Diarmuid Ó Meachair: 'People follow you from any place in America or Europe — it’s all about accessibility'
Diarmuid Ó Meachair's summer festival schedule has featured the Catskills Irish Arts Week, Minnesota Irish Music Weekend, Maine Celtic Celebration, Milwaukee Irish Fest, plus house concerts including one in Peaks Island off Portland.
Diarmuid Ó Meachair has his bags packed for another transatlantic flight. Crossing continents has become the 2022 TG4 Young Musician of the Year’s way of life, playing in Clare one week and New York’s Catskill Mountains the next, with just enough time in between for a pit-stop at home in Cúil Aodha.
It’s a musical journey that has taken the Cork accordion and melodeon player to Boston and Maine, Louisiana and Québec, playing at festivals, concerts, and gatherings. A sean-nós singer, he also fits in university lecturing in Worcester, Massachusetts and is undertaking a research masters at the University of Limerick.
On both sides of the Atlantic it’s a demanding schedule, requiring versatility as much as an organised diary. “If I go to Louisiana all they want to hear is melodeon, whereas there would be places in London or Ireland where if I don’t have a two-row accordion, forget about it,” he says.
“In Milwaukee I’m going from playing the melodeon to the Puball Gaeltachta, where I’m giving Irish language workshops and singing sean-nós, so that kind of variety’s great – I love it.”
His summer festival schedule has featured the Catskills Irish Arts Week, Minnesota Irish Music Weekend, Maine Celtic Celebration, Milwaukee Irish Fest, plus house concerts including one in Peaks Island off Portland.
If he’s living the dream as he begins his fourth year of a career break from teaching, Ó Meachair is following a well-trodden route to North America taken by many of the musicians who influenced his playing.
A century ago, waves of emigration had made America a hub for Irish traditional music. New York’s dancehalls hopped to high-speed tunes as a flourishing 78rpm recording industry brought the music to new audiences among the diaspora and back in Ireland. Hundreds of recordings were made by the likes of Sligo fiddlers Michael Coleman, Paddy Killoran, and James Morrison and had a profound and lasting impact on the style and repertoire of Irish musicians worldwide.
It was the recordings made in America during that era by US-born John J Kimmel, Waterford’s Flanagan Brothers, and Galway native Peter (PJ) Conlon that would become major influences on Ó Meachair’s playing.
“In America I really went into a Peter Conlon phase – I’ll always be in a Peter Conlon phase,” he laughs. “The man and his music has such a control on the way I try and play tunes, that no other way will do. There’s a particular phrasing in the way he played,” he adds, crediting a compilation of 1917-1929 recordings, as the album that “changed my life”.
His UL masters research focuses on those early Irish-American melodeon recordings, particularly by Kimmel and Conlon, and Ó Meachair hears their influence on many of the musicians he meets on his travels, especially in Québec.
He is a frequent visitor to the Canadian province and derives “great enjoyment out of getting to know musicians in Québec and Louisiana because they play the same instrument as me, the single-row melodeon. I know those players and they know me because we’ve seen [each other’s music] online so that barrier is broken down,” he adds.
Just as the coming of 78rpm records revolutionised the dissemination of music in Conlon and Kimmel’s day, the internet has brought its own change by providing instant worldwide access.
“The music that younger musicians nowadays are playing or that really grabs their attention is music that’s easily accessible for them on different apps or social media video, as opposed to having to search for it through private collectors or archives,” says Ó Meachair, noting the wider reach a live recording of his achieved when released on social media.
“People follow you from any place in America or Europe; they hear the video and then they might go and listen to the album – it’s all about accessibility.”
Back in Ireland, access was face-to-face at last month’s Willie Clancy Summer School, where he was passing on the tradition to young accordion players at Quilty GAA Club in the same room where, when first attending the festival’s classes, he was once taught by Breandán Ó Beaglaoich.
Ó Meachair, who has three studio albums to his name, returns to Clare for the Trad for All festival in Doolin on November 27-29, launching an album he recorded with fiddle player James Cullinan, who passed away last year.
He has also made as-yet unreleased recordings with his younger brother, uilleann piper Éamonn Ó Meachair, with whom he plays at Glór, Ennis, on November 26, before appearing at The Gathering in Killarney with Andrew Caden in March.
