Next Saturday Sile de Valera, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, will formally open the Russell Cultural Centre in Doolin, Co Clare, marking the culmination of eight years of hard work by local people. Plans for the centre's use are exciting and imaginative, but more than anything it will stand as a tribute to a phenomenal family who brought their small townland to the attention of the world.
Doolin is a coastal village in Co Clare, sandwiched between the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. It is a beautiful, wild place with small areas of good land and good fishing grounds. Botanists and cavers visit the area to examine the unique flora and the complex underground caves.
Traditional music
It is an area strong in folklore and tradition and was a Gaeltacht late into the 1960s. But it is as the home of traditional music that Doolin is best known. In the 1960s and 1970s, long before the days of the Internet, this place became famous all over the world, largely because of the three Russell brothers: Packie, who died in 1977, Micho, who died in 1992, and Gussie, who happily still lives. As young men they had learnt their music from older musicians in the area and they played in a distinctive style peculiar to Clare.
Packie played the concertina, Gussie the flute and Micho the whistle. They were highly accomplished musicians and engaging personalities. They were warm and gregarious and were happy to play their music in the local pubs. Young aspiring musicians came from Europe, America and Australia and were made welcome in the days before organised sessions. The denimclad visitors joined in, thrilled to find folk music that was a living reality.
As word spread of the generosity and hospitality of the Russells and other Doolin musicians, more young foreigners sought out the village. Stories abound of them arriving at Dun Laoghaire, unable to speak English, but clutching a card with "Doolin" written on it.
It became the "in" place. The poet Michael Coady who spent a lot of time in Doolin as a young man writes: "Anyone could turn up: players famous or unknown from all over Ireland, musicians of all kinds from America, Britain or continental Europe, painters and poets, journalists and photographers, drop-outs and millionaires, academics or judges or politicians. A quiet man who sat beside me one night listening to Micho Russell proved to be the principal flautist with the New York Ballet Orchestra."
Topic Records went to Doolin, recorded Packie, Micho and Gussie together and produced an LP. Promoters wanted them to tour the Continent and America with their music but Packie and Gussie were both shy men and could not be persuaded to leave Doolin. However, Micho was outgoing and loved the adulation that his music brought. He travelled to London, Germany, Holland, Belgium and the US. He became an ambassador for Doolin, playing his gentle music in his own inimitable style.
Teaching in Tokyo
Micho Russell did not get to Tokyo but a young Japanese couple who heard of his music came the year after his death to Co Clare. Isao and Masako Moriyasu enrolled at the Willie Clancy Summer School in Milltown Malbay in 1993. Isao took up the whistle and flute and Masako the concertina and harp. With great dedication they have become highly proficient musicians and now teach Irish traditional music in Tokyo. Isao has written two books about Irish traditional music, People, Drink and Music of Ireland and Hear the Heartbeat of Mother Earth. He has also translated Ciaran Carson's Irish Traditional Music into Japanese. They bring their students over from Japan to Clare for intensive courses in Irish music and dance and have brought out many Irish musicians and dancers to Japan. Aidan Vaughan, the sean-nos dancer from Milltown Malbay, has recently returned from his third trip to Tokyo. He is constantly amazed when he hears Japanese students playing the whistle "just like Micho Russell".
As a way of saying thank-you to the musicians of Clare, the Moriyasus, using their adopted Irish names of Paddy and Bridget, recently completed a CD featuring 28 performers of the highest calibre in traditional music circles. "Paddy and Bridget and their great friends" can be purchased from Custys in Ennis. "Blamed the music" Michael Coady, in his affectionate memoir of Packie and Micho Russell, The Well of Spring Water, tells of meeting their mother, Annie Maloney Russell. As a concertina player herself she had been a strong musical influence on her three sons, but when Michael met her she was by then an old woman "who blamed the music for what she saw as the irresponsibility of her sons in not settling down and marrying".
There can be little doubt that she would now be proud to see dignatories and visitors from Europe, Japan and America mingling with local people at the opening of the Russell Cultural Centre in Doolin, named after her three sons.