There are a number of musicians whose work in the field of Irish music I greatly admire but there are three in particular that spring to the forefront of my mind: Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Lorcán Mac Mathúna and Gerry Diver. The three are not related although I’d love to see all three collaborate in a project. What links them in my mind is their approach to Irish traditional music, it’s experimental, fresh and spellbinding. To try and demonstrate that attraction I’ve included below three videos, one from each artist. The first is a new video from Lorcán Mac Mathúna performing alongside Seán Mac Erlaine on sax. The song is Cú Chulainn’s sleep a Gaelic song from the celtic classic The Tain. It’s a lullaby, and if this doesn’t send any child into restful sleep I don’t know what will:
The video I chose for Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh is actually by a favourite film maker Myles O’Reilly that was made back in 2009. This one captures the essence of the magic I hear and also reflects Caoimhín’s passion for his music:
The final video from Gerry Diver is, not surprisingly, from his excellent Speech Project which you can read about in our interview here. For me personally this album was and still is literally ground breaking…
You can find out more about each of them here:
www.caoimhinoraghallaigh.com
www.lorcanmacmathuna.com
www.gerrydiver.co.uk
Also read the piece Lorcan wrote for us on the tradition of Sean-Nós singing here