Culture That Made Me: Villagers and Bob Dylan feature in Dónal Dineen's touchstones
Dónal Dineen, broadcaster and documentary maker. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan
Dónal Dineen, 52, grew up on a farm in Rathmore, Co Kerry. He was the first presenter of the music television series No Disco in the mid-1990s. In 1997, he began presenting Here Comes The Night on Radio Ireland, which later morphed into the Small Hours show on Today FM.
The third episode of his audio documentary series We Are The Makers, which is funded by Solas Nua in Washington, is broadcast today, Monday. He will record a live Make Me An Island podcast episode with Lisa O'Neill as part of the West Cork Feel Good Festival, on Saturday, October 9, at Levis’ Bar, Ballydehob, Co Cork.
My father died when I was 16. We couldn’t have been more different. Unfortunately, we knew that while he was still alive. We had a contentious relationship, which was purely based around misunderstandings. He was a simple man, who was incredibly connected to a small plot of land. In my teenage head, I thought: “You are the opposite of me. I am nothing like you.”
My own desperate search for identity was causing me to do that. Once I discovered music, I no longer identified as a farmer’s son: “Take your potatoes; I’ve got to listen to the Beatles’ White album.”
The thing is my father was mad into set-dancing. It was his main love in life. I didn’t identify with that because I thought that music is not me. He was renowned for his ability to go to the ends of the earth for the dance – he would cycle to dances in Newmarket, Freemount, places a long way away, and cycle home again. Years later, I was at Glastonbury, dancing in some field. It dawned on me: “I am him. He is me. We are the exact same. We’d stop at nothing for the dance.” The whole thing clicked into place. While he was alive, we were always fighting but we were absolutely united only we didn’t know it.
He died in the act of dancing. He fell on the floor at a dance. Before he knew it, he was dead. He was a healthy, 48-year-old teetotaller, but if you have to go, it seems like a good way to go, doing the thing you love the most without even knowing that it’s over.
On the night he died, he came into my room, which he never did, and asked me, “How are the books going?” He put two bars of Cadbury’s chocolate on the bed and he walked out. Shortly afterwards, my uncle came and told me he had died.
When my dad died, I was allowed to go into my room and take the speakers off the stereo and listen to Desire by Bob Dylan over and over again. I started off listening to the album and ended up just listening to the song One More Cup of Coffee. I don’t know how many times, maybe 200 times in three days, all the way up until I had to leave to go to the funeral. That’s what music is – it’s capable of opening up worlds. It’s so full of possibilities. It always has something, even in your darkest hour.
From the very start, Villagers have set a standard. I call Conor O’Brien “The Harbourmaster” because he presides over the whole scene – all boats rise when there is somebody like him around. The songwriting, the playing – he is the best at all of those things.
Their latest album, Fever Dreams, the levels and layers of production on it – it could be their masterpiece so far because he had room to turn it into something phenomenally layered.
I spent this summer in Kerry. In parts of the world where there’s no traffic, I was able to listen to Dean Blunt’s Black Metal 2 on my headphones cycling. The album is absolute perfection. It goes superbly well with some of the back roads around the Kerry Head peninsula. I could talk all day about the shows I’ve seen him do. He has these insane set-ups. He played in Dublin’s Sugar Club where the first 20 minutes was total darkness with really loud water sounds. Nobody does shit this brave.
If there wasn’t Adam Curtis [UK documentary maker], who would we have? He’s as important as Bill Hicks. I find it endlessly reassuring that someone goes there, exposing contradictions, like he does in his television series.
All the unbelievable steps that he has to take to reach into those parts of his documentaries and connect them up. From what I can gather, he has total control over his material. He is the main researcher and the main editor. It seems like a gargantuan task. We so badly need people like him. He’s out on his own.
State Funeral by Sergei Loznitsa is a documentary that popped up recently. I’ve watched it and re-watched it. When Stalin died in 1953, the entire state operation clicked into gear, filming everything, going to every part of the Soviet Union. You see this unbelievable moment in time, unfiltered.
The people were compliant. The faces are so revealing and so present because they’re mourning. It’s all very raw. It depicts the fervour, the amount of people who filed past the coffin, the manufacturing of grief by the body politic. It’s engrossing. It was a crazy moment. Massive change was about to happen, but what was really evident was the spell he cast. You can see people were entranced by this myth.
The photographer Richard Mosse’s work is gobsmacking visually. I went to Kilkenny this year to see an exhibition of his show, Incoming, which is about the ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. He goes from subject to subject, from the refugee crisis to climate crisis, and country to country – the Congo, Brazil, all over.
He uses all sorts of technology – infrared cameras, industrial cameras, surveillance cameras. There’s a purpose to his work. It connects up everything that’s happening in the world. He somehow manages to make art and storytelling a way into these worlds. He’s phenomenal.
I have a huge connection with Barcelona. Trips to the place [especially in the 1990s] really inspired me. There’s magic in the city. My time there opened me up to painting, a journey that culminated in going to see a Joan Miró show at London’s Tate Modern about 11 years ago. They had about 20 rooms.
You went from the very beginning, all the way through every phase, every tributary of his career. It felt like you went inside the man. It’s probably the greatest exhibition I’ve ever seen.
