Crossing the divide in Celtic music and ambitions

IN the four years since local band Guidewires came together, they have recorded two albums and toured the world several times over.

 

Now, the dynamic group have broadened their musical horizons to team up with musicians from Scotland, Brittany and England in the 14-piece ensemble, Dán. Along with Guidewires, this motley, crosscultural outfit comprises Kan, Breton Quartet and Alyth McCormack, singer with The Chieftains. Together they’re about to embark on a nationwide tour, which kicks off in Glór on August 15.

Having played with the idea of a cross-cultural collaboration for a while, Dán was conceived when Brian Finnegan, of Kan and also the reformed Flook, joined Guidewires on tour.
“It was an idea we came up with about a year ago,” explains Karol Lynch.

“Then Sylvain [Barou] couldn’t do a gig in Finland so Brian Finnegan did it. At that stage, we said it to Brian and he said he’d be well up for it. Then the fact that it was cross-culture between the Celtic countries and obviously because Sylvain is with us, we got a Breton contingent. Then we got Alyth just to get the rest of the package,” he says, with a nod to the Arts Council for providing the essential funding for the project.

“Basically you’ve got Guidewires, which is five Kan which is four, then four Bretons, not including Sylvain. The Bretons are basically the leaders in their field. We said to Sylvain, ‘who are the best musicians you can get’ and he recommended all of these – Jacques Pellen has been to the forefront of most of the new-age Breton stuff and then Janick Martin is a box player who is stunning. We saw him in Quimper last year and he’s just frightening and then there’s a bass player and a trumpet.”

With such a large collection of talent in one group, making music became the simple starting point in what has become an exploration of the strong traditions from whence these musicians came. Adding to that, they’ve created a new music, which challenges and pushes these traditions to their outermost boundaries. But, Karol explains, that wasn’t necessarily the original intention. Dán’s music has evolved to this point. Each member, in the process, has had the chance to give full flight to their unique creative voice, which is worked into the overall musical picture.

“When you come up with these things you never know if it’s going to be original music. We basically have all written a set – each person out of 14. We didn’t want it to be like ‘oh that’s Guidewires or that’s Kan’ we wanted it to be totally different and cross-collaborated on some of the arrangements so that it doesn’t sound like Guidewires and it doesn’t sound like Kan – it sounds totally different. Even with the instrumentation, we didn’t want to, say, if I wrote a tune, it’s not necessarily all of Guidewires playing. Some people will listen to it and say ‘I know that Karol wrote that or Pádraig wrote that’ but we didn’t necessarily sit down and try to come up with something off the wall. I’d say a lot of the Guidewires’ stuff is a lot more complex – we don’t go into polyrhythms and that kind of stuff that Guidewires has but there still is going to be some madness in there. The tune I wrote is basically a reel and doesn’t change from a reel.”

Alyth McCormack of The Chieftains and singer with Dán, while an interpreter of the songs of others for many years, has added her own original song to the project. This, she explains, is her first foray into songwriting.

“We’re going to be performing the first song I’ve written – it was important to Karol and the lads to have new compositions for the project. Writing songs has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but it’s something I feel I have to work at. I love words and can write prose but a song is not just prose. When Karol and I chatted and he specified new material, I thought ‘now is a good time to start’. So, on the recent Chieftains tour in the UK, I sat down and listened to lots of tunes for inspiration. One was Brian Finnegan’s tune Eva. I listened over and over and the words just came out. I don’t know what inspired Brian to write the tune, we may well have come from very different places but the tune took me somewhere so I decided to go with it.”

In addition to her own song, Alyth will be singing material from across the Celtic regions. “I am good friends with the songwriter Boo Hewerdine and asked him to cast his expert eye over my own song. In the process of that, he sat down and wrote another song for me called a Handful of Beads and it’s beautiful. We’ll also be doing some songs in Gaelic. Jacques Pellen composed a piece based on a Gaelic song Chadal cha dean mi he heard years ago sung by the Scottish Harp duo Sileas and we’re also going to do a set out Mouth Music – puirt a beul. These are originally dancing songs so that’ll be pretty bouncing,” she says.

Alyth will also recite a poem especially written for the project by renowned poet, Theo Dorgan, during the Dán concerts.

Karol explains, “Because we went with the name Dán, which means poem, it was obviously in our heads that we wanted to get some poetry into it. Theo has written a poem that incorporates Scotland, England, Brittany and Ireland and he explained it that as we’re all islands, we don’t look inward, we look outward. The poem is stunning – it’s kind of nautical in certain ways,” he says.

When Alyth and the other 13 members of Dán meet in Glór this August, they will be meeting as Dán for the first time, having spent the last year sending the music to one another from around the world, without live rehearsal. Three days in Glór prior to their first concert of the tour will be the final piece in Dán’s creative, cross-cultural jigsaw.

“We’ve got three days of rehearsals in Glór before the gig. Up to now, rehearsing has been taking place through technology. If you’re not all in the one place, that’s how it’s done,” he says.

“Because we’re all over Europe and the west side of Europe, it’s all been emails and dropbox – everyone has some kind of recording system so that we record stuff and send it to each other.

“It’s a little daunting but very exciting,” he concludes.

The full line-up of Dán is Pádraig Rynne, Tóla Custy, Sylvain Barou, Paul McSherry, Karol Lynch, Brian Finnegan, Ian Stephenson, Jim Goodwin, Aidan O’Rourke, Geoffroy Tamisier, Janick Martin, Jacques Pellen, Etienne Callac and Alyth McCormack. Dán will kick off their national tour in Glór on Wednesday, August 16 at 8pm.