A Tribute to “The Thing Itself”
Claddagh Records
by L. Vandegrift Davala
The artist Pablo Picasso once said that great works of art should be capable of curing people. It would be hard to imagine an art form more closely associated with this task than the great dance music of Ireland. For sheer revelation of joy and well-being, there is no greater testament to the power of that cure than the most recent recording by Maeve Donnelly and Peadar O’Loughlin on Claddagh Records.
Recently I had the pleasure to speak with Peadar O’Loughlin about this CD and about live and recorded dance music. It has been almost two decades since the weekly sessions of music and set dancing in Inagh County Clare disbanded. I was fortunate to participate in these sessions from 1975 until their end in the early 1980s. Learning by example from Peadar, Paddy Murphy and many others, accompanying dancers (who were the most discerning of listeners), affirmed my reverence and love for this music, as well as my respect and gratitude for the players.
Peadar referred to these dancers as “the other musicians” saying that even now, 25 years later, “they are there - in the music”. In a truly great, driving session, they are conjured in the imaginations of those who knew the sound and sensation of battering feet, and what is even more magical – in those who didn’t. They are there - inspired by notes which have themselves been shaped by feet, as much as by breath.
Breath is at the core of Maeve and Peadar’s music. This music isn’t played, it is breathed. If inspiration means being “breathed into by God”, then we understand how such musical truths can be communicated - from one to another - with such stirring authority. For its greatest players, this has never been a music played only with fingers – it has never been exclusively a technical feat, pasteurized or homogenized. Such “perfections”, especially in this age of digital recording, would rob Irish dance music of its dignity, its residues of time, place, individuality and its profoundness. Most important, it would rob it of its place in the future.
This recording ensures that future. Donnelly and O’Loughlin have put a living art on record: masterful and evolving, dedicated and loving. At any moment on this CD, a complex and distilled language lifts the listener in its gentle essence. Every musical mark is as intelligent as it is expressive.
For more than four decades, O’Loughlin has generously shared his music with younger players. This considerable legacy is evidenced in his recordings with Maeve Donnelly, as well as with Ronan Browne, Geraldine Cotter, Eamonn Cotter and others. With each recording we are grateful for the challenge these musicians issue each other and the rewards shared by all.
In a time of abundant and easy communication, undiminished “dis-ease”, a time when so many are seeking authenticity, what greater cure is on offer than the mighty resonating magic revealed in this collection, truly “The Thing Itself”.
L. Vandegrift Davala, 2004
Discography
The Thing Itself
Maeve Donnelly and Peadar O’Loughlin
CCF36CD
Touch Me If You Dare
Ronan Browne & Peter O’Loughlin
CCF35CD
Maeve Donnelly
Maeve Donnelly
MDCD001
The South West Wind
Ronan Browne & Peter O’Loughlin
CC47CD