Archive News
Kilfenora CŽil’ Band marks new chapter with Town Hall concert
Date Published: 11-Apr-2012
The strong sense of history that prevails among the members of the famous Kilfenora Band isn’t surprising given that the group marks its 103rd anniversary this year.
But there’s also a sense of innovation in the legendary group and Galway audiences can experience that when ‘The Kilfenora’ visit Galway’s Town Hall on April 22 to promote its new album, Chapter Eight.
Flute player Gary Shannon and accordion player Claire Griffin explain that the band recently expanded and now has 11 core members, including four fiddle players, one of whom plays the viola.
There’s a bass and cello on this album as well and the whole combination has given a string quartet feel to Chapter Eight.
That mix of instrumentation allows them to do more in terms of the music and gives it a depth it didn’t have before, says Gary, a brother of well-known accordion player, Sharon Shannon.
The Kilfenora Céilí Band was founded in 1909 to perform for dances. It went through peaks and troughs in the years since, but since the early 1990s, when it was reformed under the leadership of John Lynch, it has gone from strength to strength.
Because of the road the band has gone down in recent years – performing in concert as well as for dances – there needs to be a greater variety in its music, Claire and Gary feel.
But, they add, experimentation is nothing new for this band, despite the fact that the members have a huge respect for its history and their role in its continuity.
In the 1960s the band had a saxophone and double bass. It may seem unusual, but there was always a dichotomy in music in the North Clare area, says Gary.
“American big band music was always very popular there; it would have been brought in from the States. There was a brass band tradition as well and that would have informed their traditional music.”
The current line up has “conservative and innovative leanings”, and as a result “the band is in constant creative tension”, laughs Gary.
Clare agrees. “The skill is in finding the balance between keeping traditional dance music, but also pushing the boundaries,” she says.
The Kilfenora Céilí Band still keeps the traditional dance band format, and retains the lift and rhythm of a dance outfit, but it’s more innovative within the structure of the tunes, says Claire.
And members are always aware of their place in the scheme of things.
“We can’t morph into Stocktons Wing,” says Gary. “There is 103 years of tradition and John, as band leader has a responsibility to all the people who went before us.”
It’s hard to measure how the current line-up is appealing to new audiences says Claire, but the fact that they have filled major venues, such as the National Concert Hall, the INEC in Killarney and the Concert Hall in the University of Limerick shows their popularity.
“And if we were doing the same thing as 30 years ago, they wouldn’t be coming.”
Their concert is a show, with songs and dancing as well as top class music. The Galway show will feature Michael Donnellan, who was lead dancer with both Riverdance and Lord of the Dance as well as local set dancers, while there will be songs from Galway singer-songwriter Don Stiffe.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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