A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
On a highly entertaining edition of the Mystery Train Sunday Service on RTÉ lyric fm, John Kelly was joined by Ian Lynch of Lankum for a chat and some of his favourite tunes – listen above…
The musician, folk song collector and folklore lecturer explains the epenthetic vowel and a mondegreen, and picks music by Shannon and the Clams, Portishead and Iron Maiden.
Listen to this GREAT show at: Lankum’s Ian Lynch boards the Mystery Train
The shortlist has been announced for the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, taking place in Vicar Street on October 24th.
This year’s nominees cover the entire Irish folk spectrum, with talents like Lisa O’Neill (nominated in four categories, including Best Folk Album and a pair of nominations for Best Original Folk Track), Junior Brother, Saint Sister and Ye Vagabonds nominated alongside veteran players like Dervish, Gerry O’Beirne, Cormac Begley and Martin Hayes. You can read the shortlist in full below.
Additionally, it has been announced that Irish folk legend Moya Brennan, the vocalist with Clannad, will achieve this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards 2019 – The Shortlist
Best Traditional Folk Track
Bacach Shíol Andaí -– Ye Vagabonds
The Factory Girl – Lisa O’Neill
The Foggy Dew – Ye Vagabonds
The Granemore Hare – Daoirí Farrell
Póirste Béil – Inni K
Best Original Folk Track
All Down the Day – Gerry O’Beirne
Áthas – The Gloaming
Blackbird – Lisa O’Neill
Down in the Glen – Karan Casey
The River Holds Its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire
Rock The Machine – Lisa O’Neill
Best Emerging Folk Act
Anna Mieke
Alfi
Lemoncello
Junior Brother
Saint Sister
Best Folk Instrumentalist
Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh
Colm Mac Con Iomaire
Cormac Begley
Martin Hayes
Zoe Conway
Best Folk Singer
Daoiri Farrell
Iarla Ó’Lionáird
Lisa O’Neill
Radie Peat
Ríoghnach Connolly
Best Folk Album
A Lifetime of Happiness – Daoirí Farrell
Heard a Long Gone Song – Lisa O’Neill
The Hare’s Lament – Ye Vagabonds
The River Holds its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire
Pull the Right Rope – Junior Brother
The Gloaming 3 – The Gloaming
Best Folk Group
Dervish
Flook
Saint Sister
The Gloaming
Ye Vagabonds
And so Derry Girls hop-scotches into the sunset after a successful second season (the last episode is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm). Once again, the biggest surprise about the Lisa McGee hit is not that a late-period Troubles comedy could be a rich source of chortles. It’s that we all so very desperately miss the ’90s.That seems to be true even of people too young to have meaningfully experienced the Nineties first time around. For some reason, the decade of grunge, boybands and cynicism pouring from our pores and through the walls continues to exert a deep fascination. Why this should be so, is a matter sociologists could spend forever and a day interrogating.
What’s unquestionable is that Derry Girls paints a halcyon picture of a time when the music was better, the fashion was… more interesting and selfie moments weren’t a thing.
In her portrait of female friendship in the pre-social media age, McGee pleads a powerful case, moreover, that life before the internet was in many ways superior. Nobody had a mobile phone constantly distracting them and a Twitter storm was what happened when a flock of birds took fright en masse.
How far have we come in the interim? Not quite the distance we might like to think, is the implication. So what have we leant?
From The Cranberries’ ‘Dreams’ to Cypress Hill’s ‘Insane in the Brain’, at its most assured Derry Girls is a valentine to the pre-internet music era. The soundtrack brims with nostalgia – season one, for instance, treated us to ‘Alright’ by Supergrass, ‘Unbelievable’ by EMF and ‘No Limit’ by 2 Unlimited (which yielded surely the greatest nineties pop couplet in “I’m making techno” and “I am proud”).
This was a golden age for pop, the show quietly argues – perhaps the last golden age. Rap-metal was coming over the hill and then music downloading would bring the industry to its knees. But in 1994 we’d never had it so good.
Most impressive of all is the way Derry Girls conjures the era without resorting to clichés such as grunge or early Britpop (which was just about twinkling on the horizon circa 1994). Even techno cheese-mongers D:Ream come away with their reputations burnished.
The beloved Derry Girls danced to one of the biggest Irish songs in last night’s episode of the hit Channel 4 show.
Derry Girls is truly the perfect show for giving anyone a good laugh, and last night’s episode was no exception.
Let’s start with the fact that Aunt Sarah casually showed up to a wedding in a white dress almost identical to the bride’s — it’s safe to say the first Derry Girls wedding went out with a bang.
What really had us in stitches was when the song Rock the Boat came on and and nothing has ever been more relatable.
Source: This Scene In Derry Girls Was The Most Irish Thing On TV