By Earle Hitchner
Wondering where to spend New Year’s Eve 1999? Forget Times Square, where half a million people throng. Amateurs all. And ignore Trafalgar Square, where auld lang syners gather to revel. Lightweights the lot.
The place to usher in the new millennium is the port of Bunbeg, part of the Irish-speaking parish of Gaoth Dobhair in northwest Donegal, where 700-plus patrons stuffed themselves this past Dec. 31 into the top-floor ballroom of Óstán Ghleann Bhé (Hotel Glenveagh). Now there was a New Year’s Eve celebration, one of the toughest to get tickets to in Ireland, as more than 1,000 people occupied the ballroom, the two ground-floor lounges, and the disco in the basement of the hotel, also dubbed "Dodge." (After a rumored, Wild West-like shooting some years back, the hotel received its nickname. Sadly, "Dodge" has since been shuttered for good.)
Everyone was clearly primed for a good time this past New Year’s Eve in the wake of one of the worst storms to hit Ireland in years. Pelting rain and winds reaching 110 miles per hour, the strongest since Hurricane Debbie in 1961, had left 160,000 households in the country without power. The storm caused more than £100 million in damages, and it had certainly left its mark in Ireland’s northernmost county, where fallen trees, scattered branches, and mud slurries lined the roadways and matted the landscape.
Yet nothing seemed to deter the hardy souls who traveled from all over Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Germany, Japan, and America to attend the fifth annual Frankie Kennedy Winter School of Music, of which the New Year’s Eve party was but one component during the week of Dec. 28 through Jan. 2. The entire week is a fitting tribute to Frankie Kennedy, a Belfast-born flutist and founding member of Altan, who died of cancer in September 1994 at age 38 and embraced this region of Donegal as his second home.
Starting off this New Year’s Eve of all-acoustic music were Donegal-born singer and guitarist Kevin Doherty and Tipperary-born banjo wizard Gerry O’Connor, both former members of Four Men and a Dog. Doherty’s penchant for country-tinged original songs blended well with O’Connor’s fast licks on the four-string banjo, an instrument on which he has no equal. But the real surprise came on a Doherty song where O’Connor switched to acoustic guitar and snapped off some impressive blues runs. Their set concluded with "Mystery Train," a blues classic written by Junior Parker that Doherty sang with a silent nod to The Band, whose members helped Four Men and a Dog with their last recording and also Doherty with his upcoming solo album.
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On stage next were Stephen Cooney on guitar, percussion, and vocals and button accordionist Derek Hickey, filling in for Séamus Begley. Cooney was in overdrive, thumping out jigs and reels with Hickey and playing for close to four straight hours. But the Australian-born singer, who lives in Kerry, also knocked out riveting versions of the Beatles’ "I Saw Her Standing There," Creedence Clearwater Revival’s "Proud Mary," Carl Perkins’s "Blue Suede Shoes," Bob Marley’s "Jump for Joy," Willie M’ Thornton’s "Hound Dog," and such spirituals as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and even "Cumbaya." And they all worked, flowing in a stream of madcap musical consciousness and inciting the crowd to pack the dance floor.
Cooney was virtually a one-man band, helped at one point by Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, who, when Cooney tossed her a verse to sing of a rock standard, broke out in an Irish song. Again, it worked. What a night.
Teaching: the heart of the school
From Monday to Wednesday, Dec. 28 to 30, musical instruction took place in late mornings and early afternoons at Dunlewy’s Lakeside Center, which is opened daily from Easter to the end of October and last year drew more than 70,000 visitors. With winter coal or turf burning in the hearths of the main building and its interconnecting, satellite cottages, students had lessons in the fiddle, flute, tin whistle, uilleann pipes, accordion, and accompaniment instruments (bodhrán, guitar, bouzouki, etc.).
As tape recorders whirred under chairs and on tabletops, Beginish’s Paul O’Shaughnessy taught 22 tunes over three days to 16 "middle" pupils, including his elder daughter. (Two other fiddle classes, for beginners and advanced students, were being held elsewhere on the premises.) With remarkable patience and diligence, O’Shaughnessy taught every tune incrementally, insisting gently but firmly that each part be repeated until he was satisfied, then each section, and finally the whole tune.
In a cottage room lit by a bare bulb tacked to the ceiling, Beginish’s Paul McGrattan instructed students in a flute class and added his own engaging comments to how he obtained the tunes he was teaching. At one point, McGrattan mentioned how he had labored long and hard on composing a tune only to find out, when he played it in a seisiún, that it was a traditional Donegal melody previously recorded by Altan.
Anna Ní Mhaonaigh, Mairéad’s sister, taught tin whistle in the key of D in another cottage room, giving her students pointers on technique and offering encouragement during a tune’s more challenging passages. For Anna, this is nothing new, as she participates in and helps organize an intensive, five-day course in the playing of Irish traditional music called "Nóta" in Donegal.
The entire atmosphere of instruction at the Lakeside Center was warm and inviting, making it easy to understand why classroom capacity is reached so quickly every year at this winter school.
Concerts and craic
A weeklong music school and a series of concerts and sessions after Christmas and through New Year’s, a period when most people are home with families and friends, may seem a daft idea, particularly in Donegal. Not the most geographically accessible of Irish counties, it’s a region where snow, ice, wind, and rain are a common occurrence in winter. But all of that is, ironically, part of what makes it so successful.
Many Irish emigrant musicians return home during this time, and many resident Irish musicians feel the pinch of cabin fever closing in, so they gravitate to Gaoth Dobhair for socializing and performing. The inclement weather actually abets the process, forcing people indoors, where they stave off the cold and damp by swapping tunes and playing together.
But the main reason this music week in rural Donegal works so well is its namesake, Frankie Kennedy. His strong reputation among musicians has never waned, and his memory acts as a powerful magnet for the musical elite.
Among the slew of musicians who were not scheduled to perform but did so anyway, whether on stage or in sessions, were the Chieftains’ singer/bodhrán player Kevin Conneff, Belfast flutist Harry Bradley, fiddler Dermot Diamond, uilleann piper Gay McKeon, Dervish singer/bodhrán player Cathy Jordan, fiddler Dermot McLaughlin, fiddler/teacher Dinny McLaughlin (once of the 1960s band Aileach), flutist Marcas Ó Murchú, flutist Conor Byrne (Christy Moore’s talented nephew), guitarist Eóghan O’Brien and fiddler Kate O’Brien of Déanta, guitarist Gearóid Ó Maonaigh (indefatigable volunteer organizer and troubleshooter of the entire week), fiddler Ciarán Ó Maonaigh (Gearóid’s son), fiddler Proinsías Ó Maonaigh (Mairéad, Anna, and Gearóid’s father, and one of the most revered musicians and teachers in Gaoth Dobhair), Nomos concertinist Niall Vallely, Solas singer Karan Casey, fiddler Steve Campbell, Fermanagh flutist Cyril Maguire, fiddler Liz Doherty, guitarist Ian Smith, tin whistle player Joe Mac Grianna, and fiddler Hugh Ó Gallchoir (also owner of Teach Hiudai Bhig, a well-known music pub in Gaoth Dobhair).
Scheduled concerts during the Frankie Kennedy Winter School were nothing short of exceptional. On Dec. 29 at 4 o’clock in the afternoon at Óstán Gaoth Dobhair, a rather lavish hotel overlooking the bay, some of the most accomplished sean-nós vocalists gathered to sing. It was emceed by Brian Ó Domhnaill and taped for later broadcast on Raidió na Gaeltachta, which provides a vital regional outlet for both Irish traditional music and the Irish language. (The only "foreign" tongue banned from its airwaves is English.) In a room crammed with small sofas along one wall and rows of chairs on the floor, the concert featured Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, Jimmy McFarlane, Geraldine Frank, Jimmy McBride, and, in a lovely duet of "Factory Girl," Mairéad and Anna Ní Mhaonaigh.
Later that night at the Lakeside Center, the quartet Beginish performed. They kicked off with "The Plough and the Stars/The Kilfenora Reel/Maids of Galway/McGoldrick’s," a blast of four reels establishing a high standard that the band invariably matched thereafter. Kerry polkas, jigs including "Apple in Winter" and "Lark in the Morning," two highlands and two reels from fiddler Paul O’Shaughnessy and guitarist Noel O’Grady, and some Cape Breton barndances coupled with Donegal reels were all handled with aplomb.
Bodhrán player Kevin Conneff joined Beginish for a pair of barndances composed by Grattan as well as a hornpipe, some reels, and some slides. The Chieftains’ singer also gave a fine rendition of the song "Mourlough Mary" with Beginish backing him.
Every so often, a single concert can create the kind of buzz that crosses county lines and penetrates the entire traditional music community in Ireland. That was certainly the case with the mid-afternoon performance given by Altan button accordionist Dermot Byrne, Manchester-born fiddler Dezi Donnelly, and Steve Cooney in the Lakeside Center on Dec. 31. Billed simply as "Dermot Byrne and Friends," the trio rarely perform together but blended brilliantly all the same, with Donnelly’s highly individualistic, near-Maguire-like bowing in sync with Byrne’s box playing and Cooney’s idiosyncratic, ever-tasteful accompaniment.
In Altan, Byrne meshes so well with the two fiddles and the two rhythm instruments that it’s easy to overlook how extraordinary a button accordionist he is. His playing of "Paddy’s Rambles Through the Park" at slow-air tempo was exquisite, while his fleet, clean fingering of the rousing Latin American tune "Tico, Tico" demonstrated how formidable his chops are.
Donnelly’s fiddling on the "Second Star/Sunshine" hornpipes was a marvel of instinctive, impishly joyful embellishment, and Cooney’s singing of "Island Girl," his own composition, was full of heartfelt emotion and exotic, often mystic imagery. A Breton tune penned by former Kornog guitarist Soig Siberil was undergirded by Cooney’s fine tabla playing, and a medley of reels that included "Mulvihill’s" ended with a strong blues lick from Cooney on guitar.
Byrne, Donnelly, and Cooney were spectacular, free-flowing and free-thinking in their musical ideas, yet without a hint of self-indulgence. So it came as no surprise when I learned weeks later that they were embarking on a short Irish tour, prompted by the tremendous stir created in Donegal that day.
On New Year’s Day in an Óstán Ghleann Bhé lounge, Dog Big and Dog Little gave a late-afternoon concert that was a triumph of unfrenetic reserve but still energetic and very skilled playing. Leitrim-born fiddler Ben Lennon and Fermanagh native fiddler Fr. Séamus Quinn were in great form, along with Kinawley musicians Gabriel McArdle on vocals and concertina and Altan’s Ciarán Curran on bouzouki.
"Jimmy Duffy’s Barndances" had plenty of snap to them, "Fisher’s/Dunphy’s" hornpipes exhibited exemplary pacing, and the "Yellow Tinker/Pakie Dolan" reels sparkled in the hands of these four good friends and performers. McArdle fervently sang "Banks of the Clyde" with Altan guitarist Mark Kelly accompanying him, and another guest, Belfast-born flutist Marcas Ó Murchú, joined Lennon on a spirited pair of reels, "Kiss the Maid Behind the Bar/The Dublin Reel."
The Frankie Kennedy Winter School week concluded with back-to-back nighttime concerts by Altan, and they did not disappoint their home-area fans, who packed the Lakeside Center. Three Donegal jigs collectively titled "Australian Waters" were played with irresistible élan, and Ciarán Curran opened up on bouzouki to play two Tyrone-based jigs facetiously called "Ciarán’s Capers." Two more Donegal jigs, "Johnny Boyle’s/King of the Pipers," and the strathspey/reels medley of "Clan Ranald/J.B.’s Reel/Paddy Mac’s/Kitty Sheáin’s" were among the other instrumental highlights that also included "Tommy Bhetty’s Waltz," a tune heard in the movie "Good Will Hunting."
With optimal phrasing, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh sang such songs as "Jug of Punch," "Flower of Magherally," "I Wish My Love Was a Red, Red Rose" (punctuated with hilarious banter), and "Dúlamán," where Steve Cooney on tabla and Kevin Conneff on bodhrán sat in. Mairéad also sang "A Moment in Time," a song she co-wrote with Mark Kelly in response to a sui generis Jill Freedman photo of Donegal fiddler John Doherty playing in a Carrick pub. And her fiddling on "A Tune for Frankie," named for her late husband, hauntingly evoked his memory for everyone present.
Farewell
On the morning of the last day of 1998, my wife and I walked down a narrow road leading out of Bunbeg toward the ocean. Wind whipped hard as we passed a soccer pitch to the right and a golf course to the left. Looming in the distance was the small cemetery where Frankie Kennedy was buried.
We opened the large iron gate and entered what was clearly the older section. The headstones were weather-worn, with beds of white stone lying before them. The newer graves, arrayed in trim rows, did not have these white stone beds, and we walked along the small concrete pavements separating the headstones.
Clutches of flowers were placed here and there, pinioned to the ground to prevent the gusting wind from carrying them off the graves and into the tall grass lying beyond the short wall enclosing the cemetery. A large masonry cross stood silent sentinel at the back of the graveyard, facing out on the Atlantic, white-tipped with waves unfurling ceaselessly toward the shore.
Then we saw it. Fresh flowers were placed in front of the headstone, smooth on its face, rough-cut at the top, the surname "Kennedy" painted in white inlaid letters at the bottom, "Frankie" and some brief words in Irish near the top, with the date of death noted: 19-9-’94.
Even in bleak weather, with incessant wind and pending rain, it was a raw, beautiful, tranquil spot. As we gazed quietly at the grave, my mind cast back to something Altan fiddler Ciarán Tourish had mentioned to me. After the funeral, when other mourners had long since departed, members of the band drove out to the freshly covered grave, popped a Van Morrison CD into the car player, opened the doors wide, and cranked the volume.
Morrison was Kennedy’s musical idol. The two came from the same city — Kennedy from the Andersonstown area, Morrison from Hyndford Street in East Belfast — and Kennedy used to enjoy pointing out to me moments of Morrison’s hard Belfast accent in certain phrases he sang.
"How do you get this VCR of yours to work?" Kennedy once asked me over the phone while I was at work and the band was staying at my home. As they did with virtually every visit, they had popped in a video I had of "Van Morrison: The Concert," recorded at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater on Nov. 30, 1989. It’s a stunning performance by Morrison and his group, with Irish saxophonist Richie Buckley echoing improvised phrases from Morrison on "Summertime in England" that represent live music at its on-the-edge best. For Kennedy, it also represented the level he and his bandmates strove to reach with every concert they gave.
On this cold, gray, windy day, the idea of Kennedy’s bandmates gathered near his grave to pay their respects by blasting Morrison songs from the car comforted me. I could think of no better parting gesture, no surer way of showing emotion over someone taken much too soon from us.
Then I thought of "Caravan," a classic Morrison song from 1970, and its repeated variations of a phrase: "Turn it up, burn it up, radio/Turn it up, burn it up, so you know, it’s got soul."
With the radio turned way up by a small caravan of grieving friends, Frankie Kennedy made his final journey. And every year since then, between Christmas and New Year’s, at the winter school bearing his name in a remote region of Ireland he loved so much, kids and adults together rediscover the soul of a music that brightened his life and still redeems ours.
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For more information about this week of music instruction and performances, contact the Registrar, Frankie Kennedy Winter School, Bunbeg, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland, 075-32127 or 075-31639 (phone), gearoidm@iol.ie (e-mail).