Recently, The Friel Sisters, Sheila, Anna, and Clare, immensely talented sisters who grew up in Glasgow but are essentially Donegal musicians, came to perform at A St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn in Boston. They are award-winning multi-instrumentalists and delivered on the reels, jigs, hornpipes, and marches just brilliantly. What really wowed the audience however, was their unison singing.
There is something powerful—primal almost —when voices are together singing not just the same note, but the same ornamentation that is typical in Irish traditional songs. No harmony. Unison. It's even a little eerie. The Friels sang "The Moorlough Shore" in this style, with sparse accompaniment from Cathal O’Currain, and Yann Falquet. What a moment!
It put me in mind of a segment I had created for A Celtic Sojourn a number of years ago using that very song, and the idea of unison singing, and passing on tradition, and you can listen to it again here.
Sarah and Rita Keane were born in the 1920s in Caherlistrane, Co Galway. They acquired a vast store of songs and became well known in traditional circles throughout their lives for their unison singing. Sometime in her teenage years, their niece, Dolores Keane went to live with them. And so one of the greatest traditional voices ever came out of that close contact with her familial sources. The rest as they say, is musical history.
Dolores Keane and her brother Sean Keane regularly cite “the aunts” as their big influence, even the very source of their traditional singing. When Dolores recorded "The Moorlough Shore" under the musical guidance of producer Donal Lunny,* the result was magical. Here was a song learned directly from her aunts, when they recorded it in 1968.
I noticed early on that it was in the same key, and edited to morph from the aunts 1968 kitchen recording to Dolores in 1990 singing to a lush contemporary arrangement and hauntingly, back again, to the aunts. Echoes thru the ages: influences, and shadows, and kin.
*Donal Lunny is a hugely influential musician and producer who was a founding member of both Planxty and the Bothy Band. I heard Chris Thile recently saying, that for Celtic music, that is like being a founding member of the Beatles AND the Rolling Stones!
