Meeting House Audience

Was Treated To Sweet Evening Of Traditional Irish Music

By Andrew Carey

The four members of the Belfast-based Irish traditional band Craobh Rua pulled up to Newtown Meeting House on the evening of Friday, April 8, after a long drive from the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. They had been stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, and in place of a leisurely supper in a local restaurant between the soundcheck and the show they had a hasty meal of pizza in the basement of the meeting house. It was the end of the first week of their latest American tour, part of Culture Ireland’s year-long program Imagine Ireland.

But from the perspective of the audience who had gathered for the latest in the Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society’s concert series, Craobh Rua might just as easily have not traveled a full mile from home. From the first note of the evening to the end of the encore their music and stage patter were fresh and lively, full of a friendly, cheerful energy that comes from valuing the tradition handed down from previous generations of musicians enough to make it a vital part of daily life rather than something to be wrapped up in cotton wool, put on a shelf, and only brought out for special occasions.

The concert started off with a set of reels, “The Red Crow,” “The Dawn” and “The Bianzano.” The set began with a few soft notes played by founding member Brian Connolly on the tenor banjo. Jim Rainey’s guitar and Conor Caldwell’s fiddle came in, followed by Aaron Hagan’s uillean pipes, and the night was underway with a fierce 4/4 rhythm.

Next came a set of slipjigs, gentler tunes in 9/8 time, starting with “Give Us a Drink of Water” and ending with “Moll Rua” (“Red-Haired Molly”).  Mr Hagan began this set, playing whistle, with Mr Connolly joining in on mandolin on the second section of the first tune and the rest of the band coming in at the repeat. 

When it came time for a song, Mr Rainey was ready with an excellent rendition of “The Road to Clady,” one of those rare happy songs about young love. A farm worker offers a young woman with “cheeks as red as roses, eyes a bonny blue” a lift on the “sour milk cart” which he is driving to the town of Clady, she accepts, and they pass the time as happily as any lord and lady who woo “among the roses and the flowers.”

A funny story about a stay in an exclusive Washington, D.C., hotel introduced “The Saratoga Hornpipe” and “The Washington Hornpipe,” and a humorous description of Belfast’s industry (“We built a ship called the Titanic. She was fine when she left us.”) led into a lovely old song about a young man and his fiancée who met in the linen mills, “The Pride of the Springfield Road.”

The basic rhythms of Irish music were explained as “carrots and cabbages” (jigs) and “Black and Decker” (reels). Mr Hagan gave a brief explanation of his primary instrument, the uillean (Irish Gaelic for “elbow”) pipes, a uniquely Irish form of bagpipe played sitting down with the bag kept pressurized by a bellows under the player’s elbow.  Mr Rainey sang a lovely song in the Irish language, “Na Buachaillí Álainn” (“The Lovely Boys”) about the women of an island who love the local boys who sail away fishing and bring them fine clothes from foreign places, but regret when they marry Scottish girls.

The concert “officially” ended with a set of polkas, but the audience leapt to their feet and demanded an encore. After some joking about a possible Barry Manilow song, Mr Rainey instead sang “Weddings and Funerals” by Michael Sands. The band played two jigs and two reels, and the lovely evening of sweet music drew to a close.