ROBERT SAYS MORE PICS AVAILABLE ON SUNFLOWER WEBSITE
OÍCHE smúidghealaí it’s called in Irish. A night when the moon is covered by moving clouds. Cold but not too cold, a hint of rain in the air but the promise of a night of song always makes the journey to the Sunflower Bar warm the soul.
The Sunflower Folk Club was celebrating its sixth birthday last Thursday night so there was an extra warmth to the tried and tested formula of singers from the floor followed by a guest singer or singers.
And there was no shortage of people ready to take the stage of the newly refurbished upstairs bar.
As a city dweller, I have noticed its absence but maybe it still exists in other people's homes and in the country where people would gather in other people’s houses and each would sing a song, or recite a poem or play a tune. Does the céilí house still exist?
The sing-song was something that bonded people together. Each one had their own particular favourite and woe to anyone who would sing someone else’s song!
Family, relations, friends, neighbours were all drawing from a well of song that, despite cultural global warming, hasn’t completely dried up.
My mother and her female friends would sit in the “parlour” and knit Aran sweaters – it was the 60s and the Clancy Brothers were in vogue – and each would sing their party piece.
They sang songs that meant something to them: a sense of place, protest songs, a love song from their youth.
On Thursday night there was all this and more at the Sunflower. Fergus O’Hare started the proceedings off with his song about Victor Jara, the Chilean poet and political activist who was tortured and killed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He was followed by Fiona Ní Mhearáin, with Ye Rambling Boys of Pleasure, who then gave way to her brother Caoimhín who sang The Ould Triangle. It could have been the Oul House in 1968!
There was a similar family vibe with Denis and Dermot Rooney singing accompanied by steel guitar.
For Bill Rolston, the former lecturer in sociology at the University of Ulster, the Sunflower is “a proper folk club, the way they used to be”.
“People who come here are serious about the music, not in any dour sense, but they really value and enjoy what they are hearing and they have nurtured the songs they themselves sing for maybe all their lives,” he says. "The performers enjoy playing here too because they always get the best of order; people really listen to the songs and the music.”
The night ran through the whole gamut of folk song and even strayed a little bit outside on occasion. Bill himself sang Karine Polwert’s River Run and Amanda McBroom’s The Rose (Some say love …).
If your idea of a folk club is people singing a la Geordie Hanna, Joe Holmes or Paddy Tunney, there was that. If you wanted a Gordon Lightfoot vibe than you got that too. If you wanted some blues, that was available. There were a lot of Christmas songs too, but without a Slade or a Mariah Carey exploding festive decibels into the night sky.
The highlight of the night for me was Steve Amos, who sang a hilariously tragic song about poor Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer who can’t make it this Christmas (or any after that) because he has ended up on a barbecue in mid-July. This was followed by a delicate little song about a wee snowdrop that would have you laughing and crying at the same time.
The main act of the evening was Noel Lenaghan, originally from Belfast but now living in Donegal. Noel is a wonderful singer who also plays the mandolin and flute and we got a taste of his many talents on Thursday night.
Other singers included were David McCann, William Duddy, Anna Grindle, and Fergus Woods.
Founded by Máire and Fergus O’Hare exactly six years ago, the club harks back to the 1960s when the “folk revival” was in full flow in places such as Pat's Bar, the Continental Rooms, the Imperial Hotel, the Old House, Terry’s Bar in Durham Street, the Pure Drop, Queen's University Folk Club and Tom Kelly’s in the Short Strand.
Among the most exciting events coming up next year in the Sunflower will be Niall Hanna who is making huge waves on the folk scene around the world at the minute; Edelle McMahon whose new album is called Adventures in Narcissism; the great sean-nós singer Síle Denvir and the fabulous Landless, an a capella female quartet consisting of Lily Power, Meabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinead Lynch.
Ireland has long been a land of song. A book published fairly recently recorded hundreds of songs from just one townland in Co Galway. Like the little snowdrop in Steve Amos’s song, that beautiful subterranean culture just needs to grow and that’s what folk clubs do.
In the north, there is the Foyle Folk Club, very ably run by Martin Sweeney, the Rostrevor Folk Club and the Downpatrick Folk Club, among others.
So if you have a song you have wanted to sing for a long time, or if you have written a song you would like to play to a live audience or if you just want to enjoy a quiet night’s entertainment, there’s bound to be a folk club near you.
