Miltown festival to celebrate the concertina

DAN Worrall, regarded as the leading expert on the social history of the Anglo-German concertina worldwide, will present a lecture on the origins of Anglo-German concertina playing this Friday evening.

The talk, from 7.30pm upstairs in the Markethouse, Miltown Malbay, will form part of the official opening of the first annual Concertina Cruinniú in the West Clare town this weekend.

Although he is from the US, Dan is a regular visitor to the county.

“I’m a retired geologist and my wife and I live on a small farm in coastal Texas. When I was younger, I visited Clare several times in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when I had just ‘discovered’ the concertina. I briefly met several wonderful Clare players at that time, among them Chris Droney, Tommy McCarthy, Tommy McMahon and Junior Crehan, and these gentlemen inspired my life-long interest in the instrument,” Dan Worrall told The Clare Champion this week.

“My maternal grandparents were both from Clare – Inagh and Mullagh – and emigrated in 1906. It was only after I took up the concertina that I learned that my grandmother had played it in her younger days. I and many others in my family were in Clare for the centenary of their marriage in 2009, where we met many second and third cousins,” he added.

Since his retirement, Dan has invested his spare time in researching the origins of the concertina.

“I’m not in any way a performing musician and am frankly in awe of those who are. But I am keenly interested in the social history of the concertina, especially the humble little German concertina that our grandparents and great-grandparents played and have followed that interest around the world. Its early history in Ireland will be the focus of my talk on Friday,” he explained.

In the late 19th century, concertinas were commonly played solo for house dances, not only in the West of Ireland, but also for similar house dances in England, as well as colonial Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and even in parts of North America. The German concertina entered Ireland in the years after the Great Famine as a foreign, modern instrument, with an associated repertoire of foreign, but very popular, so-called ‘ballroom’ dances, including the old quadrilles, polkas, waltzes, mazurkas, shottisches, barndances and varsovianas.

“Over the years, people here naturally added older Irish dance tunes to its repertoire, mainly jigs, reels and hornpipes that existed long before its arrival. In the early days of the Irish Republic, these older tunes took precedence at céilí dances. Some of these older tunes, especially rapid fire reels, were somewhat difficult to play on the German concertina, especially in the keys preferred by other musicians in céilí bands,” Dan noted.

“Many players quit at this time but others switched to better quality Anglo concertinas and kept on playing. Over the middle and late 20th century, Irish players adapted and perfected the styles of fingering used to play it for the old Irish repertoire, which, after all, had been composed largely by pipe and fiddle players, not concertina players. This resulted in a great resurgence in its popularity, not only in Clare and Ireland but abroad as well. It is amazing to visit distant places like Melbourne, Australia or Cincinnati, Ohio or wherever and find people talking about the finer points of Clare music,” Dan marvelled.

He described his invitation to speak at the Concertina Cruinniú as a “real honour”. Much of the material Dan will present will be from his book, which was published in 2009.

“I’ve written up my research in a 2009 two-volume book, The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History and last year with a CD-Rom book with embedded audio files entitled House Dance. It follows the shared history of the 19th century house dance around the world, with archival audio recordings and interviews of old players in Ireland, England, South Africa and Australia. I’ve given copies of those works to the folks at Oidhreacht An Chláir in Miltown Malbay for their library and it is always great to hear comments from people who have read them. Pursuing my writing interests is strictly a not-for-profit hobby and has netted me and my wife many fascinating friends around the world, not a bad hobby at all,” he laughed.

Other features of the Concertina Cruinniú weekend will be instrument maintenance workshops, an exhibition of old and rare concertinas, as well as archive audio, video and photographic material and intimate sessions with some of Clare and Ireland’s leading concertina players.

Saturday night’s concert with Noel Hill, Tony Linnane, Alec Finn, Rick Epping and Mick Kinsella will be held in St Joseph’s Parish Church.

Further details and a full programme of events can be viewed at www.oac.ie or on Facebook: The Concertina Cruinniu 2013.