cd reviews
DAWN: On the fidddle review by Don Mead -IRISH VOICE NEWSPAPER.
Irish traditional dance music is pretty simple. That doesen’t mean that it’s easy to play.
Years of practice are required to reach even an average level of competence as a fiddler,piper,accordionist or other instrumentalist. And the best Irish traditional players are truly
gifted musicians who could surely have reached a comparable level of execelence in any other field of folk,popular or classical music. But it really is pretty simple. A catchy little melody played
in the rhythm,with a bit of ornamentation for flavour, That’s all there is to it. If you really want of course you can add some light backing on piano,guitar or bouzouki-maybe even a bodhran,
some bones or a pair of spoons(if you can keep them in the right hands).Anything else is not likely to improve the sound.In traditional music less is usually more. The only problem is that
you need some sophisticated ears to appreciate this“simple”music Listening to Irish traditional tunes takes nearly as much practice as playing them.To get from the stage where “it all sounds the same” to the point where you hear the little variations thrown in by master musicians takes
time. Listeners raised on a diet of rock and roll or other popular music just don’t get it at first..Which means that record companies don’t get it either. Commercially oriented musicians
and music bussiness types always want to mess with traditional music in order to sell it. So in comes the electric bass, the drum kit , the congas, Fortunately, there are still musicians who don’t want to compromise and who continue to make recordings of good, old-fashioned traditional music. You probably wont find them in the bins at Tower, Virgin or HMV, but at least the music is out there somewhere. You can get it from the musicians themselves at their own gigs, or through a hand full of distributors who specialise in quality recordings of folk and traditional music.. Dawn a new disc from button accordionist Andrew Mac Namara is one of the best recordings of this type that has found its way into ‘On the fiddle’so far this year. MacNamara is a native of Tulla in East Clare. He played with theTulla Ceili Band and can be heard on a couple of tasty duets with fiddle star Martin Hayes on the Tulla’s Cd A Celebration of Fifty Years. Mac Namara also made one record with the now
defunct group Skylark. In 1996 he formed his own band the Lahawns and put out a wonderfully
livley and informal CD Live at Winkles.
MARY & ANDREW MacNAMARA: OPEN HEARTH
Mary MacNamara: concertina
Andrew MacNamara: accordion
Those familiar with the subtle, sparsely decorated, and gently paced music of Tulla, Co. Clare, concertina player Mary MacNamara will find this recording very much in the same vein as her previous two solo albums. Although her brother Andrew's accordion playing can be quite different in style, i.e., complex in ornamentation and faster paced, here he matches Mary's style note for note, which results in a series of charming unaccompanied duets, just as one might hear played by the hearth with a roaring fire crackling in the background. The music consists mostly of some well-known tunes and standards of the Clare repertoire, though always played with a little twist that will keep the listener intrigued. My only complaint would be that this is a rather short CD, with 13 tracks all less than 3 minutes in duration. With music of this quality, one would easily listen to double that number. Sometimes, one just wishes for quality AND quantity...
Philippe Varlet Celtic Groove`imports
The Lahawns live at winkles
Lahawn music LM001
Painter J.B. Vallely, my own first cousin and indeed my mentor inmusic thirty five years ago,remarked recently
that the only revolutionary thing left to be done in Irish Art is to thatched cottages".
So too with Traditional music-sleek presentation,squeakless fiddles,wheezeless flutes,squawkless pipes,
Dettox studio sound,Popular music ethics and hype, all combine to sucha pitch of over-production these days
that it is a sheer relief tohear a mere ceili band.
Something to get the nerve-ends of thelower leg twitching. the Lahawns- called after a townland near
Tulla Co Clare-are Andrew Mac Namara (accordion), BredaSmyth(fiddle), Jimmy Higgins (piano ,snare) ,
Kevin Hough(guitar),Jim Corry (piano) the style is easy-going ,the energyhigh.
Recorded vaguely live mostly at Winkles hotel in Kinvara.
This is not cynically structured 'set music for dancing to, nor is it suave studio synthetics- this is honest to
God session music, music for talking to, Humours of Tulla, the Skylark, Roaring Mary,
Sligo maid, The bird in the bush,solid tunes,a bit of banter, 'cahooing' both cool and gauche,
and, most wonderfully, the waltzes. No one else would have the nerve: Moon light in Mayo,
My Bonnie lies over the ocean, Lovely Leitrim.
Tight music with tremendous gusty piano-driving, heart skipping snare-tipping and
unashamed, pounding foot beat.
This is the kind of thing that scares the tokenism out of them in the White House and
Aras an Uachtarain-this is the stuff
FV Irish times 6-8-97.
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