Chris honoured for contribution to Irish music

LEGENDARY concertina player, Chris Droney from Belharbour, is to be honoured with a national musician’s award, Gradam an Chomhaltais.

The award will be presented to the iconic figure in Irish traditional music at a tribute concert in his honour at Cois na hAbhna, Ennis on Saturday, July 27 by Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, Ard Stiúrthóir Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

Chris has been playing music for almost 80 years and his unique style of playing has not only enhanced the great respect there is for Clare music-making but has continued to energise the feet of set dancers down through the years.

Following in the footsteps of his father, James and grandfather, Michael, he began playing the concertina at the very young age of eight. While he was self-taught, his father had a huge influence on his playing. Chris recalls spending hours as a child practicing tunes by poor light from an old oil lamp.

As a young lad growing up, he had few outlets for his music. Belharbour House, where Chris was born and still lives today, was a popular venue for house dances and it was there that the annual Wren Dance was generally held. Chris’s early repertoire was made up of tunes played by his father and grandfather on concertina and his uncle, Michael on fiddle, at these late night dances.

Other early musical influences came from renowned local fiddler Peter Maher and his 18 siblings, all of whom played music on a wide range of instruments. His neighbours, the  Linnanes, were also musicians, and Chris’ four brothers could also play a few tunes on concertina.

However, it was Chris who made the concertina synonymous with the Droney name.
He was senior All-Ireland concertina champion nine times in the 1650s and ’60s, and has played in several well known céilí bands down through the years, including the Belharbour Céilí Band in the early ’50s, the Ballinakill, the Aughrim Slopes, the Kincora and the Kilfenora. He also played with the Four Courts Céilí Band throughout Ireland and abroad for almost 25 five years.

Chris toured in Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, The Isle of Man and Newfoundland with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, as well as entertaining Irish communities from Camden Town to North America. He had the honour of playing for the late Cardinal Ó Fiach and he performed at a function to mark the Emperor and Empress of Japan’s visit to Ireland in 2005. In recent years, he has found himself entertaining guests on Caribbean cruises.

Chris has also made three fine solo recordings. In 1962 his first solo LP album, The Flowing Tide, which was released as a CD in 2007, marked the rise of one of the greats of traditional Irish music. In 1995, over 30 years later, Chris recorded The Fertile Rock, his second and much-acclaimed solo album, with Chlólar-Chonnachta. In 2005, he produced yet another musical feast in the album Down From Bell Harbour.
Irish music lovers will forever be indebted to Chris for this wonderful collection of music in the North Clare style and, more particularly, in the Droney style, which is proudly carried on by his son, Francis and his children and his daughter, Ann.

Borne out of the house dances of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Chris’s music is most definitely music for the dance, lively, vibrant and rhythmic.

In the words of his good friend, Cavan fiddler Antóin Mac Gabhann, “The rhythm of the music is wed to the dance, putting the beat right under the feet of the dancers. One can picture the couples in a figure of the Caledonian set gliding in and out on the cushion of rhythm that Chris provides.
“Chris has inherited and developed his own settings of tunes in such a way that they sit easily on the concertina, and that is what gives his music its own natural flow. In his playing, the rhythm of the tune takes priority, the embellishment is sparing and is tailored to enhance the rhythm, not to intrude on it”.