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Liam O Maonlai and Shane Howard |
Shane Howard - Téanam Ort! Come Away
I was introduced to Mossie through historian and friend Eamonn Ryan. Eamonn knew Mossie through his involvement with the Irish Language Association. When Mossie wanted to make a recording, Eamonn suggested that we meet. Into my world came Mossie Scanlon with his native Irish Language and history, culture and mythology and, of course the songs.
Great wit and native intelligence travel with him. A man who left his native home nearly thirty years ago but still intimately retains the elements of his cultural tradition. When Mossie sings, it is, in many ways, a voice from the past. Songs of the recent as well as the ancestral past that surrounded him during his years of growing up on the Dingle Peninsula. Singers long gone, live on in Mossie’s singing. His voice carries the memory of old people and old way, of an Ireland that is gone now. People like Thady Flaherty.
But he also sings of his adopted land, Australia with love and passion. Moreton Bay and Banks of the Condamine are given new life here, sung, as they are, almost ‘sean nós’ style.
There is irony too in the fact that I was recording an Irishman in Killarney, Australia and then sending some of the recordings to Stiofán Cooney, an Australian in Ireland, to record his parts. The musicians on this recording are Irish or Australians of Irish descent. There is treasure here for both Ireland and Australia and indeed for all lovers of folk tradition and fine music. There is something old and something new about this recording and I hope listeners receive as much pleasure from hearing it as we did in recording it.