Traditional Irish music and traditional owners
BY LLOYD GORMAN
MOST MUSICIANS ARE BORN INTO THE WORLD OF TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC. OTHERS DISCOVER IT LIKE SOME FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR COUNTRY. STEVE COONEY IS ONE OF ITS GREATEST EXPLORERS AND EXPONENTS. AND AS HE TOLD RTE PRESENTER MIRIAM O’CALLAGHAN ON HER SUNDAY MORNING PROGRAMME ON MAY 2, HIS JOURNEY WAS A HOMECOMING OF SORTS THAT HAD AN UNUSUAL STARTING POINT. “I was born and grew up in Melbourne, Australia” he said. “I didn’t know much about Irish culture at all, I didn’t know any Irish music until I was 28”. He was separated from his Irish heritage for good reason. “My father had grown up from an Irish Catholic family in Manchester. His mother died in the TB epidemic in the 1920’s and his father brought him to Australia to escape the TB and to get the fresh air in Australia, so they came for the health. I remember my father saying the first time he saw oranges and bananas and fresh fruit was when he came to Australia. They were a Republican family. His aunt kept a safe house in Manchester but he fell out with my mother who was from a staunch line of protestant ministers and that didn’t go down well with his father, my fathers father. He was disowned and subsequently we were disowned for having a Protestant mother so I grew up as part of the schism between Protestants and Catholics.” While it might be seen as an excessive reaction by today’s standards, Cooney knows that it was not uncommon in Ireland or even here in Australia for feelings to run that strong over the religious divide. “The Catholic faith was very strong and when you think about the Famine and people not taking 28 | THE IRISH SCENE
the soup and they would rather die, condemn their own families to death rather than convert their religion, shows how strong that was. So my dad said he was an Australian, an egalitarian society and he put his Irish heritage into the background because it was hurtful to him I suppose and thats one reason why I needed to come here and discover that heritage.”
