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Sleeve Notes — Out Of Ireland
The documentary film Out of Ireland tells the epic story of Irish emigration to America through the experiences of a handful of men and women. The visual images and narration in the film emphasize the historical facts of their lives and the broad political and social forces of 19th and 20th century Ireland and America.
But in creating the music for the film, our goal was to give expression, not to the facts of Irish immigration, but to the feelings: the hopes, fears, yearnings, satisfactions and regrets — the whole range of emotional forces at work in the hearts of the seven million immigrants who came out of Ireland to America. To accomplish this, we drew from the deep well of Irish traditional music which has, for hundreds of years, sustained the Irish people, even as it has expressed their deepest feelings.
The music for the film was arranged thematically. There is a separate musical theme for each of the featured immigrants and there are also additional musical themes suggested by particular aspects of Irish and American social, economic and cultural life.
In creating the musical score, we benefitted greatly from the collaboration of several of the finest Irish musicians in the world. Given the story of remarkable cultural resilience that the movie documents, it is fitting that, with the exception of master percussionist Tommy Hayes, who lives in County Wicklow, all the musicians featured on the soundtrack are residents of the United States.
Timothy Cashman Theme: "The Bogs of Shanaheever" & "The Carraroe Jig"
The Bogs of Shanaheever is a traditional song on the theme of loss and separation. The opening verse of the song is powerfully evocative, conveying the anguish of a young man who flees Ireland under threat of deportation for a trivial offense:
My young life is past, which makes me feel dreary
For at night I am cast on the wilds of the prairie
Hunting the wild deer, the panther and the beaver
As my thoughts wander back to the Bogs of Shanaheever.
The lonesome melody of the song, stated starkly by the uilleann pipes, is used as the opening theme. The ensemble joins in after the opening stanza. Strains of the melody recur throughout the movie, particularly in the Timothy Cashman story. Cashman was an immigrant from County Cork who worked for over thirty years in America but always harbored thoughts of returning to his native land. The theme is also used in the closing section of the film, emphasizing the theme of return — the longing to go home — and the paradoxical nature of that vision. For most, the hope to return is a dream — something that is not and never can be. The Carraroe Jig suggests movement and optimism tempered eventually by the sobering reality of displacement and separation. This leads us back into The Bogs of Shanaheever where the uilleann pipes are joined by the full ensemble in a restatement of the melody.
Devereux Brothers Theme: "The Old Foggy Dew" & "The Rattling Boys of Ballymote"
The calm before the storm of the Rebellion of 1798 is suggested by the melody to The Old Foggy Dew, a beautiful folk melody played widely as a slow air in Ireland. The ominous preparation for the rebellion is underscored by the same tune played as a march. The jew's harp with percussive accompaniment deepens the sense of foreboding. The theme of insurrection culminates energetically in the jig The Rattling Boys of Ballymote.
Optimism Theme: "North Amerikay"
This jaunty melody draws its tune from the defiant emigration song of the same name, popularized by Dublin singer Frank Harte. In the song, an independent young woman deals with her parents' objections to her suitor by stealing money from her father to pay her passage to Amerikay. She is joined there in time by her lover. The melody is used three times in the film to suggest an optimistic and even lighthearted view of America. Thus, it is used to underline the commercial success of Wexford man John Devereux in Utica, New York; Margaret McCarthy's remittance of money in her letter to her impoverished parents in Ireland; and Alexander Sproule's befuddled letter describing his daughter's flight to the freedom and opportunities of America.
Mary Rush Theme: "An Drimin Donn Dilis" (The Dear Brown Cow) Ireland was know by many symbolic names in the 19th century. One of the most prominent was "An Drimin Donn Dilis" (The Dear Brown Cow), an odd symbol for a country, one might think, but perfectly understandable when one weds the image of fertility to the importance of the lone cow in the small, vulnerable agricultural holdings of mid-nineteenth century Ireland. The haunting lonesome melody represents the great hunger of the famine years described poignantly in the letters of Sligowoman Mary Rush to her father in Canada. The theme begins with a stark whistle solo and then develops with electronic instruments into a discordant cacophony. The uilleann pipes emerges in a final solo to suggest the resilience of the human spirit even in the most adverse circumstances.
T. Mcintyre Theme: "The Pretty Girls of Mayo"
The Pretty Girls of Mayo is a grand old reel which has been played by countless Irish musicians for generations. It is played first in the old traditional style and then, as Northern emigrant T. McIntyre reflects on the simple, fulfilling rural life he left behind, the musicians segue in free style mode into a minor key variant of the same tune. This piece is used at various points in the film to suggest the more heartening and cheerful aspects of the Irish experience at home and abroad. It especially evokes the vibrancy and free-spirited side of Irish culture, for example at Donnemana Fair about which McIntyre waxes nostalgic in a letter home. It is used as the theme for the story of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to come through Ellis Island, and also as a backdrop for the recounting of the "love and liberty" won by Irish women in America.
William Murphy Theme: "Fig for a Kiss"
The bouncy melodic slip jig Fig for a Kiss is used as counter-point to the story of County Antrim emigrant William Murphy who emigrated to America with two of his brothers in the wake of the Great Famine. After trying a variety of laboring occupations, he ended up working in railroad construction where he was constantly on the move. His eloquent, poetic letter home reveals him to be a troubled, deeply restless man who felt that his destiny was always to be a wanderer and an outsider wherever he went.
Discrimination Theme: "The Rights of Man"
The great old tune The Rights of Man is played as a slow reflective air, to denote the condition of discrimination faced by Irish immigrants in America in the mid-19th century, and then in a lively march mode to denote positive action.
Richard O'Gorman Theme: "The Men of the West" & "The Bold Fenian Men"
Richard O'Gorman was a young idealistic Irish nationalist and a member of the Young Irelander Movement of the 1840's. His idealism is represented by the melody of the famous William Rooney composition, The Men of the West, played in martial style. O'Gorman's later rise to political power in New York at the expense of his idealism is implied by an ironically melodic rendering of the same tune as the theme develops. The tune is also associated with a letter O'Gorman writes about "the destiny of the Irish race" on the North American continent. It is used again later in the film in the section on Timothy Cashman to accompany the discussion of the nationalistic movements of the 19th century and Irish American support of those movements including Cashman's own pledge of fealty to Mother Ireland. Finally it is used to underscore the ultimate triumph for nationalists — the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.
The burgeoning power of the Irish in ward politics in late 19th century urban America is underscored by the ironic martial strains of P. J. McCall's stirring patriotic song "The Bold Fenian Men."
Mary Ann Rowe Theme: "Low Back'd Car" & "Believe Me If All These Endearing Young Charms"
Mary Ann Rowe was a young woman who emigrated from County Kilkenny in the 1880s simply because there was no place for her in Irish society. Her high-spirited departure from Ireland is illustrated by Samuel Lover's Low Back'd Car, one of the most popular stage songs in Ireland and America in the latter decades of the 19th century. It suggests the determined economic progress and upward social mobility of Irish women in America, contrasted with the nostalgia for the country left behind. Her loneliness in domestic life in Boston, deeply expressed in her letters home, is represented by the melody of Thomas Moore's ageless Believe Me if All These Endearing Young Charms, which was one of the great popular musical standards of the Victorian era. A version of The Low Back'd Car, played by a marching band, reappears later in the movie suggesting the successful adaptation of the Irish to life in America as they achieve social and economic parity with other Americans.
Tom Brick Theme: "The Farewell Reel" & "The Wind That Shakes the Barley"
The American Wake was the name given in many parts of Ireland to the party organized for the emigrant on the final night before his or her departure. For the idea for this theme, we are indebted to Tom Byrne, a great old style County Sligo flute player who has lived in Cleveland since the late 1940's. He recounts how in his locality an old reel known as The Farewell Reel, normally played in lively exuberant fashion, was transformed in the course of the American Wake into a sad tune, and was always the final piece of music played at the end of the festivities as the community said a last goodbye to the departing emigrant. In the film, the Farewell Reel is first played in mournful fashion before gathering momentum as the emigrant Tom Brick departs. The movie follows with Brick's description of a lively musical session he enjoys with other Irish immigrants in South Dakota. The musicians burst into an animated version of The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a great old reel played that night which Brick mentions as a highlight of the evening. The transition represents the optimism of the newly arrived emigrant as well as the resilience of the old world Irish cultural traditions in America.
Religion Theme: "The Tidy Woman" & "Faith of Our Fathers"
Elements of the pre-Christian, Celtic world-view, which still survive in the folk religion of rural Ireland, such as belief in the fairies, are suggested by a reflective free-time rendering of the traditional slip jig The Tidy Woman. The camera brings us into a holy well representing the Christianization of Ireland where the old pre-Christian fertility entities associated with the wells are replaced by Catholic saints. The melody is transformed into a wild dance tune to represent the retention in modern Ireland of lively Celtic mid-Winter death and resurrection rituals, such as the tradition of the Wren Boys on St. Stephen's Day. The same music is also used in the section on Thomas Brick to accompany the recitation of the pre-Christian tale of Oisin's enchantment in Tir-na-nog (the land of eternal youth).
The ensemble plays the popular hymn Faith of Our Fathers in a somber reflective mode to accompany the discussion of the institutional power of the Irish-dominated Catholic Church in the United States and the role that the church played in the creation of some of the major avenues of upward social mobility for the Irish in their new home.
Tim O'Brien Theme: "The Doon Reel" & "The Old Thatched Cabin"
The American years in the life of Northern Irish immigrant Tim O'Brien would be remarkable even in the realm of melodramatic fiction. O'Brien left his Belfast home in the early 1920's and ended up in Los Angeles where he embarked on a variety of highly unconventional commercial enterprises. Ultimately he falls into trouble with the law, jumps bail and is never heard from again. The ensemble begins the theme with a traditional version of the old tune, The Doon Reef and then transforms the reel with swing variations to represent O'Brien's gleeful acculturation to a 1920s American, fast-lane lifestyle. A flute/accordion rendering of the plaintive old ballad The Old Thatched Cabin provides an austere melodic backdrop to his presumed untimely demise.
Closing Credits: "Speed the Plough" & "The Four Courts"
These two old traditional reels are played exuberantly over the closing credits, providing a release from the ambiguities and tensions of the film. The music is also used earlier in the movie for Daniel Guiney's letter home to Ireland, recounting the elation he and his friends felt upon arriving in America where they were met by their old companions and neighbors from Ireland.
The Musicians
John Doyle (Guitar) is one of the most accomplished guitarists in the Irish music scene in America. He performed for two years with the group, Chanting House, and since leaving the group has become one of the most sought-after accompanists in the Irish music scene in the Eastern United States. In addition to his club and concert performances he has recorded with accordionist James Keane, fiddler Eileen Ivers, multi-instrumentalist Seamus Egan, and flute and tin whistle player Joannie Madden.
Seamus Egan (Flute, Tin Whistle, Mandolin) was born in Philadelphia. He spent some of his early years in County Mayo where he first took traditional Irish music lessons from a local teacher named Martin Donoghue. Back in Philadelphia at the age of eleven he blossomed into the foremost Irish traditional multi-instrumentalist in the United States becoming proficient on the pipes, bodhran, mandolin, flute, tin whistle, and tenor banjo Seamus is a member of the touring ensemble, the Green Fields of America.
Tommy Hayes (Precussion) is the most celebrated percussionist in Irish traditional music today. He has played on literally hundreds of recordings with some of the top musicians in Irish music on both sides of the Atlantic. With irresistible creative flair and ingenuity he plays an extraordinary variety of percussion instruments on this recording ranging from the traditional Irish bodhran to the South American rain forest drum. Tommy is also an accomplished player of the jew's harp.
Eileen Ivers (Acoustic & Electric Fiddles) was born and raised in an Irish community in the Bronx and began playing the fiddle in the Martin Mulvihill School of Irish Music. She has became one of the most prominent Irish musicians in America through her club appearances in New York and her concert and festival appearances with the allfemale group Cherish the Ladies, the Green Fields of America, the New York based group Jigsaw, and the rock group Hall and Oates.
Jimmy Keane (Piano Accordion, Synthesizers) was born in London. His mother comes from County Kerry and his late father, Jimmy "Horse" Keane, was a sean nos singer from the Connemara Gaeltacht. The family moved to Chicago when Jimmy was very young and he grew up there. While in his teens he started playing the piano accordion and has developed a unique traditional style, bringing a flair and authenticity to his music that is rarely found among players of that instrument.
Donna Long (Piano) is one of the top piano accompanists of Irish traditional music in the United States. Classical training that she received in her teens gave her a solid musical grounding, which she adapted readily to Irish music when she started to play traditional music in the early 1980s. Donna has listened to the very best Irish, Irish-American and Cap Breton accompanists and absorbed the finest elements of all she has heard in creating her own distinctive style of accompaniment.
Mick Moloney (Mandolin, Tenor Banjo, Guitar), one of Ireland's finest tenor banjo and mandolin players, is a native of County Limerick. He learned much of his art in neighboring County Clare. He played professionally with several folk groups in Europe in the 1960's including The Johnstons, and performed all over Europe for five years making seven ground-breaking LPs in the process. In 1973 he emigrated to America and gained his doctorate in folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. Since then he has recorded and produced numerous albums and has become a major force behind the great revival of Irish music in the United States.
Eugene O'Donnell (Fiddle) comes from Derry City in Northern Ireland. He achieved his earliest artistic successes as a champion stepdancer, winning an astonishing and unprecedented six All-Ireland dancing titles before he left Ireland for Philadelphia in 1957. By that time he was also an outstanding fiddler with a unique style, heavily influence by his exposure to traditional musicians in neighboring County Donegal. Eugene is well known for his lively, bouncy playing of jigs, reels and hornpipes, but it is for his magnificent, vibrant playing of slow airs and set dance pieces that he is most renowned in the world of Irish traditional music.
Jerry O'Sullivan (Uilleann Pipes, Tin Whistle) is a native of New York. He started on the uilleann pipes when he was in his teens and studied with master piper Andy Conroy in Dublin during his frequent visits to Ireland. Since the early 1980s he has been a major figure in the Irish American traditional music scene. For several years he was a member of the Irish American ensemble, The Green Fields of America, which was sponsored on five national tours by the National Endowment for the Arts. He has appeared on Public Television with the Boston Pops with John Williams conducting and was a featured musician on the soundtrack of the movie Far and Away.
John Williams (Button Accordion, Concertina), a native of Chicago, is one of the few American-born musicians to specialize on the concertina. Like all the musicians on this recording he developed an appreciation for the music from older Irish musicians. He started on the piano accordion but later switched to the button accordion and concertina. His lather originally came from Doolin, County Clare and John began to spend summers there in his teens. He picked up much of his repertoire during these visits and was heavily influenced by the Clare style of concertina playing.
The documentary film, Out of Ireland, was produced by Paul Wagner and Ellen Casey Wagner for American Focus, Inc., with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
