The endangered species of the Irish Bard

Why bother explaining you what Irish music is all about? As far as I know – suffer,wars, English are scum, my man is gone abroad, some fun of an old rich lad and self explanatory – how I got drunk. So make an image out of it – how does a folk-night in an Irish pub look like in good old Belfast? Quite strange.

When I found out about the Sunflower Public House, I was hesitating to get in. On its outside wall it has a warning:”No topless bathing, Ulster has suffered enough”. I was expecting fights, shouting, people flying through the windows and so on… like in a Bushmills advertisement.

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I went on the Internet and found out about their Thursday night Folk-Gathering. The place has a barbers chair straight next to the entrance a couple of tables with nice benches, covered with leather upholstery. Nothing happens on the first floor except of some hipsters gathering for a glass. I call ’em hipsters, just because I can’t find a shorter name for art college students…Pity, poor English.

On that particular Thursday I had a tooth pain and was expecting to make it worse. Let the common reader know that I do suffer from agoraphobia. So after The Editress (My Fuehrer in the world of journalism) gave me the task, I was doing all my best to avoid completing it. Sorry…

The night was on, five pounds as an entrance and an empty hall around nine. Suspicious. People started coming an hour and a half later, carrying different kinds of guitars, wearing boots and speaking in a way, that makes the untrained ear suffer for the beauty of English language. So far everyone was sober and I was wondering if I am not on the wrong place. Some guy asked me what I do and lied. This time I was a plumber. “Fanton Valley won’t be here tonight, his old’ mum died yesterday…But Jerry is here, he’s really good”.

When the music started playing the fifth Bushmills in my blood stopped the toothache and inducted a panic attack. All those songs I heard, mainly from Ulster were sad ballads about the destiny of an Irishmen, the Famine and some bad luck in love. What was impressive though, that I didn’t hear the same song twice. Everybody had written one for the night, everybody went on stage.

The theory behind the musical performance was nothing very impressive on the level of harmonic sound – minors, minors and minors, sometimes a major chord, pretty much to point out how sad everything is. The lyrics on the other hand contained much of a sophisticated humorous look on life in some cases and in others were harder not to be taken than a hardcore blues. Considering the fact that most of the performers live in remote areas from the city and come around only for the Folk Night, I was really impressed by the fairness and simplicity of what they sung about – old windmills and ravens get involved in a “circle of life” conclusion, talking about general ethical values as friendship and emotions as love are mixed into a funny story about a Dickens-kind of hero with a Pickwick approach to life.

Most of the people are in their late thirties up to their seventies. It is a dying thing in the city – folk music in its traditional form, although there is a monthly magazine, there are festivals, but the average age of visitors is not much different from what you can see on a Thursday night in the Sunflower Public House and Live Music.

If you go to the docks of Belfast and don’t find a job for the day, wait until Thursday and look for the endangered species of the Irish Bards.