From the Plain of the Yew Tree

by John Hoban

  Music-making, singing and teaching have led me from community to community. It has always been the same with me. I suppose this started for me many years ago with the family in summertime, singing as we visited the relatives and the country people. Then came the choir, the church and the hospitals in the ’60s in Castlebar, the operas in Tuam, The Gondoliers, the White Horse Inn, Oliver, off to Dublin and London with outcasts, hipppies, navvies on the line, us all on cheap wine, Rastas in Notting Hill, Latin Americans in the Troubadour, folk clubs and the Irish ghettos of Kilburn, Putney and North London, and so on. My travels always brought me into contact with rebels, and different sorts of people who took refuge in music and drink and various other cultural activities.

  When I first started teaching music, I discovered great communities in places like Dundalk, The Cooley Penninsula, and all over Mayo, especially Curraun in Achill. My music also brought me to Cliara, or Clare Island, which I always loved to visit.

  In more recent years, I have become very involved in recording the songs and stories of the older people with whom I come into contact. I also work a lot with some very special, wonderful people who have various types of disabilities. These people are very musical, and they express it in very powerful, individual ways. I also work, musically, with people who are recovering from various life-threating addictions. They find that music provides them with a road back to being themselves. Everybody deserves music, and everybody has music, or a love of music, deep in their hearts. So, I do my best to listen and sing for everybody and anybody.

  I have alluded to the fact that I have come close, very close, to dying many times in my life. Death has been part of my life from my early days, from losing my grandparents, parents and quite a few friends when I was young, right up to today. I have known a fair share of grief and loss but I have never felt like a victim, and I have never felt sorry for myself. I have always viewed death as just the other side of the coin – the other side of life. I have always felt a real closeness with the next world and with the spirits who have completed their work in this place. I feel certain that we all pass on when we are ready, and that our time here is for learning, and preparing for the next phase. Music and song help me with this way of living. On quite a few occassions, people nearing the end of their lives on earth have specifically requested that I play for them when they are ready to go to the next world. Others have requested that I sing or play at their funerals. I naturally associate songs with people and places, this association eternalises the person with the song. The song and the spirit become one. It’s true. It’s love, I guess. But what a privilege to be asked to play somebody into the next world. No greater feeling could I have in my musical life.

  I always come back to music-making and the need for mutuality and sharing. The musician and the listener, the call and the response, from the heart, to the heart. A man once said to me on Clare Island that, “People have lost the ability to listen. When we were young, we had no choice but to listen to everything.” I knew what he meant, as I too have learned that freedom for me is absence of choice. I learn each day that listening is meditation, and that speaking or singing is a prayer. There is an Irish proverb Is fearr port ná paidir (a jig is better than a prayer). Nowadays, forming friendships and true relations with people is music to my heart. In my life I have learned, through being involved with various communities, that it is really important not to play music at people. In order to learn this we must:

  First, develop the relationship over a long time. A friendship and conversation over many days, many years in fact. This relationship extends to the wider community of family and friends.

  Second, develop the music relationship. This means knowing the songs, dances, stories, recitations of the particular area and of a particular era. We must bring out the tradition and encourage the sharing of that tradition. Therefore, a true community musician must do a lot of research and learning, and have great musical flexibility in order to be relevant and to be welcomed into the community. This is the way we can be genuinely helpful to each and to any specific community/locality.

  Once again, people don’t want music forced on them or played at them. Their own traditions and their own lives must be respected and preserved.

  The musician must love this work and see its great value. Over decades, I have been enriched beyond words by various communities: the elderly in rural and urban locations and in their homes and care settings, the many people with physical and intellectual disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, the youth, and people from all walks of life. Without exception, I have received as much, and more, than I have given.

  Playing music on the street provides a great theatre space in which to explore the inner and the outer worlds of music-making. Sometimes it can be a difficult or hard station as passers-by divide into those who celebrate music, and those who turn away from it. I have spoken a lot about busking or playing music on the street. I have busked in Sligo, New York, Sydney, Toronto and in many other places, but probably the hardest town of all in which to busk is Castlebar. The home turf. It does require fairly strong resolve in the world of the spirit, a totally shameless approach, and a good sense of humour! People love to see you at it, or else they duck down alleyways conveniently realising they’ve forgotten something really important so they have to double back. But in general, people love to hear music on the street. I think so anyway.

  Songwriting is life itself, storytelling, turning it out. Songs to me feel like spirits, like guardian angels floating around, unseen until the time is right, and suddenly, there they are. Wanting to be sung. Like flowers waiting to blossom. Then there are the other songs, the songs which take a long time to come out, the songs which require a lot of nurturing. This is a deeply personal experience for me. These days I do not worry about what others think of them, or what will the neighbours say, not that it ever really mattered.

  The first song that consciously called to me was the ‘Long Forgotten Saint’. It is about my mother’s passing in 1967. In this song I thank her for giving me life, and for letting me go. It first came to me in or around summer 1970 as I was walking home to Auburn Avenue in Dublin, after a Shamrock Rovers soccer match. I recall singing it in some form or other as I walked through Ranelagh Village, the song just came to me. The next song I experienced in this same way was ‘A Day Out in Sligo’.

  In the ’70s, after my return from London, I made my living by doing the very odd gig (in odd places, with odd people like me), teaching a few pupils, and busking. Very few people were busking in those times, except in Galway where the tradition was carried on by a few older musicians like the Dunnes. Dublin, Belfast and Cork had a tradition of buskers on the streets too. I loved to stand on a street in Wexford, Kerry, Galway, Dundalk, Dublin and Sligo town. I’d play traditional music on the banjo, sometimes sing a ballad or two, and people would drop a few coins into the hat so that I’d have enough to live on for the day. Sometimes I would be joined by another musican, but mostly it was a solo job.

  So how does it work? I am often asked which comes first, the words or the music? Which comes first, the hen or the egg? I think a song is like the breath of life, it has to come out, be exhaled, a sigh, a scream. Before it comes out, something first needs to be brought inside, to be inhaled – an experience, a story, a feeling, then just sing it out in the rhythm that comes with the words. Children do this all the time. Watch them as they make up songs when just looking at the sky, or singing to a toy, or when they are looking out the back window of a car. They sing what they see.

  The next step is to write it down, sometimes over and over again. Put a chord or two, or three, around it. Record it, tape it, and sit back and listen to it with your heart. When performing music, I feel the background story to the music must be presented to the listener to allow him or her make full sense of it. I am sure it is the same with dance and dance music. It is important that the song is introduced simply, and from the heart, to welcome, and allow the listener into the song. Mus
ic must be listened to as the first language of our hearts. No place for judgement, competition, or criticism. I don’t have to like every song or piece of music I hear, but I must respect it. We are all people, all songs, all inter-connected. I have learned to accept that I am exactly where I am meant to be in my music. No better and no worse than anybody else. I remember Tommy Potts, the wonderful man and musician from The Liberties in Dublin say in an interview on the radio, “My music is a poor reflection of what’s to come.” I was amazed. I met him twice, by chance, in the Four Seasons in Capel Street in Dublin, and he played a few tunes on a fiddle for a small while. I felt blessed to have met him in person. His music still inspires me as I try to make the best of my life and my own music, le cúnamh Dé (with God’s help). One moment at a time.

  The professional world of work and music are very far removed from the world of music in which I now live. I see my world as a moment in time, to sing or play as the music inspires. I have never felt that music should be about having to perform to order or demands. I recall a singer once saying to a person in the audience who was demanding a particular song, “I’m not a jukebox, you know!” I found it highly amusing.

  I feel very free at last in music to be myself. I also enjoy making music with many people, too numerous to mention, but I’m sure they know who I am speaking about. I also feel I am just beginning in this life, and I will try to be open to learning from others and from myself, each day.

  With a song in your heart,

  a breath still in your body,

  all you’ve got to do is walk on!

  Walk on, my friend!

  (‘Walk On’, John Hoban)

  JOE AND LORD GORDON

  (John Hoban)

  I’m fairly sure, nobody knows, what’s going on,

  when I play Lord Gordon’s reel.

  So let me tell you.

  Joe and I met, playing in a céilí, in the ’70s,

  gallons of tae and Sweet Afton,

  flowing gently.

  Many days later and I flying to Achill,

  I stopped and gave to Joe, Lord Gordon’s reel,

  on the melodeon.

  On my way back East, the following day,

  I called to visit Joe, as I used to do

  fair and easy.

  ‘Have I got it right?’ sez he to me,

  and proceeded to play Lord Gordon’s reel

  on the melodeon.

  It was the finest setting I’d ever heard.

  It put me in mind of a tropical bird,

  sweet music, soul music.

  There was always fish on a Friday.

  There was always a welcome for I,

  regardless of how I was travelling.

  There was always music,

  friendship and neighbours in Joe’s house,

  night or day.

  This goes on and on and on and on,

  whenever I play Lord Gordon’s reel.

  Notes on the song:

  The true story of me and my friend Joe Keane. On the day in question Joe learned the five-part reel, ‘Lord Gordon’, from me. He played the tune beautifully on the melodeon. From then on, every time I play the tune, Joe is in it, alive and laughing. Nobody would know that, but now you are let in on the secret with this song.

  THE ROSE AND THE HEATHER

  (John Hoban)

  I’ve walked these roads for eighty-odd years,

  I’m now in the home for the aged.

  I’ve circled The Reek, swam in Dubh Loch,

  and I’m none the worse for wear.

  My days are now numbered,

  my friends pass away,

  I’m near the end of life’s pathway.

  I smile and recall,

  those nights in the hall,

  between the rose and the heather.

  I’ve lived eighty mixed summers,

  carried hay and such work,

  it was hard,

  but I never regret it.

  The fact that I lived on rough, stony ground,

  often flooded and clutter’d with nettles.

  The music evenings of a long winter’s night,

  the half-set, song and the story,

  kept us alive,

  taught us how to survive,

  between the rose and the heather.

  A man from my village,

  once made a fiddle.

  The poor crayture just couldn’t play it.

  My father came home from the fair in Leenane,

  where he heard the Raineys play.

  He hummed ‘The Blackbird’,

  and ‘The Old Copper Plate’.

  One day they came from the melodeon.

  I was just a boy child,

  my thoughts were pure wild,

  between the rose and the heather.

  Notes on the song:

  The first tune I learned, in the Irish traditional music field, was called ‘The Rose in the Heather’, a double jig. This song imagines myself dreaming away at eighty or ninety years of age, reflecting on a good, decent life, filled with music, song and dance. Not an easy life mind you, as I try and sing about being caught between the Devil and the deep-blue sea, between a rock and a hard place, between the rose, (symbol of love) and the heather (symbol of childlike pain and brokenness, maybe).

  Epilogue

  You can sing it.

  Qosqo (Cuzco), Peru, March 19, 2009

  For the moment, my own music pilgrimage, spanning over five and a half decades, goes on, and is described in stories, songs, poems and pictures. Like the iceberg, or the swan in the water, the main story is hidden under the surface. Here’s one of my poems to wrap up the proceedings:

  Old Mountain

  So now to conclude

  and to gather in these verses.

  Synthesis, I believe,

  in sound, sight and rhythm.

  Right now, today,

  just singing in the rain,

  Peru Rail, on the train

  through the Sacred Valley,

  high up in the Andes,

  en route to Machu Picchu.

  It all makes sense to me.

  I see the condor, the eagle,

  the puma and the snake.

  So, Pachamama, mother earth,

  old mountain, help us to trust,

  to sing, to listen

  and finally to walk on

  with no fear, nor struggle.

  THE LONG FORGOTTEN SAINT

  (John Hoban)

  I couldn’t for the life of me,

  remember where we met.

  I also had forgotten your name.

  Your eyes said more

  than a thousand empty words.

  Your gentle hands,

  have never known shame.

  (Chorus)

  We talked of birds and trees,

  cliffs and raging seas.

  We laughed about the times

  we’d spend in love.

  We watched an artist paint,

  a long forgotten saint,

  while the music climbs to the mountains to the sky.

  The Sunday afternoon you passed away,

  I ran to the graveyard to pray.

  I lay down a wreath of flowers,

  where your head should be.

  Then thanked you for setting me free.

  Notes on the song:

  This is the first song I really wrote. I love the sound of it, and I love the wee tune in the middle of the song that floated up the Sruthan river in Castlebar. Sruthan is the Irish word for an underground stream. It is also the name of the street which my mother was born on in 1921. It’s now called Newantrim Street.

  ON YOUR WAY

  (John Hoban)

  On your way, dúirt sí liom.

  Close your eyes and listen up.

  Close your eyes and listen up,

  you are loved,

  drink from this cup.

  Ash to ashes, dúirt sí liom,

  shake the dust from off your shoes,
/>   shake the dust from off your shoes,

  see each moment, bright and new.

  All is well, dúirt sí liom.

  From the cradle to the grave,

  from the cradle to the grave,

  let go and trust, my little brave.

  So, ar aghaidh leat, dúirt sí liom.

  Don’t forget you’re not alone,

  don’t forget you’re not alone,

  go dté tú slán, on your way home.

  Notes on the song:

  Said she to me, dúirt sí liom, in a dream, she said a few very important words to me. “Don’t forget you’re not alone. Let go and trust, my little one. Go dté tú slán, may you be kept safe, on your way home.” A song that arrived in a dream. I love this one, as I love each and every song I sing, and every tune I play.

  Every day I live, free at last. Just for today.

  Slán agus beannacht.