AS A kid, I was always amazed how Tonto could tell the Lone Ranger that 25 baddies riding horses were on their way towards them just by putting his ear to the ground.
If Tonto were around today, his ear would no doubt pick up the buzz being created by the preparations for the upcoming Imbolc Festival "a celebration of music reflecting the diversity of the contemporary Irish music scene", that is happening in Derry between January 29 and February 5.
One of the stand-out gigs is the return of Dervish to the banks of the Foyle as they open the festival on the Sunday night. The band are celebrating 25 years on the road with a current line-up of Brian McDonagh, Liam Kelly, Tom Morrow, Shane Mitchell, Michael Holmes and of course, singer and bodhrán-beater Cathy Jordan up front.
I spoke to Cathy – a good while ago now – and suggested that with such a great voice, she could have been a rock chick or a jazzy torch singer. So what was it about traditional songs that attracted her in the first place?
“Oh, I don’t know but old songs are what I grew up with, listening to my parents and aunts and uncles. And our neighbours always used to sing, and I always loved the whole notion of songs being handed down from generation to generation and carrying all their stories with them, whether they are about love and heartache or emigration or whatever – that always appealed to me,” she said.
It is not just traditional songs that attracts Cathy but songs that have roots.
“I want to hear the ground almost,” she laughed. “I want to hear the beginnings of it, the roots of it in a sort of organic way. I like it as raw as it comes.”
Roscommon native Cathy was happy to admit that she relates to old songs more than to newer ones because the language and the feel of them and the melody speak to her.
“Maybe I’m reliving a past history or something, I don’t know.”
Cathy has been a member of Dervish for 25 years now, having joined in 1991. I asked her, to what does she attribute the longevity of the band?
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’re just lazy,” she laughed. “But I do think there is a kind of glue that holds us together. At this stage now, we are like a family. We’ve given out to each other and said all those horrible things to each other that only families can get away with and still forgive each other. We can turn up the next day as if nothing had happened.
“We’ve been through a lot and travelled all the continents. We lost our sound engineer, Finian Corrigan, in an accident in 2002 and I think if he hadn’t died, who knows? We might not have lasted this leg of the journey. Finian’s death brought it home to us how precious life is and how precious each of us are to each other.”
Certainly another reason for their longevity is the fact that they share the same musical philosophy – at least as far as Dervish is concerned.
“We seldom argue when it comes to the music. We have the same idea as to what the Dervish sound should be,” Cathy said. “I believe that any good concert should have the three elements of Irish music – geantraí, goltraí and suantraí [joy, lament and lullaby] and the music is so deep and there is such a wealth of emotion invested in it, it can help you dream, it can make you cry, it can lift your spirits; it is an emotional rollercoaster that you come away from uplifted in some way.”
When you get a press release about Dervish, they always mention – and quite rightly so – the eye-catching headline gigs that Dervish have performed over the years.
“From the Great Wall of China to packed auditoriums in the Holy Land and being the first Irish band to perform at the greatest music festival in the world, Rock in Rio in front of an estimated audience of 240,000 people...” But are those what Cathy herself sees as a highlight of the band’s career?
I suggested that a wee gig, in a wee pub in front of a wee audience could be just as magical as anything in as exotic venues as those listed above.
“Well, you’re dead right,” Cathy agreed as she recalled the 18-month residency the band did in Leitrim back in 2010/11.
“What we love is the colloquial, and the Leitrim Equation as it’s known gave us the opportunity to do something we hadn’t done in years – that is, to completely ensconce ourselves in a community. And you go to their schools, to their old-folks homes and to their pubs and you get surrounded by the wealth of people and all they have to offer. It was a phenomenally moving experience."
She recalled being in an old-people’s home where maybe some of the residents might have lost their short-term memory and might not even recognise members of their family, but they would know every word of a song they’d learned 60 years before.
“For us to be in a position to give them the space to sing a song was very enriching for us, to see them with smiles on their faces,” she said.
There will no doubt be smiles aplenty when Dervish play the Glassworks in Derry as part of the Imbolc Festival on Sunday January 29.
