Down to the
Tiger in Long Eaton to see
Len Graham... what struck me overall on this excellent gig was the infinite flexibility of the human voice. Tonight I encountered a battery of solo singers, one story teller and one duo, stripped of accompaniment, delivering an eclectic variety of material from the traditions of the British Isles/Ireland and beyond. Which might, to a casual observer, seem somewhat arid – but believe me it was not. The diversity of songs was matched by the wide tonal ranges of the voices, tonight predominantly male but leavened by the compere, Corinne Male (ha!) and Jackie Perry who sang in tandem with Nick Burdett – demonstrating my point: Corinne, lyrical yet with a raw emotional edge, Jackie a harder, harsher granularity, well suited to the rugged rawness of the hunting song 'Swartfell Rocks' and balanced by the deep baritone warmth of her partner. So: a fascinating, wide ranging swing through sonic field and narrative content. Humour, tragedy, weirdness, especially – the ghosts that loom out of those bizarre old ballads to cross the centuries alongside the familial abuse, violence and murder – merrie olde England this ain't and wasn't. Performed with sensitivity, buttressed by deprecating wit and good humour that floats easily on a collective reservoir of deep knowledge. A special club, then, to be able to front any gig with such firepower from their ranks. As I didn't catch a couple of the names I won't give a list of the singers because they were all that good...
If the locals provided a feast, what of Len Graham? A guy who has been around, from when he grabbed a rucksack and guide to the Youth Hostels of Ireland North and South in the sixties and hit the road 'in the quest for song and fun.' Ireland, of course, lived nearer to its traditions with such a small population (due to the linked devastations of famine and exile), unlike the cultural dislocations caused by the Industrial Revolution in the U.K. and the movements from the land to town and city. The lines of dispute are of course there – only the most deluded paddyphile (bejasus) would refuse to acknowledge their existence. Yet by stepping back into the tradition, or diagonally, even, Graham avoids getting snared in these thorny issues. Even his overt reference to wider conflicts in the song ' I wish that the wars were over,' that memorialises the sacrifices that North and South made during both the World Wars of the twentieth century, by coming from a different angle makes a wider point that transcends mere sectarianism. Interestingly, the last time I was in Dublin, my old buddy Jon to me the War Memorial Gardens that commemorate the 49,000 or so Irish soldiers who fell in the Great War. We were chatting to the attendant who took us inside to view the books with the names of the war dead. The first one I saw gave an English address in East Leake – a spit from where I am sitting writing this. It gave me an odd frisson... The attendant said that not many people ever came out there, which was hardly surprising I suppose – the 'terrible beauty' of the Easter Rising still maybe overshadows the tragedies of the Somme for obvious reasons in the founding of a new state. Perhaps Len Graham, as an Ulsterman, can stand slightly to one side of these controversies. By celebrating the cultures of both North and South, arguably he makes a subtler point...
Thinking about polarities again – if the late Luke Kelly, say, whose wounded, vulnerable raw power splashed his emotional delivery right in your face – and this not a criticism, rather an approximate attempt at delineation, because I loved his singing mightily – can stand on one point of the continuum, Len Graham, perhaps, would be somewhere opposite. Graham is a subtle artist with a high pure lyricism and easy delivery, that hints at hidden power to spare, maybe something to do with the Ulster culture and accent, a certain closure, a slight throttling back. The emotion is there, sure - as Yeats said: 'Great poetry is not possible without passion' - but holds the songs together on a different level under the surface of the narratives, woven into the folds of the words in a cunning blend. His introductions are just as important to the overall performance, simultaneously amusing and erudite, the sharpness of his intellect covered by the warmth of his demeanour. Finely honed skills that add value to the individual songs by placing them in the wider context(s) of the traditions they come from. For a brief period of time the audience is taken into another world, a coherent topos where older voices co-exist with the contemporary, or rather step out to bear witness to times and people and places long gone – but still familar. Songs of sport: 'The Galway Races,' of exile, lost love and regret – 'The Bourlough Shore,' celebrations of simple joys in spinning lines of bantering nonsense: 'The Crocodile' and the sly double-entendres in 'The Taglioni.'
To say that a performer takes you on a journey is a cliché, certainly – but Len Graham offers this to his audience, an opportunity to travel on an elliptical trajectory where the subtle relations between story and songs conjure up a landscape and its various peoples grounded in the realities of history and life lived but laced with, perhaps, a utopian yearning... Fanciful – yep... but that was the feeling I came away with. The encore gave the flavour of the man... 'The Parting Glass,' that perfect but admittedly overdone song of farewell over the last drink - here sung in a totally different version (to me) - Graham providing a subtle spin on the familiar which serves as a paradigm for his artistry...
It was that good...
With regard to my reference to Owld Luke:
Contrast and compare...
Len
and
Luke with Paddy Kavanagh (and the young Al O' Donnell).
