Music: Twenty years ago, Macalla paved the way for women playing traditional music. Tonight, the band reunite on stage, reports Siobhán Long
Seosaimhín Ní Bheaglaoích laughs heartily as she recalls how the first all-female traditional group, Macalla, came into being.
"Way back in 1984, there were lots of musicians who were never asked to join in a session in Dublin", she recalls. "And 99 per cent of them were women. In fact, one time, someone suggested to us that we were no more than groupies, following the musicians around. You can imagine how we felt about that!
"So, there was a Dublin Folk Festival on in March of 1984, which coincided with International Women's Day, and we thought to ourselves: 'Here are all these women musicians who are never asked to do anything. Why not have a show of strength?' So we went to John Greene, the organiser of the festival, and we suggested to him that we would do a concert. And he agreed!"
But that was then and this is now. Tonight sees Macalla reunite for a one-off concert to mark their 20th birthday. Hosted by Oireachtas Na Gaeilge's Féile Na Bealtaine, Macalla take to the stage tonight in Liberty Hall, Dublin, with the sole aim of re-igniting the flame beneath what was a highly innovative and eclectic congregation two decades ago. Traditional music was never front of the queue when it came to matters of equality. Despite the significant contributions of such musicians as Cúil Aodha singer Elizabeth Cronin and Co Clare concertina player Mrs Crotty, women were a rare sighting in the midst of any session, whether in the town or the country, up until the 1980s.
Macalla boasted a formidable 26 members for their début concert, with nine fiddles, three flutes, a concertina, a bodhrán, a harp and a piano, not to mention numerous singers. Its membership crossed boundaries of both geography and style. Even a glance at the band's line-up reveals a multifarious gathering intent on rattling the cages of the tradition. Co Donegal fiddler Mairead Ní Mhaonaigh (subsequently a founder-member of Altan) shared tunes with Co Clare concertina player Mary McNamara and fiddler Pearl O'Shaughnessy; Co Galway pianist Patsy Broderick jammed alongside fiddler Maureen Fahy (now with Riverdance); Clodagh McRory, Ursula Kennedy (sister of the late Frankie), Anna Ní Mhaonaigh (sister of Mairéad), Mary Claire Breathnach, Mary and Bríd Ilvanney, Roma Casey, Edel McWeeney, Catherine McEvoy, Jacinta O'Gorman, Maggie Gallagher, Siobhán Breathnach, Máire and Siobhán O'Keeffe, and Claire Eustace brought a rake of songs and tunes to the table; Co Westmeath singer Roisín Gaffney brought a store of comic songs to the mix; and Co Wexford singer Joan McDermott swapped verses with Seosaimhín Ní Bheaglaoích, who was reared on the songs of west Kerry in the heart of the infamous Begley clan.
Débuting in the Ormond Hotel, Macalla drew a full house before they had aired a note. Queues snaked their way down the quay in advance of their gig, and contrary to Ní Bheaglaoích's expectation that they'd be assigned to the corner of the bar, the band and their audience took over the entire ground floor of the hotel. Not surprisingly, Gael Linn came knocking, and an album, Mná Na hÉireann, was recorded the following year.
Macalla's timing was evidently in synch with their audience's appetite for something different. But how important was their gender to the success of the band?
"I think it was very important that we were all women and still we were bending over backwards to explain that we weren't feminists", Ní Bheaglaoích says, "Ireland being a very paranoid place at the time. There was a lot of discussion among ourselves at the time too: what was a feminist? Was a feminist somebody who celebrated women's creativity, or women's way of looking at life - or a man-hater? None of us, as far as I know, hated men. In fact, we actually quite liked some of them very much! Or most of them actually! And, you know, lots of people would ask us: 'Why are there no men in your group?' And we would reply: 'Why don't you ask The Chieftains or The Wolfe Tones a similar question?' "
Joan McDermott, another of Macalla's singers, and subsequently a member of the all-female Fallen Angels, recalls the group's origins with a certain gratitude.
"I was a solo singer at the time," she recalls. "And it wasn't very easy for women to get gigs then, because when you went to sessions it tended to be mostly men on stage, and it was men who organised all the folk clubs. It always felt like a closed shop, so Macalla offered us all an outlet for our creativity.
"I think the timing was right: it paralleled what was going on in the women's movement in Ireland in the 1980s. The feminist movement was in a strong position, and I like to think in ways we forged a path for women in traditional music."
With Mná Na hÉireann released in 1985, Macalla strode forth, their free- spirited repertoire surprisingly at odds with an alternative interpretation of the rightful role that mná na hÉireann should be assuming in the final decades of the 20th century.
"There was a group around at the time called Mná Na hÉireann," Ní Bheaglaoích recalls, "who were a right-wing, Catholic group who believed that women should stay in the home and be tied to the kitchen sink, barefoot and pregnant. But it was because we had a song called Mná Na hÉireann on the album that we called it that. In fact, it's not a woman's song at all. It's about a man singing his own praises of his prowess, that there isn't a woman in Ireland who wouldn't go for him. But we loved the air, which was written by Seán Ó Riada."
Ní Bheaglaoích is quick to pinpoint the essence of Macalla's music.
"It was a big fiddle sound, with the richness of the flute", she says. "It was a very light but strong music. We had songs from Donegal and Wexford, Westmeath and Cúil Aodha, and, of course, highlands, courtesy of Mairead Ní Mhaonaigh."
Macalla toured sporadically for a full four years, finally disbanding reluctantly as a result of family and lifestyle choices (many members moved out of Dublin at that time). Times have changed, but Macalla's appetite for a decent tune and a robust song are no less fervent.
"Looking back on it now, women accepted their traditional role," Ní Bheaglaoích says. "We were of a generation who were spreading our wings. We wanted to express our independence through being in Macalla. There was a strength in numbers in a very quiet way. I think there is a feminine way of playing. There's a lightness but a strength there, and Macalla was a celebration of all the talent that existed in its members. It wasn't aimed at grinding anyone's nose in it, or suggesting that we were better than anyone else and, really, we had the greatest of times together.
"After us, you had the likes of Cherish The Ladies, and Sharon Shannon. Before that, it would have been unheard of that a woman would have that kind of profile in traditional music."
• Macalla's début album, Mná Na hÉireann, is now on re-release on the Gael Linn label. Macalla's reunion concert starts at 8 p.m. in Liberty Hall, Dublin, tonight. Tickets cost €12 (tel: 01-8586374)