 |
Programs & Activities
Music & Dance
Danú
Donegal, Dublin and Waterford, Ireland
Irish traditional sessiun music
 |
| Members of Danu |
The
beating heart of Irish music is, as it has been for centuries, the sessiun.
These informal music gatherings, where any and all can gather to play
traditional tunes, have kept Irish music a social form at a time when
most other folk styles exist almost exclusively on the professional concert
stage, or in the privacy of people's homes. The Irish even have a word
for the special fun of people sharing music together, craic.
More successfully than any band working today, Danú has transferred
the unique social energy and convivial passion, the lively craic, of the
sessiun to the concert stage.
In 1995, a few longtime friends and sessiun mates from County Waterford,
including McCarthy and Clancy (son of the world-famous Clancy Brother
Liam), heard they could go to the Lorient Inter-Celtic festival in Brittany
if they appeared as a band. "The way we looked at it," McCarthy
recalls now, "we were just going for a bit of a laugh; we weren't
thinking about a band at all. But we needed to have a Celtic or Irish
name to go as a group, so we picked Danú, after the mother of the
ancient Irish gods." Along their way, just as it would go in a folk
tale, they chanced to spend the night in Dublin, where they immediately
made their way to the nearest sessiun. There, they met the Doorley brothers,
Tom and Éamonn.
They all hit it off so well, musically and personally, that the Waterford
lads promised if they were ever asked back to Lorient, they would bring
the Doorleys along. Well, of course, they were invited back, and they
did bring the Doorleys. That second year, everyone began to notice that
something special was happening on stage. The crowd loved them, and they
won the new band competition.
In 1999, Irish Music Magazine named Danú Best Overall Traditional
Act. In 2002 BBC's vaunted Folk Music Awards named them the "best
band of the year," and The Irish Herald dubbed Danú "the
finest traditional band in Ireland."
Joining founding guitarist Dónal Clancy (formerly of Eileen Ivers
Band and Solas) are vocalist Muireen Nic Amhlaoibh, from the Irish-speaking
Corca Dhuibhne in West Kerry; button accordionist Brendan McCarthy and
bodhrán player-piper Donnchadh Gough, both from Waterford; flutist
Tom Doorley and his bouzouki-fiddle playing brother Éamonn Doorley
of Dublin; and Donegal fiddler Oisín MacAuley.
Links
http://danu.net
http://rgmbooking.com/artists/danu/danu_p03.htm
|
