The present-day resonance of the events of the Irish Famine in the middle of the 19th century was, appropriately enough, writ large in Declan O’Rourke’s show in Manchester on 14 October in aid of the charity Action Against Hunger who we interviewed recently here. What started, in recorded form, as a moving and evocative set of songs, becomes live yet more powerful and stirring and, with the drawing out of contemporary relevance, an all-encompassing and genuinely momentous performance.
The biggest audience for Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine outside of Ireland turned up to Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music – ‘the nicest hall we’ve played in’ Declan told us. Judging from the lengthy after show queue to buy the album, the material, and maybe Declan himself, was new to some when they arrived – they had come to support a good cause. That didn’t stop them from being completely absorbed right from the start – which came with Clogman’s Glen, the album’s first song.
On stage, Chronicles illuminates probably the single most significant historical event in Irish history through a combination of performance of the songs themselves and the background to each song, both historical, and, in many cases, how Declan came across the story the song told. As Declan said in our interview with him a few weeks before the show, he had realised early on that he had to ‘contextualise’ the songs for the audience and to do that, he “had to speak”.
Declan communicated what he told us that preceded the songs in a relaxed, direct and chatty way that made even the RNCM’s 600-seater Concert Hall feel like an intimate space – in which he could be talking to just you. He said towards the end of the first half that he was “rambling tonight” but it didn’t sound at all like that; I sensed he wanted to share with us all the key perspectives on the famine that he had gleaned over 15 years of reading and researching, a history he told us “was no more than a footnote when he was at school in Ireland”. He joked after the interval that some people had told him that they liked the ‘talk’ so much that they wanted more of it and less of the songs; but this was never going to be a lecture, with real people’s stories and the emotions those stories stir taking centre stage.
The heart-breaking Poor Boy’s Shoes typifies the impact the performance of these songs had on the audience. You can just about hear the gasps, the catches in the throat, as people hear the final verse and realise both the tragedy and the beauty (as Declan describes it in the album’s sleeve notes) of the death of Pádraig and Cáit Buckley after they left the workhouse. There is a great deal of compassion, with just the right amount of solemnness, in the way Declan delivers these haunting stories.
The songs, together with the redolent and very well played accompaniment from the band, evoked for me remarkably clear, visceral, and lasting, images of the stories that were being described. Her Silken Brown Hair is another song where you can feel the audience reaction when it becomes obvious the hair that ‘blew on the wind’ belongs to a partially buried young woman who has died of starvation and, again, the image endures.
The stories first got heard in different ways. Declan recounted to us how he and Jack Maher were told the story behind their song Johnny and the Lantern during a, then, regular Sunday session in Whelan’s in Dublin. They then wrote the song the following day, while, apparently, still a little the worse for wear, making up the character of Johnny who held the lantern. The buoyant song, describing the murder and dismemberment of a cruel landlord (as depicted by the band on the suitably gruesome album cover) was not at all diminished by the immediate context in which was written.
Listened to live, you appreciate to a much greater degree how the very varied music heightens the drama of the stories in the songs in entirely appropriate and discreet ways. The band who gave us that music on the night were: John Sheahan (yes, that John Sheahan of The Dubliners fame) on fiddle, Jack Maher on guitar, banjo, mandolin & vocals, Floriane Blanche on harp, bodhran, piano & vocals, Chris Herzberger on fiddle and Dan Bodwell on upright bass.
The resonances with the world we live in now that Declan drew our attention to are, 170 years on, as shocking and unacceptable as the historical events of the famine itself. With the UN warning that Yemen could be facing the world’s worst famine in 100 years, the need to do what we can individually to ameliorate people starving is self-evident (as indeed many ordinary English people did during the Irish famine) and Declan urged the audience to contribute to Action Against Hunger. He also drew equivalence in the abject failure, then and now, of leaders of countries who could act, to do so. The song Laissez faire describes the economic theory used as justification for doing nothing to stop the Irish famine and Declan decried the paucity of world leaders willing to do anything effective to address human suffering in the present day.
The song Villain Curry Shaw describes complete indifference on the part of the captain of a ship headed for Canada, before and after the boat sank, to the plight of passengers escaping the famine. Declan drew a direct connection with the way people who are fleeing persecution, torture and hunger are treated and portrayed today.
The only non-original song on the night was The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes, recorded by Planxty on their 1979 album After the Break. Another song about a murder by a disgruntled tenant, it tells of Hayes killing the landlord’s agent after being evicted from his farm and his success in evading capture despite pursuit through, as Declan described it ‘every town in Ireland’, ending in him escaping to America. It was a great choice near the close of the show, played entirely in keeping the Planxty arrangement and reinforcing just how fitting the use of a traditional setting for Declan’s songs of the Famine is.
Experiencing the Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine live is frankly quite unlike any other show I have ever seen. It is both completely engrossing and literally unforgettable. Declan gave due credit on the night to Liam Ferguson, who both had the idea of staging the charity concert and made it happen. Declan and the band also deserve plenty of praise for doing it and doing it so well.
For readers who would like to support the charity Action Against Hunger, donations can be made at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/liam-ferguson5
Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine is available on Warner Bros now (Amazon).