Charles Acton, The Irish Timeslong-time music critic, found himself at odds with some friends over his approval of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, prompting him to explain himself in this column. – JOE JOYCE
LAST AUGUST I wrote an enthusiastic notice of the first Irish concert given by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and as a result nearly alienated two sets of friends.
One came to the second concert on my recommendation, told me in the interval they were deeply disappointed and had rarely witnessed such an exhibition of American-style vulgarity, and they did not wait for the second half. The other pair objected strongly to the noise and nicknamed them the “Folk-Beatles”.
The head of the first family is a distinguished scholar of Irish. I would be extremely surprised to find him singing ballads in English (or any other language) in a pub. It was no surprise to me that he had never heard of Johnson's Motor Carbefore that night. I think they expected a more earnest evening of sean-nós singing "through the medium", in spite of my notice plainly discussing something quite different.
Now I remain an unrepentant admirer of the work of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. And I am quite sure that both sets of friends came expecting to hear something quite different from what they got. But one has to judge the Clancys for what they are and not regret that they are not something else.
To many people "our glorious heritage of traditional song" means a John McCormack singing Thomas Moore's Oft in the Stilly Night. Anything more different from that than the Clancys would be hard to find, still using words and tunes actually found in this island. Without discussing McCormack or Moore, neither is really "our glorious heritage of traditional song". Nor, for the matter of that, would the Clancy Brothers want to be that either.
To many others, folk song and traditional music mean sean-nós. So it does to me, and I would be the first to protest if the Clancy Brothers put, say, An ráibh tú ag an gCarraigthrough their particular mill. But they do not. It is clear from the records in the catalogue of Tradition Records Inc., founded and owned by Pat Clancy, that they know very well indeed the difference between The Holy Groundand An ráibh tú.
There is a continuous spectrum running through the vestiges of high bardic art in An ráibh tú, the true Irish folk song (in its original English meaning) of Déirin De, the foreign song assimilated as Séan 'ac Donnchadha's version of The Bonny Boy,the ideal translation of these into urban art as done by Gráinne Yeats and Mary O'Hara.
This continuum has nothing to do with the Clancy Brothers. For it has nothing to do with the urban street ballad, the pub song, the political ballad, the songs of the ports, with folk song in the American sense. And that is just what these singers are concerned with.
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