Martin Pheaits, as he is known locally in Connemara, was born in 1922. He has sung sean nos, the "old style" unaccompanied songs that still survive in the Irish Gaelic speaking areas, for at least 60 years. This album contains nine of these songs of varying length, plus one song in English called "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen."
Sean Nos has a reputation for not being good listening material, like a field recording that can't be made "pretty" by having a 20 year old re-sing it in the studio. Though the songs may have familiar tunes and be "translatable" into contemporary music, in this form the verses are unmetered. The sean nos singer uses a flat, very ornamented voice, and there are nuances and understandings between the singer and listener that often leave American ears dangling helplessly at the bottom of the appreciation ladder. Luckily, though, if you're used to rough singing from Brittany or Uzbekistan or your own back yard, or from old Buffy Ste. Marie LPs, only the nuances and the Irish language will cause those ears to dangle.
For being eighty, Pheait's voice isn't all that bad and it's even hard to tell whether the waver comes from his age or the ornament -- in any case it is still melodic and pliable. His songs "grow on you" as you listen over time and as you let yourself fall into them as if into a wave on the ocean. Well, actually a wave from your CD player, but they do hold strong ties with "ancient" Ireland, the bogs, cottages, and seaweed of the West. Apparently some notes are built into the songs as drones and, though structured differently, the songs can be as mesmerizing as shamans rocking back and forth singing the Kalevala, or whatever other ethnic trance musical experience you want to come up with.
Unfortunately the liner notes are mostly in Gaelic, with only a short piece in English. The songs are all translated, in that beautiful, archaic, and literal style used for Gaelic songs. Many of the songs are about love, but at times some tend to ramble and become incongruous. In several instances, seemingly timeworn lyrics are juxtaposed with the obviously modern, as in the charming "The Beautiful Women of Ros an Mhil":
"If I am traveling the roads in the form of a craftsman without any means,
I was in college in California amongst young women who studied law.
There's few who could surpass my penmanship throughout the world.
He hasn't been born in Aran yet nor is he married in Ros an Mhil."
It behooves you to read the translations! Some of the tunes will seem familiar. "Peigin Mistreal" and "Women of Ros an Mhuil" surely should have "Paddy's green shamrock shore" or "Van Dieman's Land" in it, but they don't. Other tracks emphasize ornament and words over the slow diaphanous tune.
Obviously Traditional Songs from Connemara is not a listening album for everyone, but it should be a good source of material and instruction for singers. It will be the lucky ones who shed the modern concepts of song and let themselves be carried by the songs themselves, by the beauty of ornament and language, as if by waves on the Western ocean.
