Song sung green

TIM WATKIN tries to get DITA DE BONI enthused about celebrating St Patrick's Day in the best Irish tradition - in the pub.

Hey Dita,

St Patrick's Day this Sunday. How about we hunt out some Irish music and a bit o' craic in a few pubs?

Tim

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Tim:

Thanks for the invitation. The "bit o' craic" I can handle - even though it's never a bit, is it? - but as far as the music goes, I think I'll give it a miss. I've had enough nights stuck under the bow of a mad fiddle-player drinking warm beer and saying, "Oh arrr" to last a lifetime. While we're on that point, don't think I haven't noticed the Celtic CDs littering your desk featuring maidens in long white dresses and unicorns. While your commitment to the magical tunes of the Emerald Isle is to be commended, I pray to God I'm never left alone with you and your boom box.

Dita

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Dita:

Well, warm beer's enough to put anyone off anything - as for some mad fiddler and his bow ... ?!

Your unhappy impressions seem to be more with the surroundings than the music. Perhaps you've only been to dud pubs. The best Irish pubs - admittedly they're often in Ireland, which is a long way to go for the weekend - have a warm welcome at the door and a cold, black beer inside. They have some local history stuck on the wall and beer stains of many decades on the tables. There's an old fella telling stories in one corner and some musicians playing a few reels and ballads in another. Unlike the typical New Zealand tavern, all ages mix there.

Even if it's an Irish pub in New Zealand on St Patrick's Day, you can't help but get caught up in the infectious spirit, dancing a few jigs and singing along to some Pogues songs, can you? The music warms the soul ...

Tim

ps: For the record, I do not - and never have - owned a CD with a unicorn on it.

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Tim:

Fellas telling yarns, history and nostalgia ... maybe in Ireland, boyo, but Irish pubs in New Zealand exist for the sole purpose of bad dancing and skew-whiff accents, I swear. And to play more Pogues-like music than the Pogues themselves could have reasonably stomached.

I once had an Irish boyfriend and this was one point we were united on. And we united on little else, believe me - I barely understood anything he muttered in his grizzly County Cork accent. We would periodically attend a suitably manic performance of Irish music by a bunch of Kiwis with romantic illusions of four-leaved clovers and maidens fair - decked out in the best tradition of Irish fashion circa 1839 - and as the music slowly abandoned all pretence at keeping time, our brainwaves would start synapsing erratically.

The effect was heightened by continually being kicked in the shins by those perpetrating what was loosely described as "Irish dancing". In fact, the person whose enthusiasm best matched the increasingly frenetic pace of the music was our German friend, who, with his other German friends, sat right under the noses of the band and slapped his lederhosen enthusiastically for at least 50 minutes solid.

Dita

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Dita:

Granted, some Irish bands and pubs are as genuine as a plastic Rose of Tralee - and about as talented.

But I've been listening to music in Irish pubs when shy wee friends have suddenly burst into song, strangers have unveiled life stories, adventures have been shared with mates after years apart, and women met and lost. The music always seems to be a great soundtrack for these moments.

Irish music has a down-to-earth passion and an other-worldly air. Weary and hopeful, full of joy or full of misery with no half measures. I love the real life poetry in them - reel songs about real people (Sorry, couldn't resist that pun).

And the history ... It's cool that these stories have stayed alive so long. As Billy Bragg said, an old English geezer singing in a pub gets dismissed, but an old Irish geezer gets respect. Why is that?

Maybe it's cos so many of the songs are great yarns encapsulated in a few bars and simple words. They're often about a particular person, memory or place, rather than the catch-all, watered-down emotional fizz of modern pop. It's homely and grounded. Yet woven through the reality is this thread of magic.

Enough raving. They're mostly about devotion, heart-break, and rebellion against the power. In that sense they're pure rock'n' roll, baby - throwing the TV out of the hotel bedroom at the English ... And the accent's sexy.

Tim

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Tim:

Shy wee friends bursting into song ... strangers unveiling life stories (why this is desirable I don't know) ... adventures shared (women shared?) ... sounds like one thing is to blame for this behaviour - not Irish music, but alcohol.

I'm sure we could get you bursting into song and unveiling your shy wee friend with a similar quantity of margaritas or long island iced teas, be it Def Leppard or Nana Mouskouri in the background.

Furthermore, my friend Gavin, who spent a considerable amount of time in Dublin, reliably informs me that singing is not allowed in Irish pubs - it's considered to be too disruptive to other patrons. (Oh for a similar clampdown here)

Any old music that people have grown up with, overlayed with misty-eyed romanticism, would probably take on the same rosy hue. I feel my emotions bubble up with a rousing chorus of I Am Woman, and even Like a Virgin makes me a little tremulous - both real songs about real people, worldly and yet naif-like, speaking of feelings that have been welling up in the collective breast for centuries, thumbing their noses at the given order.

It is unfortunate, I grant you, that the Irish Rovers haven't yet seen fit to do a cover of either of these in their indomitable style. Luckily, poet and cultural critic Pam Ayres has stomped the same ground with her tasteful verse.

Back to music, however ... you are right in a way about Irish music tending to have hidden depths. Personally, I get the shivers when Andrea Corr proclaims "We are so young now, we are so young, so young now" - a more uncannily layered critique of society's treatment of youthful, raven-haired beauties would be hard to find.

And as for Westlife's What I Want is What I've Got , the inherent endorsement of capitalism and its effects on the music industry vis-a-vis mass-produced pop schlock resounds now and will no doubt be with us for years to come.

Dita

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Dita:

Bringing in the Corrs is a low blow - that's like judging all New Zealand music in the light of When the Cat's Away. And surely Westlife's music is as Irish as a Big Mac in Dublin - geography's the only distinction.

If we're fighting on modern ground, I offer U2 in retaliation - the biggest band in the world for nearly two decades and still winning grammys. But my case is more for the roots music. You wouldn't be belting out Madonna numbers in your fingerless gloves and lace hairbands, or any other modern music in its existing form, if it wasn't for the enduring influence of the old Irish tunes (not that I'm discounting the black or Jewish or other influences).

And I don't think the power of Irish music can be put down to the "any old music that people have grown up with" notion. I didn't grow up with it, for a start. And the thousands of Irish pubs around the world, in countries where the music is hardly part of the upbringing (I had a pint at an Irish pub in Berlin, for example), suggests there's more to it than that. I can't remember seeing any Helen Reddy-theme pubs anywhere.

The sense of fun, familiarity and feeling in the music is cross-cultural. It's hard not to get caught up in the vibe - unless, of course, you're home listening to the 80s hits of Madonna, Tiffany, and the like.

Me, sure now I'll go listen to a bit of old Celtic soul music and count the rings as I down a pint or two of the black brew.

Tim

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Tim:

As the Irish themselves say when someone shows an obstinate love of something, I might as well be whistling jigs to a milestone than try to talk you out of your Clannad-loving ways. As the Irish also famously said, "Marry a woman from the mountain, and you'll marry the mountain" - but that there is a whole other story.

Dita