Sliabh Luachra is, according to the late, great journalist Con Houlihan, more a state of mind than a place. Its music – rooted in the triangle that stretches from east Co Kerry to northwest Co Cork and west Co Limerick – is made to dance to. Its best-known proponent was Patrick O’Keeffe, the late fiddle player from the townland of Glountane, outside Castleisland, whose memory and remarkable playing are celebrated each October bank-holiday weekend at a festival in the town.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of O’Keeffe’s death. Had it not been for the festival, founded 30 years ago, his extraordinary playing might well have been lost to the majority of the traditional music community. A teacher by profession but a musician by calling, he cycled along the bothareens of what we now call Sliabh Luachra, offering music lessons to anyone with an ear for a tune. This writer, a Castleisland native, had heard precious little about O’Keeffe until the advent of the festival in his name.
Its artistic director is the accordion player Paudie O’Connor, a lifelong lover of the distinctive dance tunes that epitomise the region’s style. “The innate repertoire of Sliabh Luachra,” he says, “are the polkas and slides which were basically tunes that were bent into shape to suit the dances we inherited from the royal courts of Britain and Europe.
You’d have to be mad to want to cut off access to this international audience who want to learn. We’ll have people logging in from South Korea, from the US and all kinds of locations
“Those dances came across the water with the soldiers and others, and the polkas and slides evolved out of the quadrille dances of the time, so that it became a localised style of playing that was unique to the area, and I think that’s where the swing of the music came from.”
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O’Keeffe, who was born in 1887 – a well-known photograph of him, taken by the late Liam Clancy in 1955, hangs in Lyons’ Bar in Scartaglin – developed his own simplified notational method as a teaching aid. Seminal recordings that Séamus Ennis made of his performances were released by Topic Records in 1977, on a timeless album entitled Kerry Fiddles. It also featured the sibling duo of Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford, who themselves had recorded their own landmark album of Sliabh Luachra tunes, The Star Above the Garter, for Claddagh Records in 1969.
“They became the standard bearers,” O’Connor says, “and were so different to all the other styles of music around the country. And dancing was at the core of it.”
This year’s Patrick O’Keeffe Festival shows the remarkable health of a musical style that struggled to be heard for so long. Its programme is laden with musicians local, national and international, from the Sliabh Luachra stalwarts Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly to one of the lynchpins of The Bothy Band, Kevin Burke, the west Kerry accordion player and singer Méabh Begley, the Clare fiddler Tara Breen, and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh of Altan. And it’s not just straight-up sessions that have propelled this festival to its place in the traditional-music calendar. Its encouragement of deeper excavation of the music of Sliabh Luachra (or Rushy Glen) lures musicians and listeners back year after year, to discover more about these tunes that are now at the heart of Irish traditional music.
“If you want a regular fiddle class, you can go to Tara Breen to brush up on your technique,” O’Connor says about the festival’s wealth of options. “If you want a Sliabh Luachra fiddle class, you can go to Connie O’Connell. And then, if you want to learn the compositions of a well-known Sliabh Luachra composer, that option is there for you, too, in that we’re celebrating the compositions of Eamon Flynn, the Mount Collins accordion and fiddle player ... Even for seasoned musicians like myself, there’s something to learn.”
O’Connor’s wife, Aoife Ní Chaoimh, is a fiddle player who’s also steeped in the Sliabh Luachra tradition. “My sister Maura gave me my first fiddle, and I attended classes with Nicky and Ann McAuliffe,” she says, referring to the duo who have probably done more than anyone else in the past five decades to share the music of the region. When it comes to divining the roots of a tune, the McAuliffes’ encyclopaedic knowledge is renowned.
“My main interest in Sliabh Luachra music came about when I started listening to Julia Clifford,” Ní Chaoimh says. “I never got to meet her, but listening to her recordings, and hearing the playing of Paddy Cronin and later, in Knocknagree, the playing of Johnny O’Leary and the great Denis McMahon, I got more and more interested in the Sliabh Luachra style.”
O’Connor is an unequivocal supporter of nurturing regional styles – the accents that help to form our musical identity.
The confidence among musicians who play the music of Sliabh Luachra couldn’t have been taken for granted just a couple of decades ago.
“When you think of the music that’s played at the Fleadh Cheoils,” he says, “regional styles aren’t a priority. You don’t see regional styles rewarded in competitions at the All Ireland Fleadh Cheoil. It’s a very generic style, and what tends to win those competitions is, in a sense, ‘perfect’ playing. Lots of the nuances and imperfections of regional folk music are not to be heard there. I think it’s important for people who are devotees of Sliabh Luachra music to have a place where their music is celebrated and rewarded, and where they get to see the best practitioners playing and being recognised.”
Peter Browne, the piper and former presenter of The Rolling Wave, on RTÉ Radio 1, played a pivotal role in the founding of the festival. His four-part radio documentary series on O’Keeffe and the music of Sliabh Luachra, in 1993, featured interviews with musicians who had been taught by O’Keeffe and laid the foundation stone for countless musicians and listeners who previously hadn’t heard the distinctive regional repertoire. At this year’s festival Browne will talk about the past three decades, tracing the picaresque journey that the tunes have taken.
The festival will also launch never-before-heard recordings of Paddy Cronin and Johnny O’Leary, through the forensic efforts of PJ Teahan, founder of the Handed Down Sliabh Luachra audio archive.
The Patrick O’Keeffe Festival continued with a full programme online during the pandemic, and this year the box player and former TG4 young traditional musician of the year Bryan O’Leary will host an online session for musicians who can’t travel to Castleisland.
“You’d have to be mad to want to cut off access to this international audience who want to learn,” Paudie O’Connor says. “We’ll have people logging in from South Korea, from the US and all kinds of locations. During Covid, we had 300-400 people logging on for classes. Their interest is genuine, and we are determined to continue to give them, and others with a similar interest who can’t travel, access to the festival.”
The confidence among musicians who play the music of Sliabh Luachra couldn’t have been taken for granted just a couple of decades ago.
“The next generation of musicians who are coming along behind us are definitely better,” O’Connor says. “Their music theory is far more in-depth than we had growing up. Lots have opportunities to study music at university, and as a result they’re a lot more confident when they compose new music in a particular style. So things are evolving in a positive way all the time.”
A sense of adventure is key to that confidence, says O’Connor, who gives the example of Aidan Coffey. “A superb young musician,” he says. “He’s constantly reinterpreting the music of Paddy Cronin, whereas when I was playing Paddy’s music I was happy just to copy it.
“Aidan’s thinking about it and finding out about aspects of bowing styles outside of the Irish-music tradition and applying them to the music of Paddy Cronin. It’s up to other people then to decide whether they like it or not, but Aidan’s putting it out there. That takes confidence, and it’s a great example of the energy that’s behind the music of Sliabh Luachra today.”
The Patrick O’Keeffe Festival begins in Castleisland, Co Kerry, on Thursday, October 26th, and runs until Monday, October 30th
