Imagining Ireland...it'll be lovely when it's finished
An emigrant's experience of an excellent endeavour.
Last night, The Barbican hosted the excellent Imagining Ireland 2024, a concert of brilliant Irish artists expertly curated by Sorcha Richardson. Having played the same bill the night before in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the entire show (bar one of Aby Coulibaly’s band members who forget their passport) managed to get to London and ready everyone and everything for the 19:30 showtime. Sorcha Richardson described feeling like the Irish Rugby team off to play in a world cup when boarding the Aer Lingus flight to London, and expected a shoutout from the flight deck to mark the momentous adventure. While that pilot’s public display of appreciation was not forthcoming, we of the Barbican audience certainly made our appreciation known throughout this brilliant gig.
Opening the night with the lovingly stereotypical Irish disregard for ceremony & procedure, Richardson described how this year’s Imaging Ireland came about before announcing that there were no set times and that the concert was starting now, as all the artists filed on stage and sat on what appeared to be couches in the background. The stage was set literary and figuratively for this musical get-together of ours, and MOIO and his band kicked us off with buttery smooth vocals, tight musical underlay, and a smile you could hear. A set of up-and-coming players receiving their first few caps.
Captain Richardson stepped up and filled the hall with her signature storytelling sound on guitar, along with some really beautiful piano support. Leading from the front and showing how it’s done, before passing over to the wise beyond her years out-half Susan O’Neill, who kicked to the corner with her unique voice, fantastic song shapes, and a trumpet!
The pacing and order of the line-up on the night was spot on. Momentum was maintained throughout and song after song, phase after phase, we as the audience were kept musically occupied as if we were watching a tennis ball go back and forth. No sooner had we savoured Susan O’Neill’s ode to her niece, than on came the pack to maul toward the line, in the form of Ye Vagabonds.
The brothers, with 2 bandmates in latch, used the power of their folk and trad mastery to cut through our defences and straight over the line into our souls. I imagined how the many greats of Irish trad and folk music such as Planxty played on the same Barbican stage, and how Ye Vagabonds were standing on the shoulders of giants and holding their own, and then some. In their opening conversation with the crowd, Brain Mac Gloinn acknowledged how great it was to be in the Barbican and joked that “it’ll be lovely when it’s finished, …with a lick of paint”, in reference to the brutalist 1982 concrete facade of the venue. Taking the piss is how we show affection and express gratitude in Ireland, so this went down a treat. His brother Diarmuid later mused on the name and theme of the concert, Imagining Ireland. He asked us to imagine Ireland and England’s relationship if we were to go back 120 years, and how being able to come over from Ireland now and sing songs and be welcomed might not have been something that was imaginable back then, given the history between the two countries. He finished by saying that if anything, it shows it can be done, and if that can be done, then we can all imagine a Free Palestine, which was followed by one of the longest applauses of the night.
At this point, as an Irish emigrant living in London, in a concert hall surrounded by many other Irish people, my mind started to wander back to the old sod. I travelled on the prompt of Imagining Ireland and tried to quantify what I was imagining. Like so many that have left through the generations, was I yearning for something that no longer exists, or perhaps never did?
In contrast to the hyper saturated view of an island full of music, art, and love that is often conjured when such beautiful music and art is on display, I thought about how just that morning I had listened to an episode of The David McWilliams podcast about the paradox of aggregation having an outsized effect on the utter stagnation of Irish public infrastructure spending, and how despite being 20 to 30 times more economically prosperous now than in the 1980s, nothing of note that isn’t a motorway has been publicly built since the DART 40 years ago. I thought about the latest episode of The Group Chat podcast where listener comments about the cost of living & housing crises were read out, and where one person was living with their parents and not able to rent, despite earning €80,000+. I thought about how financially difficult it would be if I decided to move back, and if I even wanted to. In contrast again, I thought about how marching in support of a ceasefire in Gaza gets you branded as a hate marcher by the Tory government in London, whereas in Ireland widespread solidarity for Palestine is almost taken for granted.
Perhaps this is the perennial emigrant’s dilemma, or perhaps the music had done it to me again, as it so often does. I endeavoured to park this familiar merry-go-round of guilt and longing and get back to enjoying the show, but the show had other ideas. Enter surprise impact substitute SOAK with a spoken word piece about being away and returning home. An ode to love, togetherness, and “the savouring of the crunch of cheese and onion having been deprived of it for months”.
The lump in my throat subsided in time for the amazing Rachael Lavelle. With vocals reminiscent of London Grammer, and a style not a million miles from Laurie Anderson, she reduced the hall to silence with such a powerful performance and mesmerizing stage presence. An awe to behold, and as majestic as a backline executing a training ground play to perfection.
Every rugby fan knows if you can capture the restart, you can put yourselves on the front foot, and that’s exactly what Aby Coulibaly did, having the not so small task of keeping the momentum going after Racheal Lavelle stopped us in our tracks. Like a plucky scrum-half sniping for the line, Aby’s infectious positivity and energy had us all bopping in our seats to her R&B and hip-hop swagger. It is no mean feat coming to a power house of hip-hop and rap like London and laying down a marker. Aby and her band did just that.
All that was left was for the captain to see it home, and that she did, finishing the night with Smiling Like An Idiot, which Sorcha Richardson described as a song about her deciding to stay in Dublin after returning from New York.
Earlier on in the night, she described how the vibrant and supportive music scene in Ireland was something that kept her from leaving again, and that being asked to curate the line-up for Imagining Ireland this year was such a privilege because she could now showcase that scene and those artists. She succeeded.
There has been so much fantastic Irish music in recent years, we might even be in danger of taking it for granted, just like the recent successes of the Irish rugby team compared to previous eras. MOIO, Susan O’Neill, Ye Vagabonds, SOAK, Racheal Lavelle, Aby Coulibady, and Sorcha Richardson certainly represent the enormous talent and professionalism in the Irish music scene today. So do Lisa O’Neill, Cormac Begley, Lankum, James Vincent McMorrow, Villagers, Denise Chaila, Strangeboy, CMAT, Bambie Thug, Niamh Regan, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Séamus and Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta, John Francis Flynn, Alibhe Reddy, Meltybrains?, Anna Mieke, Brian Dillon, Enda Gallery, Clare Sands, Godknows, Murli, Emma Langford, Pillow Queens, Houseplants, Pat Lagoon, Brídín, Hazey Hayes, Loah, Maija Sofia, Mick Flannery, The Mary Wallopers, Kneecap, Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O'Reilly, Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi, Cinder Well, Perlee, Tolü Makay, The Scratch, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Lisa Hannigan, Niamh Bury, ØXN, and all the others I’ve forgotten to add.
We are spoilt rotten with Irish music, and if this wealth is what comes to mind when we imagine Ireland, then we are in good health. As for all the problems, well, it’ll be a lovely country when it’s finished.
Imagining Ireland 2024 at The Barbican