Irish Music Made Me a Pilgrim

By Hinnerk R (Hinnerk Rümenapf) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29339404

I told my friend and fellow writer Cassi about Ireland the moment I learned about it. Not the country, of course. I had feasted - and fasted - on Irish music since I was a redheaded middle schooler after my dad gave me a VHS of Riverdance for for Christmas.

I watched it. And I was spellbound.

By the time I was a young adult, I had discovered Flogging Molly. With the rest of the CelPunk (short for Celtic Punk) fans around the world, I began a descent into what might be, as shorthand, called, "Drinkin' and Fightin' and Fightin' and Drinkin.'" This phrase itself came from another traditional Irish band, Shilelagh Law, based out of New York City and its suburbs.

Or I thought I was. Really, I was an introvert who loved playing The Sims.

Fast-forward 20 years and I found out about the trip of a lifetime on Facebook.

"Out There -- There's a World Beyond Yonkers, Barnaby...."

Irish music and Irish culture gave me a taste of the world beyond my hometown of Stockton, California. As an armchair traveler, I ambled up rocky cliffs, witnessed Border Collie competitions in the hill towns of County Mayo, and learned about the Troubles. All, or mostly, through music.

Even when I was on a Persian/Iranian culture kick, I would always return to my beloved Irish songs.

I ordered CD's through CD Baby commemorating Irish Republican armymen, even though I found the violence of the past painful, and distasteful.

Irish music took me away from - and peculiarly into - the spiritual realms that I was trying to escape in my day-to-day life. I was bullied throughout most of my youth. Ireland's painful history, mingled with its music's infectious joy in being alive, made me memorize those songs.

It was the perfect heartbalm for a troubled kid in their 20's.

The songs that resonated with me the most were pleas for peace:

"Walk away, me boy. Walk away, me boy. And by mornin' we'll be free.

Wipe that golden tear from your mother dear, and raise what's left of the flag for me."

I never really fought back against the bullies. And so, in the short-term, they had won. Being gossiped about and sitting alone at lunch haunted me. But I began to outgrow being angry.

Like the narrator of "What's Left of the Flag," Dave King's song about walking away from war, I sought peace. A troubled peace, but still peace.

The Irish are rarely simple.

And They'll Dance.

I hear the Irish spirit in Springsteen's yips. In the Canadian McGarrigle Sisters' longing for home. Hell, in Kesha (then and now).

From the dances that I've taken with Irish music, I have learned the mixture of sorrow with downright glee that has to be part of Irish culture. It's just too ubiquitous to deny.

It's there in the jigs with bitter lyrics. In the joy and fear of young Stephen Deadalus, James Joyce's stand-in for himself, when his family's getting close to coming to blows over politics, but with the the richest Irish turns of phrase that you'll ever hear.

The Pogues say it best:

"Where'er we go we celebrate the land that makes us refugees....and they'll Dance to the music and they'll DANCE."

And so will I.