Dexys at the Embassy
Yes, Dexys do Irish - they really do!
It's not that common for an Embassy to host a nine-song set by a seven-piece band, but that's what happened when Dexys came to play tracks from their new album, 'Let the record show: Dexys do Irish and Country Soul'.
How did this come about? It started with the Imagining Ireland concert at the Royal Festival Hall in late April. That concert, part of our Embassy's programme to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising, sought to celebrate in song the evolution of Ireland's ties with Britain during the past 100 years.
For me, the two highlights of that most enjoyable concert were the performances of Martin Hayes (Irish fiddle virtuoso) and Denis Cahill (American-born guitarist) and of Kevin Rowland and Sean Read. To my ears, the Hayes/Cahill piece appeared to weave traditional music together with jazz elements to produce a beautiful symphony of sound.
I only realised that Kevin Rowland had an Irish background when I heard about his involvement with the Imaging Ireland concert. Nor did I realise that he was the lead singer with Dexys Midnight Runners, and co-writer of the unforgettable 'Come on, Eileen', a song that continues to please 35 years after its release. On that memorable April night on London's South Bank, Kevin and Sean performed fine renditions of two classic pieces from the Great Irish Songbook, Carrickfergus and the Curragh of Kildare.
I thought they were magnificent and wanted to know more about where these very fresh versions of well-known songs had come from. After the show, I met Kevin and he told me more about his parents, who had come from Mayo where Kevin spent part of his childhood. The discovery that Dexys were about to release an album consisting mainly of Irish songs was a happy one and I invited Kevin to launch it at the Embassy.
I had two main reasons for this. The first was to pay my own tribute to the popular music of the past 50 years, which has been playing in the background as I have made my way through the world.
Growing up in Waterford in the 1960s, the music of that era offered me and my school friends a chance to eavesdrop on the world outside. It was the songs of the Beatles, Bob Dylan et al that rocked my boat - and not the writings of Yeats and Joyce whose achievement I have subsequently come to revere. Our youthful interest in the music of the 1960s and 1970s met with a degree of disapproval from those who believed that the music of that era, and all that went with it, was inimical to our distinctive Irish values.
I recall spending countless hours listening over and over to my small record collection and tuning into Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline on a small pocket radio I owned. My friends and I swapped precious records and discussed the latest releases we had read about in music magazines. It was a modest assertion of generational change; our music differed fundamentally from the songs of earlier times; and we lived in a different world.
My second reason for hosting Dexys at the Embassy was that their story is part of the story of the Irish in Britain. Irish people have been moving to Britain for centuries which means that most people in Britain today probably have some element of Irishness in their background.
Today's Irish community in Britain, about 600,000 Irish-born and the millions of recent Irish descent, is the product of post-World War 2 emigration from Ireland. In the 1950s, a time of economic difficulty at home, large numbers of young Irishmen and women came to Britain and, on construction sites in hospitals, in shops and in factories, contributed to the rebuilding of post-war Britain.
During the past 50 years, the Irish and their offspring have made a mark in every walk of life in Britain. For example, there are now some 60,000 Irish-born directors of UK companies. Many companies in Britain today, especially in the construction sector, were set up by Irish immigrants.
But it would be a sad situation if the Irish contribution to today's Britain were to be confined to the economic sphere. When they crossed the Irish Sea, the Irish also brought with them a rich heritage of story and song and it is this aspect of the Irish experience in Britain that has inspired Kevin Rowland to record a set of Irish songs. He remembers hearing them sung at family gatherings when he was growing up. I have similar memories of sing-songs at family occasions over the years in Waterford.
Kevin Rowland has revisited the songs of his childhood, growing up as part of an Irish family in Britain. It's probably not a coincidence that people with Irish backgrounds have made an impact in the media and the creative arts. Growing up with a mixed identity, in England, but with a consciousness of a different country and its culture, probably poses challenges at the personal level, but may well be a spur to creativity. Artists of Irish descent have made notable contributions to popular music in Britain - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Paddy McAloon, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Cait O'Riordan, Shane McGowan and Ed Sheeran to name but a few.
For me, one of the joys of today's Ireland is how different expressions of Irishness can exist side by side. Ireland has become a producer as well as a consumer of popular music - while also continuing to generate a healthy output of folk and traditional music. We no longer require things to be exclusively Irish in order to gain entry into our cultural canon.
I celebrate the fact that Irish musicians and songwriters have scaled heights of achievement in pop and rock music. I like Kevin Rowland's fresh pop-influenced versions of many well-known Irish songs. And I relish musical crossovers that shape the work of Martin Hayes, Denis Cahill and their innovative group, the Gloaming. Long may such influences, crossovers and musical ties flourish!
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London