THROUGHOUT THEIR careers, both musician/broadcaster Philip King and writer Joseph O’Connor have documented the development of Irish consciousness and sense of identity.
From the delving into the psyche of the Irish male at home and abroad by O’Connor to King’s groundbreaking Emmy Award winning series Bringing It All Back Home which traced the influence of Irish music and song around the world we have gained a better understanding of ourselves.
“There is some common ground between Joseph O’Connor and myself in that we are both fascinated by what has gone with Irishness on our travels and in particular how Irish identity has been re-defined in America,” King tells me as he prepares for his visit to Galway.
As part of this year’s Cúirt International Festival of Literature, a special broadcast from the Town Hall Theatre on Friday April 24 at 8.30pm, will see a public interview of Joseph O’Connor by Philip King. The event is open to the public and will be later broadcast on King’s RTÉ Radio 1 show The South Wind Blows. On the night O’Connor will talk about the influence of Irish-American ballads in his recent novels Star Of The Sea and Redemption Falls.
Bringing It All Back Home
In 1991 the US Congress authorised the use of military force to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The Provisional IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street and planted bombs at both Paddington station and Victoria station in London. Grunge music came to the forefront as Kurt Cobain became the face and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ the song, to which angry youth around the world pledged their allegiance. By the end of the year there was a bright spot on the horizon as US presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the Middle East.
During this time O’Connor had begun to develop the idea for what would become the book Sweet Liberty: Travels In Irish America. Philip King was putting the finishing touches to the documentary Bringing It All Back Home which featured Paul Brady, The Clancy Brothers, The Everly Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. Both projects featured the music and culture of Galway and the west very prominently throughout.
“I always remember the images of John F Kennedy in Galway in 1963 when he stood on the platform in Eyre Square and joked that on a clear day you could see Boston from the Galway docks,” says King. “Of course if you do look west from Galway - past the Aran Islands - the next stop is America.
“When Kennedy asked the crowd if any of them had relatives in America everyone put their hands in the air in an exulted affirmation that indeed they all had family there. Our past is so inextricably bound up with the Irish experience in America, and during the making of Bringing It All Back Home we went on that journey and excavated into our past through the medium of song.
“The 20th anniversary of the programme takes place in 2011 and I’m looking forward to opening the cans and re-visiting that journey and listening again to all that wonderful music.”
The Friday April 24 conversation between King and O’Connor at the Town Hall will dig into the rhyming and rhythm that has defined the Irish-American story.
“I’m looking forward to sitting down with Joseph and having a chat because he’s a remarkably insightful, thoughtful and tender writer.” King says. “The great thing about him is that he has a great knowledge and love of a whole range of musical sounds. I think we’re going to have a convivial, revealing, and amusing conversation.”
Private worlds, lonely voices and keeping time
During the course of his career as a musician, broadcaster, and filmmaker Philip King has worked with some of the biggest names from varied traditions including Tom Waits, Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, Daniel Lanois, and John Boorman. Of particular note are the documentaries he’s filmed, many of them with director Pat Collins, on some of the greatest literary figures Ireland has ever produced. The films John McGahern: A Private World; Frank O’Connor: The Lonely Voice; Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill: Taibhsi I mBeal Na Gaoithe; and Seamus Heaney/Liam O’Flynn: Keeping Time. These films will be screened will during Cúirt at the Nuns Island Theatre from Thursday April 23 to Saturday April 25.
“In my career it has been a great privilege to work with these people,” says King. “I knew John McGahern well and I introduced him to the director Pat Collins. I thought that in the documentary John was both brave and frank and it was sort of a master class of his writing and his influences.
“There was the emotional wrench in his telling of a loving relationship with his mother and his difficult relationship with his father. People relate to that film in a very personal and a very human way because he really gave of himself.”
The documentary charting the artistic collaboration between piper Liam O’Flynn and poet Seamus Heaney was filmed in a different vein and relied more upon voice and verse.
“It was a film conceived artistically and there’s not much explanation in terms of biography or explanation of the poems of Heaney,” says King. “Liam O’Flynn is a creative musician of huge importance in Ireland. He is very much part of that oral tradition of music transferring from one generation to the next.
“Heaney and O’Flynn together found common ground in that tradition. From the very outset we said Liam would play the tunes and Seamus would read the poems and we’d leave it up to people to make up their own minds and their own interpretations about what emerged from that collaboration.”
Down in the city
Corkonian King is very much an accomplished musicians and composer in his own right and is a founding member of folk/jazz/blues band Scullion. Their live performances in the early 1980s took on mythical proportions and they are reuniting once more to play Róisín Dubh on Sunday April 26 in a fitting closing chapter to Cúirt 2009.
“I remember playing in the very early days in Smokey Joe’s Café in UCG,” King says. “This was also during the early days of De Dannan and I met remarkable people like Frankie Gavin, Alec Finn, and Mairtín O’Connor. There was always a sense of language and literature and music in the air. The late John Martyn produced our second album and I still sing his song ‘John The Baptist’ to this very day. I know there’s a picture of John in the Róisín Dubh so we’ll raise a glass on the night and dedicate the gig to him.”
For tickets to Philip King in conversation with Joseph O’Connor phone Town Hall Box Office on 091-569777. Tickets for literary documentaries at Nuns Island available from Galway Arts Centre on 091-565886. Tickets for Scullion concert from Róisín Dubh and Zhivago Records. For more information go to www.galwayartscentre.ie/cuirt
