Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Machem performing a song of Irish national liberation, The Rising Of The Moon.
The Clancy Brothers, The Rising Of The Moon, 1991
The following review was used to comment on several of the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Machem recordings back in the day, the 1960s day anyway, when they performed many times in America and various members stayed here for stretches at a time. The obvious musical skills, sheer talent, and commitment to craftsmanship of this group during its history need no comment by me. Nor does their commitment to keeping the Irish folk tradition alive beyond the known and by now well-worn Saint Patrick’s Day “everybody is green” traditions Thus the criterion for my reviews was solely based only whether and how closely the works represented the political traditions associated with the historic struggle for independence from the English, the bloody eight hundred year oppression. The Yeatsian Easter 1916 “terrible beauty is born” saga
A word. As I developed a quasi- leftist political consciousness, frankly, nothing then really more than a studied left liberalism, red scare, cold war variant, tepid, very tepid and timid upon reflection, in my youth I also, in an unsystematic and for the most part then unconscious manner, developed an interest in what is today is called roots music. Initially this was reflected in my first love-the blues, music that spoke to that hard times growing up poor in a world, or rather a country, that was frowning on poorness. The old country blues of the Mississippi Delta sweat labor, share-cropping, hard-drinking, hard moaning, no electricity juke joint Saturday night where you got a woman or a knife, maybe both, maybe neither. Or up river, sweet home Chicago, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf cries in the great neon electric industrial night.
During the early sixties, under the influence of Dave Van Ronk, first heard on some local almost mythical folk hour, called hootenanny or some such name, singing out of some graveyard voice from those hills and hollows down Kentucky way, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies I developed an interest in folk music, then at the height of its revival minute. Then, in turn, came Bob Dylan storming heaven or hell to be the voice of our generation, at least in song, Pete Seeger methodically keeping the “faith” alive against the rock influence that drove our generation to distraction, Woody Guthrie linking us back to dustbowl, hobo, tramp, road bumming wobblie days, and the rest. It is through this process that I, almost accidentally, came to appreciate the work of the artists under review.
This is an odd route, and I will explain why. I was actually reared on the material presented on this album by my maternal grandfather, a great supporter of the Irish Republican Army. I gained from him my own romantic attachment to the exploits of the IRA in 1916 and beyond that to independence and the continuing struggle in the north. Although my own political evolution since then has led me away from political support to the IRA I still love the old songs which represent the spirit of Irish national identity and aspirations for national liberation historically suppressed by the bloody English.
A word about the songs presented here. The liner notes included with the CD are very helpful. The songs range in subject from ‘The Rising of the Moon’ at the time of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishman, probably the last time that a united, independent, non-sectarian single Irish state was possible, to ‘Kevin Barry’ and ‘Sean Treacy’ just before the partition in 1921, creating the mess that still confronts us politically today. That said, as these lines are being written we are approaching the 96th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916. The vision that James Connolly, and the others, of a workers’ Social Republic as proclaimed at the General Post Office still waits. In short, there is still work to be done, North and South, united or as independent states. Listen to these songs to understand where we have come from and why we still need to fight.
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