Speech Project by Gerry Diver.

In the evenings when there is nothing on the TV worth watching, which is quite often, I usually listen to BBC 6Music on the radio. Often, I don’t pay much attention, but occasionally I hear something that makes me stop and listen. A week or so ago Tom Robinson played a track called My Margaret by Gerry Diver. It featured the voice of an Irish lady talking about the death of her mother. I found the combination of the voice and the music had a mysterious haunting quality which made me want to find out more. I found out that the woman who was speaking was the Irish singer Margaret Barry and her words were taken from a 1953 interview she gave to the musicologist Alan Lomax. In case you haven’t heard of Margaret Barry, she was born in Cork in 1917 into a family of travellers and street singers. As well as singing she also played the banjo and fiddle. By the 1950s she was so popular that she even sang at Carnegie Hall in New York. She was a huge influence on later singers such as Luke Kelly of The Dubliners. I also found out that the track was on an album called Speech Project released in 2011. When I learned that the likes of Christy Moore, Shane MacGowan, Damien Dempsey and Martin Hayes contributed to the album I decided to order a copy which arrived yesterday.

Gerry Diver.

Gerry Diver is a multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and producer who was born in Manchester to an Irish family. He studied the violin at university in Cork with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. The idea for this project came about when he heard an interview with the accordionist Joe Cooley and was struck by the musicality in his speech. He noticed that Joe’s voice drifted in and out of musical notes like a slip jig reel. In the interview with Joe made shortly before he died in 1973, he talks fondly about the eighteen years he spent in the USA. This forms the basis for When In New York which is one of two tracks here with Joe’s voice. The other is called Old Time Musicians. Gerry takes key phrases from what his subjects say and then loops them in a kind of cut and paste technique throughout the music he composes inspired by their words.

Christy Moore is featured on two tracks called Fulham Broadway and Million Times. I have always thought that Christy has a very musical lilting speaking voice. You can hear it on such songs as Lisdoonvarna or Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains on his album Lily, so his voice lends itself perfectly to this project. Damien Dempsey is featured on a track called Feel No Pain where he talks about the spirituality of music, and says that atheists are rarely good singers. One of the longest pieces is Music For Tape Loop in which Shane MacGowan talks about the Irish diaspora. Another person with a very expressive voice and a way with words is the fiddle player Martin Hayes who I know from his work with The Gloaming. He talks about the importance of authenticity in music, on a track called Sincerely Felt. The fiddle player Danny Meehan recites a W.B.Yeats poem The Ballad of Father Gilligan on a track called Famine. The album ends with House Ceilidh in which Margaret Barry recounts how after she had been at a fair, she would be invited to someone’s house. The furniture would be pushed back and there would be singing and dancing until 7.00 in the morning.

The music composed for this album includes violins, viola, dulcimer, guitar, harpsichord, recorder, whistles, bodhran, cello, bones, flute and pipes. The only name I recognised from the musicians was Gerry’s wife Lisa Knapp who also provides vocals on one track. I’m pleased that I bought this album. I think I might be biased because I come from an Irish background, but I have thought that Irish speaking voices are very suited to musical accompaniment, ever since I heard Ronnie Drew on the Celtic Poets album by Jah Wobble. Well done to all concerned in the making of Speech Project. I have shared House Ceilidh to this blog page to give you an idea of the album.