The Gloaming finally invents the long-awaited genre of gaelic jazz

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      The Gloaming plays deep green Irish music, though unlike any that you’ve heard before. The quintet that County Clare traditional fiddle legend Martin Hayes put together two years ago is by no means an Irish folk band. Its members include Afro Celt Sound System lead singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and U.S. pianist Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, who played the old tunes as a preteen in Vermont but now lives in New York and has carved out a career on the indie-rock scene.

      All the innovative elements in the Gloaming’s approach serve to reimagine the old music, at times reconstructing it from the inside out, teasing out the emotional essence. And that, for the most part, means slowing things right down. If you’re looking for the usual hell-for-leather Celts dashing through sets of reels, barely hanging on to the coattails of the melody—let alone adding feeling and ornaments—as they fly, then the Gloaming is definitely not for you.

      “From before the band started playing I knew we were all oriented that way, toward melancholy feeling, moody and evocative elements—all that stuff in relation to tunes, textures, and expression,” says Hayes, reached on tour with the Gloaming in Bremen, Germany. “In a way we don’t give a damn what the prevailing trends or ideas are in that regard; we’re simply following what seems to be the natural instinct of all of us. This isn’t music you can have as a backdrop. You have to listen in to get anything from it.”

      The Gloaming’s other members are Hayes’s long-time musical partner, acoustic guitarist Dennis Cahill from Chicago, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh from Dublin, who plays a unique variant of the Norwegian hardanger fiddle. According to Hayes, it’s a hybrid, more like a viola or five-string violin. “It’s got a unique sound, and in attempting to find the sweet spot on the instrument it brings you into a different tonal realm. So it immediately sets a contrast against the sound I make. Caoimhín alternates between colouring, improvising, and playing the melody.

      “He’s niched in there between Tom, Dennis, and myself as an agent who carries the melody along at one moment, then accentuates things one of us is doing. The connection between the melodic and the harmonic centres isn’t a clear-cut line, and the idea of backup doesn’t really exist. The harmonic world is interactive—it’s not like Tom or Dennis could lay down a chord and we’d just play what we were going to anyway. We wouldn’t. Their chords can be new information, and I’d think, ‘Maybe there’s some way I can respond, and maybe that reaction opens another door for Tom or Dennis.’ It’s process like that.”

      There’s a jazzlike feel and attitude to much of the Gloaming’s music. All the musicians provide the rhythm at different times. You can hear them listening intently to each other in the instrumental sections of “Opening Set”, an astonishing 15-minute track on The Gloaming that starts out with the superbly evocative Gaelic singing of Ó Lionáird, echoed by ringing fiddle.

      “I’ve known Iarla since we were young teenagers,” says Hayes. “When I teach music, even though I’m not a singer or a native speaker of the language, I encourage people to listen to this old singing, as a way of understanding how the melodies can be articulated. I find that the real depths of the instrumental music still lie in the vocal tradition. There are two ancillary elements—dance and voice. The vocal allows for the lyricism in the music, the emotion, and the expression. The dance is the full embodiment and the rhythmic power. I don’t play slow airs in the band—why would I? We’ve got one of the very finest singers in the Irish language to do that.

      “Iarla has the deep, ancient sound, but he’s also well capable of moving in quite a contemporary way,” he continues. “Those elements are blended into one. The Gaelic language ties them together—contemporary Irish songs and ancient sean-nós [old style] songs, going one after the other, without distinctions. It’s fantastic to be beside Iarla, because he sings completely and perfectly from his heart every night.”

      The Gloaming plays the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday (November 15).

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