Custer Annihilated

The road to Little Big Horn Began in 1874 when prospectors(acting illegally) discovered gold in the Black Hills of the Dakota Indian Territory. The Indian victory and massacre of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry will inextricably remain entrenched in American history The precise reason why Irishman Myles Walter Keough was spared the mutilations that followed will forever remain a mystery.

By Edward T. O’Donnell

Read more

Zebadiah Beauregard

It’s Sunday. “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” (Genesis 2:2. Unfortunately, there is no rest for the wicked or for mothers who begat Irish dancers. Sunday means Feis Day! Read more

Editor’s Thoughts

July 4th happens to be one of my favorite holidays. It is a midsummer break, accented with an illuminating celebration of independence and freedom. It marks the beginning of a new found democracy unlike any known to he world. To the surprise of many it was and continues to be a place of opportunity for those who live up to the expectations and demands of that freedom. Read more

Dancer To Dancer

Learning new steps, flexibility of your feet, good posture, and crossing your feet are but a few subtleties of an Irish dancer. Understanding your body and conditioning outside the classroom may be exactly what you need.

Read more

CD Review

Aidan O’Rourke
Sirius

Aidan O’Rourke is a composer of flair and imagination. Many established artists have recorded his melodies and he has been commissioned as a composer by numerous arts organizations including the Serious Music Producers, London, and Dundee Rep Theater. Mr. O’Rourke is the current musician–in-residence a The Tolbooth in Stirling. Sirius is his first solo album that has evolved from a commission by the Celtic Connections festival in 2003. Hs musical style and expression is evident in this vast work that incorporates a wide variety of musical styles from traditional folk to jazz, roots and groove. The band featured some of of Europe’s top jazz and trad musicians including Harald Haugaard, Charlie McKerron, Brian Finnegan, Colin Steele, Luke Daniels and Phil Bancroft.

---

Tripswitch
Jazz Fusion is scintillating

 

 

Uilleann piper John McSherry has helped reinvent Irish music, bringing to it urgency and precision matched with an ambitious, sophisticated rhythmic sensibility. Tripswitch, McSherry’s new collaboration with young fiddler Donal O’Connor is a collision of traditional forms with a fluid, jazz-inflected sense of rhythm. McSherry and O’Connor are joined by Ruben Baba (guitars and bouzouki), as well as Paul McSherry (guitars), guitarists Tony Byrne and Giles LeBigot, and Shaun Wallace. (percussion).

Despite their formidable individual accomplishments, it is the clarity, focus, and unity of their sound that makes Tripswitch a thrilling collaboration. Whether soaring in close-knit unison passages or darting around one another in hair-raising counterpoint and harmony, O’Connor and McShrry demonstrate tacit compassion. The progression, escalating rhythmic settings push beyond the pale of the creative dominion of each musician. Opening set “Rose in the Gap” begins with a churning rhythmic backdrop for the titular march, and then shifts via a thrilling unaccompanied passage into a pair of reels impeccably delivered at high velocity, complete with a spot-on modulation. A set of Castilian dance pieces set in 5/8 time are hauntingly modal, yet spry and demonstrate the rarely acknowledged impact of the Moors had on European music.

While the up-tempo selections are riveting, the quieter moments such as the slow jig set “Commonalty Set” and the slow reel title track speak more directly of the passion that exists at the core of Tripswitch. Tripswitch is flying under the radar bound to explode on to the music landscape.

As I See It

Exploring recurring issues that beguile folks in Irish dancing and more discussion on the matter of dance costumes. Are dance dresses becoming too short?

By Russell J. Beaton, ADCRG

Read more

Midsummer Holidays Summon Irish Festivals

The price of gas may limit your travel this summer. Visiting an Irish festival near you may be just the ticket you need ot enjoy a weekend holiday. The burning question is where to go? How should one choose?

Read more

Irish Dancer Sidelined After Near Fatal Car Crash

His toes aren’t tapping quite yet, but Irish dancer and teacher, Shawn Silver, is slowly recovering! The high-energy performer was smashed up when his vehicle hit a patch of black Ice just outside St. John’s Newfoundland Labrador, Canada’s most eastern Province.

It could have been a lot worse. The brace and cane are visible reminders of Shawn Silver’s close call. He was on his way to the central region of the province one morning early in December 2007 where his dance company was preparing for its Christmas performance. His trip came to a sudden and violent end when Shawn’s SUV hit a patch of black ice and rolled over several times. “I felt like I was in a washing machine, just spinning and bouncing down the road, glass smashing, and things whipping past my face… and then all of a sudden I stopped. The jeep was upside down. Shawn crawled out of his crumpled vehicle, amazed he survived. He looked at the long trench his vehicle made as it plowed through the snow and dirt crossing the highway’s median and saw how close he had come to colliding with oncoming traffic. He also became aware of a throbbing pain in his back, and fell into the snow to ease the pain.

Shawn had broken his back and had pieces of his shattered bones pressing into his spine. “I had a burst fracture in the L1 vertebrae, it’s a pretty serious…and paralysis was a real option.”  Unthinkable for someone like Shawn, one whose daily routine included hours of rigorous practice. He has danced his whole life, professionally for 15 years on stage, film and television, and shares that passion with students at his dance school. Ironically it was his love of Irish dancing that also saved him. “Because I had spent my life dancing, I was very conditioned within my core, and they said it was those strong sinuous fibers that had developed around my spine that saved me and kept my spine from snapping in two, altogether.”

As a result the doctors decided against surgery, which would have included fusing his spine. Instead they opted for complete bed rest and a brace. When you come out of this type of situation—you are faced with death and paralysis—you stop and think about how you rush, this is real life.”
 Spend any time with Shawn and you know he’s not down for long and his recovery is well underway. “For me, now, there’s no heavy lifting, and I’m somewhat limited in my ability, and no cartwheels up and down the hallway just yet!”

Through the support of a team of doctors and staff at the Health Sciences Hospital in St. John’s, close friends and family, Shawn continues to slowly recover. Doctors say he is making progress but it would be up to a year before he would walk let alone dance again. But through sheer determination, and a testament to active healthy living, Shawn’s body was able to recover almost 100 percent—only five months after the accident. Shawn credits his family and friends who helped him survive the ordeal.

Shawn has high praise for his long time dance partner, Coleen Dunn Pickard. He says, “She is a tireless worker and my closest advisor and friend. Coleen is also associate director of my company iDance. She took over the running of the schools and on top of it, assisted me with my daily household chores and daily living, which had become impossible for me.
 
He says he’s used to aching and the pain is something dancers live with. However posttraumatic stress is not something the doctors prepare anyone for. “It’s something very real and something that takes its toll on the victim and the people around [him]. This is the true test of faith. It’s during these times, we find out our true friends. I still have nightmares about the accident and I know that will subside in time. I am living life with a new perspective and a whole new appreciation for life and all the joys life can bring. We are continually learning about ourselves and the world around us as we are faced with unthinkable challenges.”

He always thought dancing was his mission in life, and while he was temporarily sidelined, he knew it would be more than a broken back to keep him down.
“While the back is healing, my spirit remains strong.” Pain is subjective,” said Shawn. “For someone else perhaps this would mean being bedridden. I am doing everything I have to do to remain healthy and continue with my mission of dancing and growing Newfoundland’s profile of arts and cultural spirit in the world.”

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born on Dublin’s Synge Street in 1856. His father was a grain merchant whose salesmanship was far surpassed by his drinking prowess. He was not a jolly drunk either and his funeral went unattended by wife and children. Put off by Dad’s example, Shaw would sulk through adulthood, abstaining from such simple pleasures as a cold beer and cigar. He even became a vegetarian. This life of asparagus and abstinence likely contributed to Shaw’s much publicized old age and grumpy demeanor.

None to keen on his formal education, Shaw fled the classroom at age fifteen to work as an entry-level office clerk. There was no great love for this situation either, and at age twenty Shaw headed to London, reuniting with a mother and sister who had left Dublin some years before. Upon worming his way into their dwelling, he succeeded in sponging off them for nearly a decade, during which time he penned five novels, including a semi-autobiographical tome called: Immaturity.

Although none of these novels was successful, Shaw eventually garnered a reputation of sorts by working as a music critic under the pseudonym “Corno di Bassetto.” This strange pen name was nixed when Shaw became a theater critic for The Saturday Review, where his contributions appeared under the far less flamboyant “G.B.S.” The politically active writer also helped establish a socialist group known as The Fabian Society, and his early playwriting efforts tended to promote his politics.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Shaw was stricken by a virulent illness that left him a few steps from death’s door. Upon recovery, however, he realized many an artist’s dream by finding an independently wealthy spouse. Ideal for him as the marriage sounds, he no longer had any great need for the bride, because he had begun to reap royalties from his increasingly successful dramas. In spite of their comfortable financial status, Shaw and his wife were much opposed to having kids, and the couple took birth control to an Olympian level, abstaining from intimacy for the next four-and-a-half decades.

Never one to espouse nationalism, Shaw expressed his anti-war sentiments in a quick succession of vituperative articles amid the outbreak of WWI. The writer’s harsh words were not well received and he became a pariah almost overnight. Some even wanted him charged with treason. With bombs dropping as much as his public image, the war years were a dark age for Shaw’s creative output, as the normally prolific writer produced only one substantial work, Heartbreak House.

However, in the wake of the atrociously gruesome war, many began to share Shaw’s scathing cynicism. With his image restored and a rebirth in his creative energies, he penned the supremely regarded script for Saint Joan—an iconoclastic work that portrays the long-adored Joan of Arc not as a venerable martyr, but as a stubborn woman who brings about her own destruction.

Although such caustic skepticism may have alienated some, Shaw achieved widespread recognition, including a 1925 Nobel Prize. The world-renowned dramatist became an iconic figure, and his sullen company was now much desired. He made some interesting friends, such as Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Many were alarmed by their camaraderie, and Shaw courted much outrage when he recommended his genocidal buddy for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Shaw’s best-known work is Pygmalion, which was written for actress Beatrice Stella Tanner, by whom he was allured. Along with a failed romance, the play involves such themes as the oft-inconsistent nature of English spelling. Shaw contended that spelling posed a major barrier to socio-economic mobility, as the “uneducated poor” were set back due to the unnecessary difficulties of learning proper English. He proposed a “simplified” form of spelling—a linguistic movement the persistent playwright would support for the rest of his life.

At age ninety, a determined Shaw demonstrated his geriatric vigor by hurdling a fence. However, his athleticism seemed to have waned in the next few years, and at age ninety-four, he tumbled from a ladder while landscaping. Several days later, he succumbed to his injuries. The dead dramatist was cremated, and his ashes were mixed with those of his already deceased wife—a rather romantic end for the self-proclaimed “heart of stone.” HM

Celtic Cross…Universal Symbol of Ireland

A jogger turned the corner, cutting me off at a busy pedestrian intersection in Manhattan’s East Village, when I noticed a mass of colorful knots adorning the back of his calf.  He slowed his pace and I took a hard look at the design it was an ornate Celtic cross.  Being a self-proclaimed Celt buff I inquired, “Hey, why a Celtic cross?” to which he hesitantly responded, “I don’t know; because I’m Irish, I guess.”  I wondered if he knew the history of that design beyond its Irish affiliation.

The Celtic cross is a basic design comprising a cross (often in the shape of a “T”) with four arms extending through a circle, but its origins precede its commonly accepted meaning.  When asked to explain that meaning, most people would answer that the Celtic cross represents Jesus’ crucifixion with a uniquely Western European twist.  But the cross, like all symbols, has different interpretations that aren’t widely recognized.  Images of the Celtic cross date back to ancient Egyptian times and continue to evolve even today through tattoos, stone memorials and cemetery markers, and Irish dance costumes so many step dancers wear to shows and feiseanna.

Celtic culture is reflected in symbols: the shamrock represents St. Patrick’s explanation of the Holy Trinity to the pagans; step dancing with arms held tightly at one’s side is often attributed to religious oppression, or the strict influence of the British in Ireland; animals in the Books of Kells reflect characteristics of saints and Bible figures; and the Celtic cross symbolizes Jesus’ death and resurrection.  These examples support the strong influence of Christianity on Celtic culture, but they also allow us a glimpse into our culture’s more pagan past.

Just as the shamrock was used to convert the Celts to Catholicism, the Celtic Cross also predates Jesus’ teachings in Ireland, Wales and Scotland.  Author of The Celtic Cross, Nigel Pennick, compares early cross-like pillars in Ireland to omphalos, or mid-points that “express the relationship of human beings to the divine.” Omphalos date back to ancient Egypt where an elliptical stone on a pillar or alter was placed at what was believed to be the center of the world.  Later omphalos were decorated with swirls and images of bearded men —the same themes later adorning similarly-shaped pillars in regions of Ireland.  Pennick concludes that “these omphalos-pillars are the model from which the later designers of the Irish high crosses took their inspiration.”

The Irish high cross, Pennick believes, can also be viewed as a replication of natural phenomena like sunlight, ice crystallization, solar and lunar patterns.  Rock-carvings depicting an early version of the Celtic cross (or “quartered circle”) date back as early as 1500BC.  Etched into the stones are are “wheels” with four spokes.  Wheels were important in pagan times because they were essential to transportation, sometime buried with the dead so that the deceased could travel to the other side.  Gods were thought to travel on chariots, thus reinforcing the power and “other-worldliness” of the wheel.  When Christianity was introduced to the Druids, the image of Jesus riding a donkey-led cart on Palm Sunday grew increasingly popular because it easily translated to the pagan belief that gods traveled by wheel.

Around the seventh century pagan stone carvers began etching crosses on flat-laying gravestones.  Sometime in the eighth century deceased Pictish warriors were being buried, and erect stone slabs marked their graves.  Like the stone carvers of the seventh century, these Picts of Northern Britain decorated gravestones with crosses, but it wasn’t until Catholicism was introduced that these cross monuments began depicting the crucifixion or Jesus.  Stephen Walker, a metalsmith from Rochester, NY, describes these pre-Christian crosses as insular or Hiberno-Saxon because the style “combined heritages and innovations of several cultures.”

When Roman Catholicism reached the isles, churches began adopting images of the cross, mixing in Celtic remnants of the “quartered circle.”  It was a time of intercultural experimentation and the remnants of crosses reinforce this.  The crucifixion of Jesus was now more readily included on Celtic crosses.  Still in places like the Isle of Man, Pictish influences continued to influence the cross style.  Christian and Pagan elements now co-existed on crosses, as they do today in modern representations of the Celtic cross.

Metal Smith Stephen Walker concludes, “most people who know about Celtic art as part of their personal heritage have the sort of knowledge that the academic cannot cite as fact since the source is mainly oral tradition.”  Such a basic design, the cross has survived since before written word.  Its true origins cannot be known, but its influence on our ancestors is obvious, and its evolution can be traced through the evidence left by our predecessors.

Tattoo artist Pat Fish continues in the footsteps of her ancestors by researching Celtic crosses and knots, then incorporating authentic Celtic elements in her art.  “Celtic crosses, with their distinctive ring, are universally recognized as an ethnic symbol showing pride in Celtic heritage,” says Fish who tattoos approximately four Celtic crosses on clients each week.  Fish derives designs from direct sources like the Book of Kells, and grave-rubbings she’s done in Ireland and Scotland.  The tattoos

Unlike the jogger with the Celtic cross tattoo mentioned previously, Fish is a connoisseur of all things Celtic and stops at nothing to understand her heritage — a heritage unknown to her throughout her Childhood.  As an orphan Fish felt a strong connection to Celtic art.  Later in adulthood she learned that she was in fact a descendant of the Scottish Clan Campbell.  A specialist in Celtic art, she says her work as a tattoo artist draws clients with whom she feels a kinship.  Pat Fish’s art transcends tattoos; her designs can be accessed at www.luckyfishart.com.

The “quartered circle” is usually a welcomed symbol of peace and cultural pride, but variants such as “Odin’s Cross” represent quite the opposite.  Odin’s Cross is recognized as a symbol of hate and is associated with white supremacists.  Some believe this cross bears a resemblance to the swastika, which also has historical roots preceding its Nazi affiliation.  The swastika, like early depictions of the Celtic cross, was a common motif among ancient cultures.  Even into the early 1900s the symbol reflected a positive message — it was thought to be a good luck charm, especially among aviators.  It wasn’t until the Nazi’s adopted this equilateral cross with bent arms that it was associated with racism, intolerance and hate.  Even today variations of the swastika are found in India, and have absolutely no connection to white supremacists or neo-Nazi groups.

The beginnings of the Celtic cross will never be known, probably because the basic design occurs in nature and cannot be traced to any one specific culture.  Any meaning behind the Celtic cross (or “quartered circle”) is determined by the individual, ensuring the its evolution for future cultures and societies.

Next Page »