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JOE HEANEY

Part Two of a five-part set of linked reviews of traditonal folk song concerning source singers and the folk revival. Click here for Introduction.

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The Road From Connemara
2000
CD
Topic Records TSCD518D
Produced in collaboration with Musical Traditions

This double-album features songs and stories told and sung by Joe Heaney to Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Joe Heaney (Seosamh Ó hÉanaí) (1919-1984) was born in Áird Thoir, Carna, in the Connemara Gaeltacht in 1919 an died in the USA in 1984. Joe Heaney was one of the finest and most famous singers in the Irish sean-nós (old style), an intimate and highly decorative style of unaccompanied solo singing. But even in his own time and even in Ireland, Joe Heaney's singing was not always appreciated, and he found a more convivial atmosphere in academic circles in the United States. Such was 'the road from Connemara'.

Joe came from a Gaelic-speaking background, but most of the songs here are in English. They range from the powerfully vengeful rebel ballad 'Skibbereen' to lyrical songs such as 'As I roved out' ('Sixteen Come Sunday').

The sean-nós tradition has strongly influenced my own approach to folk singing, sometimes to the bemusement of English listeners who expect a conventional, four-square approach...

Rik - 5 July 2001

TOPIC RECORDS
http://www.topicrecords.co.uk

MUSICAL TRADITIONS
An on-line magazine and record production project led by Rod Stradling and specialising in bringing the light of day to previously obscure recordings by source singers
http://www.mustrad.org.uk
HEANEY
An exhaustive review by Tom Munnelly at Mustrad, including some personal perceptions of Heaney the man.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/j_heaney.htm

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