Why do the Clancy Brothers sing? Because Tommy Makem
August 03, 2007
According to my informant, the exemplary harpist Maire Ni Chathasaigh, the question and answer in my headline were heard commonly for a time on the school playgrounds of Ireland.
Maire was one of a small number of people to whom I turned for help after being asked to produce, at short notice, an obituary on the Bard of Armagh.
She had met Tommy, and found him warm and good company, but knew him a lot less well than did her sister, Nollaig Casey, and Nollaig's musical amd marital partner Artie McGlynn, whose superb guitar work helped Tommy when he formed a duo with Liam Clancy. Artie allowed me to interrupt a holiday in Italy and willingly offered some insights into Tommy's life and work.
At Artie's suggestion, I also made contact with David or Davy Hammond, a Belfast teacher, television programme maker and singer whose interest in, and knowledge of, Irish music are such that I bitterly regret we never met during my frequent visits to Northern Ireland as a reporter.
Davy knew Tommy Makem well. If my obituary on the man has the least merit, that would be due in no small measure to Davy and his patient, generous help and reminiscences.
For anyone of my generation interested in folk music, the Clancys represented a powerful influence.
As I noted in my the obituary, it was not an expression of Irish music that greatly impressed the purists. But the group's formidable repertoire was well known to floor singers and guest artists alike on the booming British folk scene of the late 1960s.
And Maire agreed with my view that the Irish performers who came after the Clancys - Planxty, Bothy Band, De Dannan, Altan and so on - owe a great debt to Tommy Makem and the three brothers for "remaking the music" and opening all sorts of doors. The styles evolved and there is naturally a world of difference between the balladeers of the 1960s and the traditional ensembles that followed.
But to the wider public, the distinctions are not so clear. And the purists, if they are to be consistent, would be no more appreciative of, say, Altan. For the purist, traditional music must be played by a single musician, and only then on one of a few selected instruments of which guitar is not one, or sung with one, unaccompanied voice.
There probably is not a solitary Clancy Brothers, or Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy, CD in my collection. My own tastes moved on rapidly in the post-vinyl era.
But I was happy enough to raid their repertoires when young, as did most people presenting themselves as floor singers in the folk clubs of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I am happy to record my total admiration for their achievements and what these meant to folk music.
Tommy was a giant of his trade.
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