"Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist."

"Remembering Luke Kelly."

(this is a reprint, but a worthwhile one)

Granted, I mention Luke Kelly fairly often here at this pro bono publication. Pedantry suits me, and I'm grimly determined that readers know who he was and what he stood for.

Luke Kelly truly was a troubadour of the downtrodden.

THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.

Luke Kelly's last performance, 1983.

Entirely coincidental to the yearly arrival of St. Patrick's Day, the missus has been watching an Irish television series called "Striking Out."

Set in Dublin and Wicklow, it's a soap-opera about lawyers and their role in a political scandal connected to the real-world Irish property bust ten years ago, and the reason I bring it up is apart from the performers' accents, scenic drone panoramas of the local landscape and occasional pint of Guinness, there is little to set this drama apart from one situated in London, New York City or Shanghai.

I'm not necessarily objecting to any of this. After all, modernity. While my memories of Ireland 34 years ago are missing mobile phones, specialty coffee carry-out cups and nattily attired Eurofessionals, it is unreasonable to expect the planet to stop spinning while we revert to rural thatched Irish stereotypes of the sort embraced by people who don't actually live there, celebrating their St. Patrick's Days with green beer and car bombs.

Or by me, while reading this excellent account of Luke Kelly's political grounding and its musical context. This hero of mine died 35 years ago, and his country has changed quite a lot since then.

What hasn't changed is the power of ideas, or the way music can express them -- and I submit to you that this is why Luke still matters.

Ireland’s Red Troubadour, by Ronan Burtenshaw (Jacobin)

Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist.

... In this earliest phase of his musical development, he saw his socialism and his growing love for folk music to be inextricably linked. “The music of the left-wing,” he thought, “was romantic and rejuvenating.” As his talent grew Luke took to spending his weekend touring Irish pubs with the Connolly Association selling its newspaper The Irish Democrat. As one of its leading members Sean Redmond would recall to Des Geraghty, “the drill was quite simple. He would go up to the stage or music stand, sing a few songs, then announce that he was here selling the Connolly Association’s newspaper and he expected everyone to buy one.”

But by 1962 the paths of politics and music were beginning to diverge. Seeing great potential in his intellect and application, George Thompson arranged for Luke Kelly to go to university in Prague to further his political development. Availing of this opportunity would almost certainly have meant giving up his musical career—so a choice had to be made. Although still committed to socialist politics, Luke had by this time caught the folk music bug. He turned down the chance to study in Prague and packed his bags for a trip elsewhere, returning to his native Dublin as it was beginning to sway with the winds of the 1960s.

"Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist."

"Remembering Luke Kelly."

Granted, I mention Luke Kelly fairly often here at this pro bono publication. Pedantry suits me, and I'm grimly determined that readers know who he was and what he stood for.

Luke Kelly truly was a troubadour of the downtrodden.

THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.

Luke Kelly's last performance, 1983.

Entirely coincidental to the yearly arrival of St. Patrick's Day, the missus has been watching an Irish television series called "Striking Out."

Set in Dublin and Wicklow, it's a soap-opera about lawyers and their role in a political scandal connected to the real-world Irish property bust ten years ago, and the reason I bring it up is apart from the performers' accents, scenic drone panoramas of the local landscape and occasional pint of Guinness, there is little to set this drama apart from one situated in London, New York City or Shanghai.

I'm not necessarily objecting to any of this. After all, modernity. While my memories of Ireland 30 years ago are missing mobile phones, specialty coffee carry-out cups and nattily attired Eurofessionals, it is unreasonable to expect the planet to stop spinning while we revert to rural thatched Irish stereotypes of the sort embraced by people who don't actually live there, celebrating their St. Patrick's Days with green beer and car bombs.

Or by me, while reading this excellent account of Luke Kelly's political grounding and its musical context. This hero of mine died 34 years ago, and his country has changed quite a lot since then.

What hasn't changed is the power of ideas, or the way music can express them -- and I submit to you that this is why Luke still matters.

Ireland’s Red Troubadour, by Ronan Burtenshaw (Jacobin)

Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist.

... In this earliest phase of his musical development, he saw his socialism and his growing love for folk music to be inextricably linked. “The music of the left-wing,” he thought, “was romantic and rejuvenating.” As his talent grew Luke took to spending his weekend touring Irish pubs with the Connolly Association selling its newspaper The Irish Democrat. As one of its leading members Sean Redmond would recall to Des Geraghty, “the drill was quite simple. He would go up to the stage or music stand, sing a few songs, then announce that he was here selling the Connolly Association’s newspaper and he expected everyone to buy one.”

But by 1962 the paths of politics and music were beginning to diverge. Seeing great potential in his intellect and application, George Thompson arranged for Luke Kelly to go to university in Prague to further his political development. Availing of this opportunity would almost certainly have meant giving up his musical career—so a choice had to be made. Although still committed to socialist politics, Luke had by this time caught the folk music bug. He turned down the chance to study in Prague and packed his bags for a trip elsewhere, returning to his native Dublin as it was beginning to sway with the winds of the 1960s.

Luke Kelly's last performance, 1983.

In December, 1983, the gravely ill Luke Kelly appeared for the last time with the Dubliners, in a performance shown on Irish television. Kelly died of a brain tumor in January, 1984. The group continued to work until 2012, when it disbanded after the last surviving original member passed away.

The lovely song itself, with opening lines that seem to presage the singer's imminent departure, is a composite of several "night visiting" songs -- not from Ireland, but Scotland. Turns out Kelly's grandmother was a MacDonald. Truly, we never know where the music will take us.

For the past week, I've been listening to Dubliners songs, watching the group's performances and absorbing documentaries. I know already that in years to come, this song -- this performance of it -- will remind me of Christmas in the year 2015. Ultimately, we all must away.

If you'll excuse me now, I seem to have gotten something in my eye.

Luke Kelly truly was a troubadour of the downtrodden.

On the Dubliners, of whom I remain a tremendous fan these many years later ...

The American roots magazine Dirty Linen, contrasting the Dubliners and the Clancy brothers who emerged around the same time, wrote: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fistfights."

As an entity and institution, the Dubliners lasted a half-century, finally disbanding in 2012 after the banjoist and last original band member Barney McKenna died. Lineups changed, and the entertainment value never wavered, but in musical and cultural contexts, the salad days were 1962 - 1984.

During the first two decades of the band's existence, Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly were its Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards -- not in a songwriting sense, as the group performed the songs of others, but in terms of central focus.

Drew died in 2008, and the Irish Times explained his unique contribution to the Dubliners in its eulogy. Thirty years after Kelly's premature death, the Irish Post published a remembrance,explaining the  significance of the phrase I've chosen to title this posting.

A balladeer, musician and political activist, Kelly’s ability to sing ‘his heart out’ with ‘perfect diction’ in the words of Bono and the late Ronnie Drew bear testimony to the gift of his irreplaceable voice to stir and move the most hardened of souls with song and sentiment ...

... Luke often sang of the poor, the oppressed, the worker, the lover or the rebel – the realities of his own life and upbringing enlivened and gave weight to his songs and the emotional way in which he sang them. And his own childhood and youth was anything but privileged.

In this clip, Kelly sings one of his signature songs.

The documentary embedded and linked in this post was produced in 1999, but I only became aware of it earlier in the week. It is highly recommended.

Luke - A documentary on Luke Kelly (1999)

"Chop you down like an old dead tree."

This mid-seventies edition of the Dubliners was without its departed founder Ronnie Drew, who would later return to the fold, and Ciarán Bourke, who had been crippled by an aneurysm. But this is the beloved singer Luke Kelly's personal version, anyway. Ewan MacColl wrote the song, and a cover by the Pogues is better known to younger listeners.

This morning in New Albany, I'm singing "Dirty Old Town" along with Luke.