The Independence Suite
Celtic Crossings CC2004; 55
minutes; 2004
Amidst the welter of compilation album’s it is thoroughly
gratifying to review one which has the distinct purpose of highlighting
sometimes hard-to-find independent releases, rather than rehashing a label’s
back catalogue or assembling a collection of hackneyed tracks in an attempt to
make a quick buck. 
Independence Day has been collated by the
Celtic Crossings label, whose only previous releases have featured Clare concertina
player and long-time USA-based academic Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, both solo and
with French fiddler Patrick Ourceau. Despite the album’s subtitle, ‘Traditional
Music from Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton’, Gearóid’s county origins should
not be forgotten since The Independence Suite not only includes a track from his first album, Traditional
Music from Clare and Beyond and one from Tracin’
(with Ourceau), but samples music from the
Ennis pianist Geraldine Cotter’s album as well as Anthony Quigney and Aidan
McMahon’s A Clare Conscience and tunes
from both Maeve Donnelly and Tommy Peoples. East Galway-born Maeve has been a
Clare resident for many years and, of course, Tommy was once married to the
daughter of the Kilfenora’s Kitty Linnane and spent most of the 1980s and 1990s
in the county before relocating to the USA. Then there’s a track from Kitty Lie Over, from the
duo of Mick O’Brien and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, both from Dublin, though the
latter has been studying pipe-making in Clare for the last couple of years.
However, The Independence Suite has a broader remit, as revealed by the presence of not just the Cape Breton fiddler Dougie MacDonald and the pianist Barbara of the same surname, but different family. Add to that a tremendous sean-nós song, Bríd Thomáis Mhurchadha from Connemara originating Áine Meenaghan and the sublime flute of Mícheál Ó hAlmhain (Dublin-born, Aran Islands-based) and listening to the album becomes a thoroughly engaging experience. Then there’s the only directly Scottish element which arrives in the form of the song Hé Mo Leannan from the Wisconsin group Navan, and, amnesia driven away, a set of reels from the Seattle fiddler Randal Bays’ new album Overland (and we are back to the Clare element once again, thanks to Randal’s former musical association with Martin Hayes!).
The Independence Suite is indeed a fine collection, but there are a couple of its elements which involve donning the curmudgeon’s cloak. Firstly, the liner cover is not especially inspiring and bears a remarkable proximity to the style employed by Topic’s Voice of the People series. The second relates entirely to the introductory liner notes which not only assume the existence of some entity called ‘Celtic music’, but splatter upper-case letters around as though the typographer had just received her or his redundancy payment, and, lastly, include remarkable statements such as ‘Step dancing too had its converts in Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton’ as though there once was some terpsichorean mendicant sect of missionaries eager to sell dancing shoes. Those are exceptions, so ignore them – the music is just wonderful.
Geoff Wallis
10th December, 2004
This album
is available directly from Celtic Crossings
or from Claddagh.