Player finds Celtic fans the world over

By WAYNE BLEDSOE, bledsoe@knews.com
March 30, 2007

The music may come from Ireland, but the members of the band Dervish have witnessed how it has spread around the world.

"I heard some of the finest music in Osaka," says Dervish co-founder and mandola player Brian McDonagh. "You close your eyes and you'd never know they weren't Irish."

He says the band's recent appearance at a festival in Brazil was another example of how the music speaks to other cultures.

"There were all types of bands - African bands, anything you'd want to hear. Yet when we went onstage and played a couple of reels, people really responded in a way they hadn't before. I don't know why."

Maybe there is no good explanation. However, Celtic music underwent an international appreciation during the 1970s. A few groups, notably The Chieftains, had already taken the music around the world previously, but it was the Bothy Band, Planxty and other 1970s acts (and the many groups that their departing members formed) that took Irish music to a new level.

It was these acts that McDonagh and his future band members were inspired by.

"I used to slow down the LPs and then tune the instrument down to the slowed-down vinyl so that I could learn how to play them," says McDonagh.

"It was a blooming of creativity. I saw most of the bands live at mostly intimate gigs."

He says that in its native setting, the music is certainly appreciated, but concerts of Irish music are not big events.

"There's so much of it, really," he says. "You can go down to the pub and hear some of the finest musicians. Why should you pay for it at a concert hall? You can see them next week at the pub!"

McDonagh, Liam Kelly, Shane Mitchell, Martin McGinley and Michael Holmes formed the group in 1989.

McDonagh had been in the successful band Oisin while living in Dublin, but then he moved to Sligo to study painting.

Still itching to play music, he made the acquaintance of several local players. Unlike most of the musicians he'd worked with, these men had grown up playing traditional Irish music.

"Living in the city, you don't get a chance to play with real rural musicians, and there's a different feel with musicians who grew up with it under their fingernails," says McDonagh.

In 1991, singer Cathy Jordan and fiddler Shane McAleer (since replaced by Tommy Morrow) joined the group, and the band moved up to a new level.

"Cathy is a fantastic and fun person," says McDonagh. "She can entertain you for hours on end without ever playing a tune."

By the mid-1990s the group had a full touring and recording schedule and had become one of the most popular traditional acts in Ireland.

Of course, the band wasn't "traditional" to some.

"The folk police," says McDonagh, adding that musical purists probably wouldn't put Dervish as a favorite act.

"We do try to be contemporary and interesting with what we do with it," he says.

Earlier this year, the group was chosen to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest - a yearly event in which citizens in European countries each vote for a song to represent their individual country and then vote for the best song from all of the entries.

The song "They Can't Stop the Spring" was chosen, and Dervish was asked to perform it.

McDonagh says the group is happy to be participating, but it's a contest that has been fraught with controversy. One of this year's contestants, Switzerland's DJBobo, has been criticized by a Christian organization over the song "Vampires Are Alive," which the group claims has "satanic lyrics." Last year's winner was Lodi, which McDonagh calls "a heavy-metal band covered in latex."

"One moment there will be a band like us, and then one of the bands this year is a transvestite act from the Ukraine," says McDonagh. "You just never know."

dervish

• Where: Laurel Theater
• When: 8 tonight
• Tickets: $21, $19 for Jubilee Community Arts members, students and senior citizens; available at KnoxTix at www.knoxtix.com, 865-523-7521, at Disc Exchange and at the door.