Ghost music

Gabriel Rosenstock explains how he came to write this poem linked to 'Ghost Music' (see below). Since it is linked to Galway, something has to be said about this city where more than half of the population speaks Irish on a daily basis.

Galway is a special place with those former smuggler cellars now chic wine restaurants. And then there is this hill used in the past as burial but nearly forgotten when the city expanded and started to become a business town.

So the poem by Gabriel Rosenstock about the waves becoming voices to carry the spirit of the whales adds to the beauty of that special space of a city at a river entering the sea.

Just across that river, that is outside Galway, there rested houses of fishing men on wooden poles. They stood in the water. What was so special about these men and their community is that they were never subdued by the British. They were incredible navigators as they could sail without a compass.

After the successful emancipation of the Irish from the British rule around 1921, the City of Galway succeeded where the British never did before. The city's administration found a good excuse to subdue these semi pirates of the coastline along which they would sail with their fast boats. The administration cited health reasons. It reminds what Jean Pierre Faye wrote about reactionary forces setting in the Pariser Commune after the French Revolution once there was created a health police. Due to hygenic reasons everyone had to move out and settle into houses across the street, that is further back from the sea.

When Jürgen Eckhard and I arrived in Galway 1996 to start the Article 10 CIED (Cultural Innovation and Economic Development) European project, some in the administration had the idea to use the project in order to safeguard the cultural heritage of that fishing village. They had found even one man who had a model of those fast sail boats in his garage. But the city
manager had another idea. He wished to move Galway in the direction of future business plans and therefore concentrate much more on the city itself.

Galway had gone through a first phase of mixed planning and was attempting to cope with ongoing changes. CIED in Galway managed to install a cultural heritage officer who had the task to check if all business plan to be implemented would guarantee some continuity of identity amidst all the changes. The population had been in uproar at the first CIED conference which was held in Galway in 1997 and where we met for the first time Michael D. Higgins. The people said the city was changing so fast that they could no longer recognize their own city.

It had all began with the festival. That success grew over the heads of everyone. Business and people started to move to Galway.

So good when Gabriel Rosenstock lets the ghosts speak! It does remind of another Galway!

Hatto Fischer

27.10.2012

Ghost Music of the Blasket Islands

Port na bPúcaí, (Pronounced PURT NA BOO-KEY) spirit-music from the Blasket Islands in South-West Ireland, is a magical composition performed by various artists on YouTube, such as Tony Mac Mahon on the button- accordion and Cillian Vallely or Ronan Browne on the uilleann pipes, to name but a few. It can be heard on the Scottish bagpipes as well.

I wrote a poem in a ‘shamanic trance’ at this year’s Féile Raiftearaí (Raftery Festival) in Loughrea, Co. Galway, while listening to a performance of Port na bPúcaí by Breandán Ó Beaglaoich (button accordion) and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (fiddle). (My family, on my mother’s side, had strong connections with Raftery, the blind poet who is commemorated at the annual festival known as Féile Raiftearaí).

What was it that the Blasket fishermen had heard, the so-called ‘Given Note’ as Seamus Heaney named it in one of his poems? What is this strange music they brought back with them, the music given to them by the elements, the spirits of the wide seas?

The cries of unhappy ghosts on the wind, the spirit of the waves, the secrets of the rocks, the birds and the seals? The singing of whales? The ancient music of the spheres? Whatever it is they heard, the tune Port na bPúcaí, a slow air, haunts all who listen to it.

Listen to it now on this YouTube recording with Tony Mac Mahon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTvikUGr0E

Port na bPúcaí: Athchuairt [Ghost Music Revisited] is Derek Ball’s musical reaction to my poem, an original setting which pays regard to the traditional tune and also to Tony Mac Mahon's insightful comments on the overcrowded nature of our modern musical aesthetic. The poem is below, followed by a prose translation. Derek Ball’s music attached.

Port na bPúcaí

Cúr
cúr
cúr

ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

cuilithíní
cuilithíní
cuilithíní

ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

glór
glór
glór

ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

glór na míolta móra
ar tonnta iad
ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

glór na míolta móra
ar púcaí iad
ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

glór na bpúcaí
ar míolta móra iad
ag teacht
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn
ag teacht de dhroim na dtonn chugainn

cúr

cúr

[Foam, foam, foam,