The St. Patrick’s season usually finds Boston overrun with bands doing a rowdy, rocked-up version of Irish music. Rest assured that Altan, one of Ireland’s finest traditional bands, doesn’t do any of that.
Altan may play some lively jigs and reels in between their ballads, but there’s always been something haunting and mysterious at the heart of their sound. Credit that to the golden voice of fiddler and frontwoman Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, and to the group’s Donegal heritage. “We’re cut off by mountains from the rest of Ireland so it has an isolation, both geographical and political,” she said this week. “Even for Irish people, it’s quite a mysterious place. We have a lot of fiddle tunes that nobody else plays.”
As a traditional singer, she gives life to lyrics that have been around for centuries. “When I’m singing a song, I think first of all about the person that I got it from, and the place it originated. Those Gaelic songs aren’t ballads with stories, they have more of a magic. They’re like little photographs of a loved one or of a place. You make up the rest of the story in your own head.”
Before it was even a band, Altan was a love story: Ni Mhaonaigh began performing as a teenager and one of her greatest admirers was Frankie Kennedy, who learned flute just to be around her. In time he mastered the instrument and became her musical partner as well as husband. “It was a perfect match. He was from Belfast, where they had that flute-playing tradition, but he didn’t play music at all when we met. He knew what my life was going to be though, and he didn’t want to be twiddling his thumbs while I did sessions.” The pair first came to Boston in 1981, when they played some low-key shows and frequented the Burren in Davis Square.
Kennedy died of bone cancer in 1994, wishing the band to continue. There have been other personnel changes since, but Ni Mhaonaigh says their spirit is intact. “We feel like it’s different people but the same music. We approach the music exactly the same way; if we don’t like a tune we’re not going to play it.” They have however branched out a bit by doing some recording with Dolly Parton in Nashville. “I was not a big follower of country and western, to be honest with you. But America is a great melting pot and our music was really just one step apart.”
Ni Mhaonaigh’s tastes are more diverse than you might expect; she even made a point of visiting David Bowie’s old house during a recent Berlin visit. But she’s generally kept Altan a safe distance from pop and rock crossover.
“We’ve listened to a lot of punk and pop, every kind of music. But Irish music doesn’t need to be diluted in any way, what you should give people is what you love and what inspires yourself. Sometimes you see Irish music going a certain way — too many shamrocks and greenery and people talking begorrah. That’s not what it’s about, it’s about real people and real emotions. You don’t need to make it a cabaret show.”
Altan at Somerville Theatre, Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $40; globalartslive.org.
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Altan serves up traditional Irish music, undiluted - Boston Herald
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