singing. He is the producer of Suit and, as usual, Donal Lunny collaborates as the series's musical director and presenter.

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"We must make programmes for ourselves, with the best production values, and in our own language. We have no oil, no coal but we do have a deep seam of imagination - that's our greatest resource," King says, 90 words to the second.

Sults line-up is formidable with talent as diverse as Van Morrison, Richie Buckley, Paul Brady, Paddy Glackin, Sharon Shannon, Mark Knopfler, Liam O'Flynn, Micheal O' Suilleabhbain, Christy Moore, Elvis Costello, Altan, Maire Breatnach, Iarla O Lionaird and dozens and dozens more... 188 pieces of music in all.

The English-language version is now being shown on RTE on Tuesday nights. Mary Black with Steve Cooney and Seamus Begley singing Ar Bhruach na Carraige Baine would make you weep at 11 in the morning, never mind at night, if that sort of thing appeals to you.

"These programmes will go everywhere in the world. It's modern, it's pertinent, it's now, it's engaging... And it's music that is still in touch with the wellspring. It's a part of what we are.

It's now 10 years since Philip King set up Hummingbird Productions with his wife, the writer Nuala O'Connor, and accountant Kieran Corrigan. On this occasion he is slightly hoarse. One of their five-year-old triplets had been ill in the night: "I am Juno," she announced. "I am sick. I need a doctor."

He had also spent the previous few days in the wind and rain and unhelpfully grim light of Co Wicklow as co-producer of the film This Is My Father - an extraordinary collaboration of the Quinn brothers of Chicago: the actor Aidan Quinn; cinematographer Declan Quinn and writer and director Paul Quinn. Stephen Rea, James Caan and John Cusack also appear in the production.

"At first we cancelled the shoot. Then we moved inside. Then we moved outside... then we moved inside again. James Caan - he was remarkably cheerful."

King has worked with Declan Quinn on a number of projects before, including a documentary about Daniel Lanois (Rocky World, nominated for an EMMY) and another on Christy Moore (Christy) and there are more collaborations to follow.

King is just back from the Sunny Side Of The Dock conference in Marseilles where he presented a proposal for a 90-minute documentary devoted to songs of struggle and resistance, to be filmed by Declan Quinn. They've chosen anthems such as Strange Fruit, Va Pensiero, This Land Is Your Land, Nkosi Sikeiei I Afrika, for example, and aim to tell the stories of the songs and the people who sang them.

Its title? Freedom Highway. It will be written by Nuala O'Connor - and produced by Sarah Power and Robert Walpole. Hummingbird hopes to go into co- production with this next year, using both contemporary and archive footage. Performers might include Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Nina Simone, Hugh Masakela, Christy Moore, Peggy Seegar, Aaron Neville.

King plays a sample recording for Freedom Highway of Neville singing Amazing Grace with that richly modulated, lost and wandering voice of his. It's only 11 a.m. and there isn't a dry eye on my side of the desk.

So how do you follow that?

Messrs Lunny and King plan to hit Jamaica in the autumn to work with Sly & Robbie - Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare - "two great Renaissance men, session musicians, reggae men. We are going to come up with some new dance music. New dance music for the world. We will fool around with the grammar of the music and make something happen. After all, Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim did it in 1963 with the Bossy Nova... we're going to do it again in 1997!

"Sly says to me: Like having a baby man. The project just happen.

But is the world ready for this, we ask? You couldn't possibly deny their enthusiasm. In November, King, Lunny and John Dunfert will cook up the music programme for the festival at Queen's University: "A perfect platform to explore Northern voices... to put them all in a room together and see what happens. We hope to bring Jean Richie (the Appalachian singer and archivist) back to Belfast, and of course look forward to the support of Davy Hammond and others."

And then there's a trip to Japan sometime next year. There, Donal Lunny has plans to work with the Kodo Drummers ("the fellas in nappies"). We don't linger on this topic, don't ask too many questions about this one ... you can almost hear the trad purists screeching that these people have lost the run of the music altogether.

WE watch a video recording of Donal Lunny, Brendan Power, Sharon Shannon and Seamus Begley and the four piece "houseband" playing the Suit theme. It's a handsome, studio-based production, dramatically lit by Tom Kenny (who has worked with Eric Clapton and The Who, among others) and designed by Ray Ball, with backdrops by the Galway-based artist Gertrude Degenhardt.

The music builds, layer upon layer. "We'd get a huge kick out of playing that in New York... that's what we really want to do. We'd break the place up! We'd love to make it work in New York. We had the best time putting together the music for tile festival at the Barbican in London in April. And we had an amazing time in Paris during L'Imaginaire. Both were the right kind of forum... it works differently in a different format and on a different stage."

Does this signal farewell to the beery fleadh? "The fleadhs have their place but so do the festival halls.

"Balance is all-important. The music must survive being turned into product, and we constantly have to ensure that it does survive when it meets interactivity, business, the marketing men." He finds the outbreak of more and more nouveau pubs, for example, disturbing. "Sometimes you can hear the sound of the golden goose being strangled."

Meanwhile, Hummingbird continues to produce the television programmes, the documentaries, the CDs, the books. And Nuala is just finishing a drama series for RTE. It took a long, lean time to get up and running, but in the process they've met and played with many of the best musicians in the world in the process - "The Everly Brothers! A boyhood dream come true!" There now seems to be no shortage of projects, only too few minutes in the day.

So of course King, O'Connor plus triplets, who currently live about 200 yards from the office, are moving to Kerry next Christmas, going back to the place from which the music came.

"Nuala and I are so pleased with this series, with the knowledge that you can make really good TV programmes in the digital age. Donal Lunny is, of course, the musical magnet, the magician who makes it all happen almost by sleight of hand - he's respected and admired by musicians from all over the world. He's a wonderful catalyst, he drives it, turns it into a musical conversation among a gathering of people."

And so the title, Sult. Ar bhain tu suIt as? Did you knock pleasure out of it? Clearly, the answer is yes.