I've been a wild rover for many a year

My roving has taken me to St. Louis for a conference, but thanks to free internet access, even roving is no hindrance to blogging.

As promised a week ago, here is the answer from madpoet, my dad, on why a half-Sephardic, half-Ashkenazi Jew of Portuguese and Baltic/Russian ancestry was raised on a continuous playlist of Irish folk music:

To be honest with you, I am not certain why I started you down the road of Irish music. I'd like to think that there was something about the music that somehow resonated genetically with both of us, but I suspect that is wishful thinking. More likely, before you were born I was a dyed in the wool folkie, due to the politics of the time, my need to be rebellious, and heaven knows what else. The problem with folk music then was that most of the singers wrote somewhat repetitious songs, and most of the women sounded largely the same, in the vein of Joan Baez or Judy Collins. Most of the men sounded like clones of Pete Seeger, and the truly talented ones couldn't sing a lick: consider Leonard Cohen or, dare I say it, Bob Dylan. On the other hand, bands like the Clancy Brothers combined not only highly political songs but a liveliness and singing ability that was somehow lacking in American folk music. And Irish bands were not above stealing great Irish songs from such traditional Irishman as Shell Silverstein (your introduction to unicorns). It was also about the time that the traditional music of Ireland was becoming popular with groups like the Bothy Band and Planxty. That was what I listened to, so that's what I sang to you as a child, and to your brother, though heaven knows where he went wrong. You also have to consider the fact that when I drank, which wasn't often, my drink of choice, because I wanted to be Irish, was either Guinness or Old Bushmills whiskey.

The bottom line is, I really have no idea why I so immersed you in Irish music, but I must say I'm glad I did. The Irish, Scottish, and to a lesser extent English folk bands had it all over their American counterparts, and even in the area of the folk rock, once you got past the Byrds, there was little back then that would approach Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, or the Oyster Band. And, since you didn't turn out so bad, I have to think that it was the correct music for its time and remain so.

Thanks, dad!

I have to agree that it's the liveliness of Irish music that has always appealed to me, as well as the friends I've been able to introduce to it (I think I can claim credit for dkon's exposure to Black 47 and the Wolfe Tones, for instance). Music has gotten louder over the past few decades, however, as evidenced by people calling early Beatles albums "four young men screaming". Thus, while my dad and I still have a great deal of overlap in our tastes (Chieftains, Irish Rovers), he's more a fan of the better voices (especially Irish female singers), whereas my tastes lean somewhat obsessively toward Irish punk (Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly). In the end, though, much of the appeal is the same: Irish music is fundamentally about making the best of a bad situation. It's a running joke that essentially every Irish song involves at least two elements from a list of: getting drunk, fighting the British, starving in a famine, and being sent away to either Australia as a criminal or America as an immigrant. Some songs attempt all four. This form of music (happy songs about sad stuff) is perhaps the most powerful musical form ever created, underlying styles as varied as classic country (think Johnny Cash's prison songs) to geek rock (virtually every They Might Be Giants Song fits). It works for the same reason that Greek drama works: art is cathartic, and eases your troubles by empathizing with them and then finding some form of silver lining. It can easily be made a bit angrier and worked into punk music (see also the Gypsy punk of Gogol Bordello), and is devastating when counterpointed with something truly sad (more on this friday?). Tomorrow, I'll try to get into my problem with several of the genres of pop music today, in that this element of sadness is essentially missing, and try to tie it in with my take on the difference between my generation and the one immediately younger (kids these days!). Here's a hint: I blame cell phones. No, really, I do. More tomorrow.