Article written about John in Ceol Tíre Magazine by Nicholas Carolan in 1981
Courtesy: Folk Music Society of Ireland
JOHN KELL PLAYING
FIDDLE AND CONCERTINA
Another Went Clare musician, but in the flesh, was the focus of an informal evening of music and musical reminiscence at a meeting on 31 January in 15 Henrietta St, Dublin 1. John Kelly, a master fiddle and concertina player who has lived for over thirty years in Dublin, acquired his basic musical style in his native district of Roehy, co. Clare, but has learned much music and lore from the musicians he has played with in his years in the city.
The tunes he played are for him closely linked to the places and people whence he learned them: the Flogging reel, a universal favourite at fireside and dances in his childhood; the Heather breeze reel, heard from Patsy Geary, a local professional fiddler at a feis in Kilkee in 1927; the Grand old dame hornpipe, learnt from a record played on a Victrola brought home from the States by ‘a Yankee woman’; Scandinavian dance tunes picked up by his sailor uncles;my Master grinds an organ, a modern tune taught to his mother at school and later heard from an organ grinder on the Dublin quays.
John first learned from his mother and uncles, concertina and melodeon players, and played the concertina himself from an early age. The half-crown instruments available in West Clare, generally bought from drapers in the towns, were of poor quality with paper bellows and bad keys and were often finished after one night’s bard playing. But their sound was preferred by dancers to that of the fiddle. Same dancers even preferred lilters.
John was fascinated by the first fiddlers he heard, but since fiddlers were so scarce in the locality, he had to wait for years before getting lessons and his first fiddle, which was gut-strung, ‘tuned to C’ and made by a local blacksmith. The Clare of his youth was ‘a gay country, very easy to start a dance, sets and singing and some porter’, although then as now there were ‘people with no music in them’. With the fiddle he often played at house dances six nights a week, although never for money.
People had little regard for professional musicians {‘catch-penny people’). Patsy Geary sometimes came in for rough treatment from some of the locals and once had his fiddle broken by them. Although Geary was married and had a house in the neighbourhood he spent much time travelling to play at weddings, balls in the tig Houses, and race-meetings. With his brother he regularly played his way around Munster, often returning with so much as ten pounds, this at a time when the average wage was a few shillings. He guarded his music jealously and didn’t teach his sons for fear they would break his fiddle.
Among the other tunes of his early days played by John were the Fermoyle lassies’ reel, the Ebb tide reel, the Bunch of keys reel, and some slides and polkas. These latter although commonly known were not esteemed. ‘The Clare dance was “the reel dance”‘.
Nicholas Carolan
