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A Joy Shared Is A Joy
Doubled
An Escapade in Antwerp,
8th October 2010
Originally
we had planned a kind of pilgrimage: a trip from Belgium and Germany to
Dublin's fair city, visits to the resting places of those Dubliners who
sadly no longer while among us, a tour of some of the historic sites we
both love to read and sing of, a drink or two (or three) in the pub where
it all started almost 50 years ago, having our photos taken on the
Ha'penny Bridge and standing next to Dublin's famous fish-monger – our
wish list was long! And the icing on the cake was to be our first ever
Dubliners' gig together.
But
health problems thwarted our plans in 2009, nor was luck on our side in
2010 to bring about a Dubliners' July gig at Vicar Street. So we had a
choice – either postpone the whole idea until summer 2011, or choose
another venue and at least make one part of our dream come true.
We
opted for the latter! Even if the pilgrimage couldn't take place, at least
2010 should see us singing and clapping together at a Dubliners' concert!
Choosing the venue was relatively easy – with a distance of well over
300 kilometers from door to door, travelling in October from Germany's
Saarland to Belgium's Flanders definitely sounded more appealing than a
trip in the opposite direction in November. One leg of the journey, namely
from Luxembourg onwards, was to be made by train. Chemins de Fer
Luxembourgeois (CFL), the national railway company in Luxembourg, offers a
special low-priced ticket for travellers to and from Belgium. They call it
"Escapade" ... and all at once our joint venture had a name! (Honi
soit qui mal y pense!)
Even
without a Dubliners' gig in the Koningin Elisabethzaal as the crowning
finale of the day, the city of Antwerp is undoubtedly worth a visit for
its own sake, and so we arrived there fairly early on the afternoon of the
concert and spent several hours viewing some of the places of interest
this lovely city has to offer. We reached the venue just in time to see
Eamonn and Patsy as the last of The Dubliners arriving from Rotterdam,
where they had played the previous evening. And with time enough before
the concert for the two authors of this report to enjoy a drink in the bar
next door!
After
last season's successful tour with the technically ambitious and highly
emotive "A Time To Remember", The Dubliners' programme this year
reminds again of former concerts – no video clips, no tape recordings,
no slideshow – simply five gifted musicians, somewhat more than a
handful of instruments, and a potpourri of songs and tunes chosen from a
vast reservoir that reaches back almost five decades. Over the years much
of this music has become an integral part of their regular repertoire and,
needless to say, the visitors of a Dubliners' concert – whether in
Antwerp or elsewhere – look forward to hearing old favourites like
"Black Velvet Band", "The Rare Auld Times", "The
Rocky Road To Dublin", or "Dirty Old Town". But it is a
refreshing change to hear the occasional song that is not so familiar to a
live audience nowadays, or one that seems almost to have lapsed into
temporary oblivion. One of these is "Dicey Reilly", inseparably
associated of course with the name Ronnie Drew – but we don't doubt that
he himself would have enjoyed Patsy's splendid rendition of it as much as
the audience in Antwerp did! There is never a concert in which Patsy does
not attest his admiration for the late Luke Kelly, and he did not fail to
do so in Antwerp, before delighting us with a great version of "The
Nightingale", a traditional song which, he elaborated, he had first
heard sung by Luke himself.
"Fáinne
Geal An Lae", which Seán introduced as "The Dawn", and as
a slow air written around 1600, was very familiar to all, although not by
this name. We recognised the melody immediately as that of "Raglan
Road", but as Seán explained to us after the show, Kavanagh's words
were simply set to the music of this much older song, "Bright Ring Of
The Day", which is the literal translation of the Gaelic title. This
was not Seán's only ballad of the evening. His rendition of "Night
Visiting Song" was beautiful and very moving – and not only because
it reminded us inevitably of that other great Dubliner who could fill
these lyrics with such emotion.
Undoubtedly,
their versatility is one of the factors that has made The Dubliners so
unique, so outstanding, and even after 48 years on the road still capable
of filling concert halls night for night with enthusiastic fans of all
ages and nationalities. This versatility is perhaps even more evident when
we think of the instrumental pieces, of which we heard a great variety in
Antwerp. With what easiness The Dubliners can move from lively hornpipes
in Belfast and Cork, to breathtaking reels in bars and on racecourses, and
then to the serenity of Dublin's and John Sheahan's awesome St. Patrick's
Cathedral!
It's
not difficult to guess at least one reason why The Dubliners appear so
regularly in Antwerp, and why they obviously enjoy every minute they're on
stage – the audience there simply loves them! Not that audiences
elsewhere don't do the same of course, but there's a special link between
Flanders and The Dubliners, and that link is Barney McKenna and his
affinity for Flemish music and musicians. He underlined this more than
once in the course of the evening, the first time quite early in the
concert as he, after greeting the audience in Dutch, introduced us to the
protagonist of his first song – Jock Stewart. He depicted him as a
land-owner, perhaps one of the last of the Scottish chieftains, a master
of the Scottish pipes, but above all a very generous man, and added that
the lyrics "I'm a piper by trade" always brought to his mind
another musician he had much admired, not only for his playing of the
"doedelzak". And so he was singing "I'm A Man You Don't
Meet Every Day" in memory of his good friend, the late Wannes Van de
Velde. (Flemish musician, artist and poet, born in Antwerp 1937, died
ibidem 2008)
Needless
to say, the audience was thrilled! But this was not the only present
Barney made to the visitors in the Elisabethzaal. He also dedicated his
second song of the evening, his love song for young and old, to all his
friends from Flanders, and as a special treat had an extra bonbon – or
rather, a delicious Belgian praline – in store for us. He played an
instrumental version of the traditional Flemish song "De Vagebond",
which he had learnt from Wannes Van de Velde, and dedicated the tune to
him and to his friend from Leuven, the late Dirk Lambrechts. (Flemish
musician and art historian, 1944–2006)
You
get a wonderful "extra bonus" at a Dubliners' concert – and it
undoubtedly belongs there like the banjo to Barney! We mean of course the
gags from the stage ("we're going to slow the programme down with a
few reels" ... "if I talk too fast and you can't understand my
English, it's not your fault"), the banter between the five
("the same procedure as every year James" ... "my younger
friend Eamonn, when I say younger I mean younger than St. Patrick's
Cathedral"), and the lovely explanatory notes to the songs and tunes.
For instance Patsy informed us in Antwerp that "I'll Tell Me Ma"
actually is a skipping-rope song and Seán gave us a very explicit
description of what happens before and after the "Night Visiting
Song", adding that "the song explains what happens in the
meantime".
But
the master in story-telling is of course Barney McKenna, and in Antwerp he
excelled even himself, obviously having the time of his life in his
much-loved Flanders! After Patsy had given up digging ditches and pulling
switches and the rest, apart from Eamonn, had "abandoned ship",
Barney picked up his squeeze-box and announced an "Irish" solo
together with Eamonn's guitar. But first he told us how he came to learn
this instrument – that his father had played the melodeon when he,
Barney, was a boy ("a good few years ago"), that nowadays young
people don't have the time to learn musical instruments, but in the 40's
and 50's when people had neither television nor tape-recorder they had
made their own music and from generation to generation taught the younger
ones how to play, dance and sing. And that they had played not only
traditional music but also what was the modern music of that time. What
then followed on the melodeon was indeed a delightful potpourri of tunes
that might well have hailed from the McKenna living room of the mid 50's
– we heard the traditional "Cork Hornpipe", "True
Love" from the film "High Society" (1956), and "Mary's
Boy Child" (1956). The latter of course a Christmas song, and that in
October! But the audience in Antwerp loved it, and started humming the
tune immediately. And we found it not at all out of place, bearing in mind
that shortly afterwards John pointed out to us the merchandise stand with
its many potential Christmas presents ...
Well,
after the gig the authors of these lines had the honour of experiencing a
special performance of "Mary's Boy Child". Barney sang it for us
– which was something like the cherry on top of the icing on the cake!
We
hadn't made the pilgrimage to Dublin, but our escapade in Antwerp turned
out to be by no means second best. The pilgrimage is not forgotten though
– after all, postponed is not cancelled! Perhaps we'll manage it in
summer 2011. Our health, and The Dubliners willing ...
Article
by Enid & Ria
Photographs by Enid
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