Lunasa: Sean Smyth Interview
Although this interview with Lúnasa’s Sean Smyth is in advance of a prestigious concert in Ireland, and not one in Kansas city or the Midwest, Lúnasa will be touring the US in September and October 2006, and including venues in Tulsa, OK and Boulder, CO.
Smyth is a native of Mayo and an All-Ireland champion on both fiddle and whistle, and in the interview talks a lot about what constitutes traditional Irish music from the Lúnasa perspective:
I came through Comhaltas myself, and it was a very fine organisation in the way that it introduced me to music in lots of respects. But I’ve never had anyone come up and say that we are destroying traditional music!We are very true to the times and the music in that way that it was written. We don’t do jazz improvisations within the form of the music, and we are playing on instruments that form part of that tradition.
The music is very much about melody and rhythm within the tune, and that’s what Lunasa is trying to achieve. We try to focus on the melodies and on the harmonic variations and all that kind of stuff, but it is still the melody which is foremost, plus the rhythm which I would say is the soul of the music.
That gives it its attractive hypnotic feel. Even though we’ve been called very modern we’re probably as traditional as you’ll ever see
It’s a great interview with distinctions between the kinds of audiences Lúnasa get on the Theatre circuit in the US contrasted with their Irish & Music Summer Festival audiences, and the story of being given a tune backstage at a gig in Portland, Oregon, which was to ultimately feature on the current album, Sé.
Lúnasa seem very much in the tradition of The Bothy Band, and Irish Traditional Music praise doesn’t come much higher than that.
See also:
• Irish Choral Music and Celtic Underpants
• Song Sung Traditional: Hold On
• Seachtain na Gaeilge : Ceol ‘06
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