The family that sings together stays together… At least that’s true in folk music. Think of Waterson- Carthy and Seeger-MacColl. And last night at Cecil Sharp House, citadel of British folk music, Peggy Seeger and her sons Calum and Neill stepped out for a family concert.

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SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017

Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★  The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary things

Fresh from their triumphant return to the Royal Albert Hall last month, the Corrs – one of Ireland’s great Nineties exports – are back with a new album, the second since their 2015 comeback, White Light, and the seventh since their 1995 debut, Forgiven, Not Forgotten, thought it was Talk on Corners (1997) which made them international superstars. 

An underground American star since 2010’s Strange Cacti EP, Angel Olsen’s distinctive brand of indie folk-rock was propelled to new heights in both Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014) and then last year with MY WOMAN.

Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music, a catch-all term about which Peggy Seeger and her creative and life partner Ewan MacColl (they didn’t actually marry until a decade before his death) had strong feelings. Pete Seeger, Peggy’s half-brother and the legendary composer of “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, was more tolerant.

British singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey’s new album, Wake Up Now, is one of the year’s finest. However, there’s a moment on the single “Myela”, a heartfelt Afro-Latin stomper protesting the plight of refugees, which can grate. The song suddenly stops and female backing singers begin a nursery rhyme chant of “I am your neighbour, you are my neighbour”. On record it seems trite; however, in concert at this eye-pleasing, airy Bexhill-on-Sea venue, it’s transformative. Mulvey and his five-piece band use the sequence as a launch pad for a cosmic jam, before settling into a brief snippet of Gary Clail & On-U Sound System’s “Rumours” (“of war”).

The song is one of this concert’s highlights and Mulvey introduces it by deadpanning, understatedly, that “truth is not rampant” in the world in 2017. His music, by contrast, is fervent in its truth-seeking. It seems to be aiming towards a higher purpose and, at its best, achieves elevation. He may look quite ordinary in his jeans, black shirt, beanie hat and dark beard, but his skill with a guitar is revelatory, and his quiet demeanour is belied by moments when the music takes off to somewhere else. In a funny sort of way – and not musically – there’s something of the Grateful Dead about it all, but Mulvey and co. have not yet reached the place where four-hour jams are de rigeur.

The set runs through most of the new album, dips into his first album, and even includes an unreleased song called “The Doing Is Done” which effectively combines drone harmonics with an African chant aesthetic. His sound is very WOMAD, a stew of global styles, built around his voracious appetite for learning new guitar techniques from across the world. His band is there every step of the way, notably his wife Isadora on ukulele and backing vocals, his multi-instrumentalist sidesman Frederico Bruno, and, most visual of all (including the frontman!), the striking, blond-maned valkyrie Fifi Dewey on synth and scorching electric guitar solos.

The band leaves the stage to allow for a rather tentative campfire-style audience sing-along to Mulvey’s most recognisable song, “Cucurucu”, which he has to restart due to a cough, but is there to add texture to quiet beautiful songs such as “We Are Never Apart” and the new album’s stunning meditation on death, “When the Body Is Gone”. They don’t play one of Mulvey’s most popuar older songs, "Nitrous”, but they get away with it because there’s enough potency to keep everyone happy in new songs such as “Unconditional” and the encore-opening, enthneogenic ballad “Infinite Trees” ("Seems to me a galaxy is calling us/Calling us on and on/Calling us into its infinity”).

If I had a quibble, it would be that there’s sometimes a solemnity which adds occasional unfunky weight when this band make music that's elastic, wide-eyed and lighter than air. This could just be because it’s the last night of the tour and, in any case, it’s nit-picking. It’s a great gig, and it climaxes with the second best song of this year, “Mountain to Move”, so we’re sent off onto the wildly windswept seafront singing its ecstatic chorus, “Wake up now!”, an anthem for our times.

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Overleaf: watch the video for Nick Mulvey "Mountain to Move"

With their contrasting yet entirely complementary timbres and their ability to create textural palettes ranging from lonesome single notes to fulsome chords rich with harmonics, the combination of pipes and fiddle is surely one of the most potent in traditional Irish music.

That was certainly the case at this remarkable concert celebrating the work of the 19th century music collector, Canon James Goodman (1828-1896). A Protestant minister, Irish speaker and uilleann piper from Dingle, Co. Kerry, and later a Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin, Goodman’s passion for music saw him amass a vast collection of over 2,300 tunes and 90 songs, many hundreds transcribed from the playing of fellow piper Thomas Kennedy.

The music-making confounded your expectations with endless surprises

Bringing this wondrous collection from page to stage were two outstanding musicians, fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain and piper Caoimhín Ó Fearghail. Straddling the worlds of traditional and classical music, as much at home leading the Clare Memory Orchestra as she is performing with the Crash Ensemble, Ní Bhriain proved to be a stunning stylist, leaping around octaves and switching between tune playing and accompaniment in the blink of an eye.

From An Rinn in the west Waterford Gaeltacht and a recipient of the TG4 Young Musician of the Year Award in 2012, Ó Fearghail’s virtuosity and versatility – in addition to the uilleann pipes, he also sings and plays flute and guitar – has seen him in much demand by bands (Caladh Nua, Danú) and soloists alike.

Presented by Irish Heritage and the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in association with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and a year in the preparation, from the very opening bars of the march “Fáinne Geal an Lae”, a unique version of the well-known “Dawning of the Day”, the music-making confounded your expectations with endless surprises.

The slow air “Ceó Draoigheachta Sheól Oidhche Chum Fághain Mé” (“It was a magic mist that put me astray one night”) was a spine-tingling stand-out. Played first by Ní Bhriain, underpinned by Ó Fearghail’s single note drone on the root note of A, by the end of the final, unison, repetition the air had cast a powerful spell over the Cecil Sharp House audience.

As well as the more unusual, even unique, repertoire contained within the collection, such as the perky “Quadrille” (which irrevocably called to mind The Chieftains), it was fascinating to hear the duo play two of the best loved jigs in the tradition, “An Rógaire Dubh” and “Airgiod Caillighe” (a version of “The Hag with the Money”) and note the subtle differences in phrase endings when compared to the versions we know today.

The venerably ancient love song “Maidin Bhog Aoibhinn” and “Caitlín na Guaire”, the latter framed by the loveliest of instrumentals and grounded by a profound D drone in the pipes, hinted at what a treasure trove the collection is for any aspiring traditional singer.

Illustrating how the collection represents a living, breathing entity, rather than a museum piece frozen in time, the duo took poetic licence with a couple of hornpipes which they appended to the march “An Fhinne-Bhean Mhodhamhuil” (“The Gracious Fair Lady”), transforming the first into a captivating strathspey, complete with some bracing double-stopping from Ní Bhriain, and the second into a driving polka. Matching each other note for note, you couldn’t blow smoke between the players.

The evening began with a scene-setting introduction from the Director of ITMA, Grace Toland, and an instructive film by artist Michael Fortune which provided useful background on the collection.

Long thought lost, Toland revealed that the book of song lyrics Goodman transcribed was finally reunited with the rest of the collection in Trinity College in 2008 (having been discovered in an attic in England). Well over 150 years since his initial, painstaking transcriptions, the Goodman collection represents a priceless snapshot of tunes and songs as they were played and sung at the time in west Kerry.

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@MrPeterQuinn

Overleaf: watch Mick O'Brien, Emer Mayock and Aoife Ní Bhriain perform “Ceó Draoigheachta Sheól Oidhche Chum Fághain Mé”