It's time for a return to the sort of protest songs made famous by Woody Guthrie , veteran folk musician Andy Irvine, currently on tour with Mozaik, tells SIOBHÁN LONG
‘IN THIS COMING winter of discontent, maybe we’ll hear some new songs born of the protest songs which have long characterised folk music.” So says Andy Irvine, one of the most serious grafters in the music business.
Decades after he first wrote a fan letter to Woody Guthrie, and given his storming contributions to Sweeney's Men, Planxty and Patrick Street (with whom he still plays), Irvine could reasonably be tempted to hit cruise control. Instead, he's on a 13-date tour of Ireland with Mozaik. Formed in 2002, and launched via a live album recorded in Brisbane, Live From The Powerhouse, Mozaik (or "Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny's Mozaik" as it was re-christened for their second CD, Changing Trains) is a transnational conglomerate whose tentacles stretch from west Clare to Virginia and to the Romanian forest of Bãneasã. It risked sounding like a bland musical Esperanto but instead is a highly cosmopolitan mix of indigenous folk tunes.
"It is amazing, you know", says Irvine, "how different cultural music can sound extraordinarily similar. I well remember Nikola [Parov, Mozaik's resident polymath, who plays a virtual orchestra of Romanian instruments including the gadulka, the gaida and kaval, not to mention the tin whistle, clarinet and guitar] was playing some Romanian tune and Bruce immediately said 'wow, that's Reuben's Train[a North Carolina song beloved of Doc Watson], and of course that's in our repertoire now."
Irvine is convinced that passport controls hold scant sway when it comes to musicians exerting (sometimes subliminal) influence on one another. “The human race hasn’t been on the planet long enough to make totally different styles of its own music,” he insists.
Mozaik’s Old Time American fiddle player, Bruce Molsky, once described tackling the band’s repertoire as akin to “trying to square dance with one foot nailed to the floor”. Dónal Lunny wryly describes Mozaik’s magpie approach as “cultural pollution”.
This is Mozaik’s first Irish tour in almost two years. “It’s just a little bit economically difficult”, Irvine admits. “It would be so great if the whole thing was financially worthwhile, because we do love doing it, and the truth is, we get a fantastic reaction when people see us live.” It might be easier to fill larger venues if Mozaik diluted those death-defying Balkan rhythms so punters could tap their feet in time, but Irvine has never been tempted to homogenise his music in the interests of mass appeal.
“I’ve been very lucky to have audiences who like to get engaged with the music”, he muses. “And the truth is we play what we play simply because we love it, and we’re glad to be able to do that for people who love it back.”
Mozaik have boldly gone where few other bands have dared to go, reworking the labyrinthine Bulgarian tune Smeseno Horo and invigorating folk standards such as The Ballad Of Rennardinewith new rhythmic patterns. Then there are Irvine's own songs: tales that swing from Scarriff ( My Heart's Tonight in Ireland) to the Woody Guthrie-inspired Never Tire Of The Road.
Always in forward motion, Irvine was a key influence on Bill Whelan's 11/16 part in Riverdance,particularly through his 1992 CD, East Wind, recorded with Davy Spillane, and produced by Whelan. But he's the first to admit that he, too, had to work hard to get beneath the skin of much of the Balkan music that is now such a key part of his repertoire.
“You know, when I first heard it, I thought it was wonderful but I didn’t understand it at all!” he laughs. “It took me a really long time before I got a hang of the rhythms. It’s a very funny thing though, but now when I play in 4/4 or 6/8, I don’t tap my foot. I feel that I have to concentrate on what I’m doing with my hands, but as soon as the time signature is something peculiar, I’m dancing all over the place! Maybe I had a Bulgarian great grandfather or something. Dónal Lunny used to say the only way I could play in 4/4 was by playing in 7/8 and adding a beat! There’s a grain of truth in that.”
Right now, Irvine is interested in the prospect of a resurgence in interest in folk music’s potential to articulate the frustrations and injustices of daily life.
“Protest songs have to a large extent given way to ‘nice’ songs,” he notes. “Christy [Moore] has always kept up that side of the tradition, but I do hope we might return to some of the songs. Often when I sing, I can feel Woody Guthrie in me. I can feel almost how he would have felt when he sang the same song. I think there’s room for a lot more of those songs these days.”
Mozaik are currently touring around Ireland. See andyirvine.com/mozaik for details
