Poetry and community at the heart of new album ‘Fad Saoil’

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

The wealth of talent and community spirit in South Connemara shines forth from Fad Saoil, the latest album from Johnny Óg Connolly, which is based on the poems of well-known Irish-language writer Joe Steve Ó Neachtain and features the voices of Cór Óige Cois Fharraige.

Launched at the weekend, it’s the second such song cycle from Johnny Óg who began playing accordion at the age of nine and who, in more recent times, has emerged as a composer of real talent.

His first cycle, An tEarrach Thiar, consisted of 12 poems by the Aran island writer Máirtín Ó Direán which Johnny set to music for singer Liam Ó Maonlaí and which premiered at the Spiddal arts festival, Éigse an Spidéil, in 2017.

This latest project began when Johnny bought a copy of Joe Steve’s poems Fad Saoil in a shop in Spiddal one evening in 2017. He began reading it at home and was immediately struck by the short but powerful Briseadh Croí. In it, Joe Steve described the death of his father many years previously when the future poet was just 10 years old and recalled his father’s remains being brought to the local graveyard on Christmas Eve. Deeply moved, Johnny felt Briseadh Croí and several other poems in the collection could be set to music.

“I started by looking for ones that had a Christmas theme, but then found others that resonated,” he explains.

Joe Steve had written the collection as a retrospective on his life and that of his Cois Fharraige community through the decades, from his childhood in the 1940s through to his older years.  Johnny selected poems that struck a chord with him and captured the arc of Joe Steve’s life. He put each one on his piano at home and composed his musical response to the mood and atmosphere of the original work. When he was done, he told Aisling Ní Neachtain, the director of the local choir, Cór Chois Fharraige, about it.

Aisling, who is Joe Steve’s daughter, was delighted to help develop it further. She and Johnny worked together to involve young people in the song cycle, creating the nine-strong Cór Óige Chois Fharraige to sing the musical works.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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