The Chieftains' Place in Irish Music
While many people credit Riverdance,1 the step-dancing extravaganza that has been crisscrossing the globe for most of a decade and still remains popular, it was not that production, beguiling as it is, that is logically credited with the popular mania for Irish music. That accolade would more properly go to The Chieftains, a four-decade-old troupe of exceptional performers and musicians whose internationally feted harper, Derek Bell, was the first of the group to pass away, on October 17, 2002. Although the entire group is composed of accomplished musicians, only Bell had been a bona fide child prodigy, composing his first major work before the age of ten. Like the historical Turlough O'Carolan, the Blind Harper, Bell was slated as a youth to go blind, impelling his parents to surround him with musical instruments (The Chieftains Web site). He did not, in fact, go blind, but he had found his calling.Riverdance gives a visual as well as aural glimpse of what it means to be Irish. The Chieftains, however, have been able to help their fans "discover what it means to live and die in Ireland, then and now, a land where failed efforts at transforming or controlling life combine with full powers of evocation and articulation; a
Henry Joy is the tale of an Irish soldier during a rising against the British. There's killing in it, and mourning wives and mothers. The musical accompaniment is much like that for the entire album; a single banjo, not a traditional Irish instrument like the Uilleann pipes, the Irish harp, the bodhran, the tin whistle or the bones. Indeed, most of those instruments do not appear on this 'traditional' album. The resurgence of Irish music is, some critics believe, "based on the 'realness' and 'honesty' of the music, in other words, its authenticity as a music of the people. To some extent, the perceived authenticity of this music has led to its exploitation as a selling-point, as in the advertising of other Irish products such as beer (Shuker 2002 43).
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Approximate Word count = 4463
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)
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