Culture That Made Me: Liam Ó Maonlaí on his Cork connections and touchstone influences
Liam Ó Maonlaí brings Hothouse Flowers to Connollys of Leap in mid-August.
Liam Ó Maonlaí, 64, grew up in Clonskeagh, Dublin. In 1985, he co-founded Hothouse Flowers with Fiachna Ó Braonáin. In 1988, the band’s record, People, became the most successful debut album in Irish chart history. He has acted, and performed in numerous projects with musicians, including the 2008 documentary, Dambé: The Mali Project about his musical adventure at the Festival au Désert. Hothouse Flowers will perform at Connolly’s of Leap, Co Cork, August 16-17. See: www.connollysofleap.com.
My dad went to the same school, Farranferris, in Cork as Seán Ó Riada, probably in the same class. The first record we devoured in our house, and I still listen to it, is Seán Ó Riada’s live album, Ó Riada Sa Gaiety, recorded in 1970. He had Ceoltóirí Chualann with him, some of whom formed the Chieftains. He became interested in modern classical music. His vision was European, looking to Paris, Vienna and Berlin as cultural centres. However, he was also living in Ireland as it was re-dreaming itself. There were great musicians all over the country. He tapped into that. Mise Éire is one of his great orchestral works. He was the master.
The Ó Riada Sa Gaiety album has that element of energy that happens between a group of people making the sound and a larger group of people experiencing the sound. What crosses over would be the occasional applause and the hoops and yelps that are a lovely part of our tradition. It's a global thing. Go to many places where music is played, and a hoop or a yelp will be expressed. It’s like the duende in flamenco or the calls they have in Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a fantastic thing.
There's a famous summer holiday – Seán Ó Riada went to Corca Dhuibhne, West Kerry. He stayed in Seán De Hora’s house with his family. Seán De Hora was a great singer at the time. The earth moved when he sang a song. It didn't matter what song he sang, you knew you were in the presence of a great singer, of a great phenomenon of humanity.
Seán Ó Sé has a unique voice because he touches on the bel canto. He's a trained singer, which you don't get in Irish music. His voice has a pure tone. He didn't fall into the habit of using vibrato, which many singers like to do because it makes people think you're good. He has the Cork Gaeltacht spirit of fun in the way he sings a song. His voice is as pure and strong as it ever was. He himself is still in fine form. What a storyteller. Just an open, ageless individual.
The third song I ever learned was An Poc ar Buile. I didn’t know it came from Seán ó Sé because I learned it from my dad. As a kid, you're learning the world. I have memories of learning to speak and being taught words by my dad in Irish and in English through song. It was a clever thing my dad did in giving me Irish in song, as I was learning to speak, so that I could make my own formula.
There was one particularly hot summer in Jamaica. It could be an urban myth, but ska and other dancehall music forms were quite fast. They slowed them down and reggae was born. I heard word of Bob Marley and The Wailers. This guy was different, with the dreads. Once you got into Bob Marley: Live! there was no turning back – the musicality, the work that went into the arrangements, the formulaic aspects, the tribal aspect. The bass would always do one thing, the keyboard another. You had this machine, this system of polyrhythms going. When you fired it up, it was strong and on top of that style was place.
I got familiar with Thomas McCarthy in the last 15-20 years. He's a king. I saw him recently in Glastonbury. A night there can be magical. Glastonbury has a way of framing things. He was part of a magical night I spent there, sitting at the fire together. The most ancient form of performance is the storyteller. He embodies the storyteller. His presence is vital. He sits there. In a way it's not performance it's just being.
I grew up with punk. I’m drawn to authenticity and individuality. I love the way John Lydon has no time for anything. He had meningitis as a boy. He came out of a coma that lasted months. He had to learn to do everything again. The doctor told his mother: “Try keeping him angry,” which is not what you'd be imagining. “Anger is an energy” – that was the force of punk music. It gave a voice to the anger boiling under the surface of a generation. It had to explode. It had to shock. Shock was vital. If anyone generated that anger, it was Johnny Lydon. His dad was a Galway man. My mother is Lydon also. She always said we were related.
I saw Teac Damsa perform (Swan Lake) in Irish, with Slow Moving Clouds providing a musical backdrop. It was a combination of dance and satire, pointing at a dark time in midlands Ireland. Michael Keegan-Dolan used people, costumes and props to huge effect. Very subtle but effective. He's a master theatre-maker.
A novel I return to is The Bone People by Keri Hulme, a part-Māori New Zealand writer. Māori sensibility, Māori power, Māori artistry, Māori culture, Māori language is a big part of that book. It's so vivid. The places she takes you in the story are harrowing, inspiring, redemptive, hopeless, and redemptive again. It got the Booker prize in 1985. It's her only full-length novel. An incredible book.
Breandán Ó hEithir was a warrior of ’60s and ’70s Irish culture, a West of Ireland, Galway man. He was an intellect, a regular on television shows like Féach, the Irish political magazine programme. The old Gaelic way was that you built a house, wrote a book, fished, played music, you did everything. Breandán Ó hEithir was one of those people. He built a boat. He wrote a book, Lig Sinn i gCathú, which means “lead us into temptation”. It's a window into college life. It's based in Galway. It's got mad twists and turns in it, and great character detail. One of the great novels of the Irish language.
There are no words in the film Baraka. It's a portrait of peoples’ relationship with the Earth from the most profound, spiritual and cultural to the most debauched. You get pictures of people in their highest spiritual state to the lowest spiritual state. It's a beautiful document of the Earth, the land, the people, all the different colours, from strip mining to a Japanese monk sitting looking at his garden. It uses effects like time lapses. You get a real sense of the Earth moving around the sun and stars. It's very elemental. It says so much without saying a word. It's extraordinary.
