Monday, December 19, 2011

Holiday Update :

 
Breaking News :

The United Working Elves Union of the North Pole, (local#42) have called a strike against Santa Claus & Claus Inc., citing sweat shop labor ethics of the Claus & Claus Inc., unpaid wages, cuts on Health benefits, and an abusive drunken supervisor bedecked in jolly red suit and white beard, who is often absent or sleeping off a hangover in the janitors closet.....Additionally,word on the street is that Santa Claus has absconded with the Tooth Fairy.....Rudolph and his Rednose reindeer were not available for comment.

I'll keep you posted on all developments.....


Monday, December 12, 2011

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents :
Santa Gone Fenian !














  http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/


FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ CIARAN MURPHY, and Mike Walker of THE McGILLICUDDYS !
    http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/





As well as lots of Fenian classics, and new tunes by Aine Fox, Athenrye, Martin Whelan, The Larkin and Moran Brothers, The Kreellers, The Fisticuffs, Kilmaine Saints, Dropkick Murphys, Siobhan, Blood or Whiskey, Cruachan, Kelly’s Men, The Dubliners, The Wolfe Tones, The Gentlemen, Shane MacGowan, The Wakes,


And tons more !


http://www.archive.org/details/RRGSantaGoneFenian/

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

IN REMEMBRANCE OF VOLUNTEERS WILLIAM FLEMING & DANNY DOHERTY

 William James Paul Fleming and Danny Doherty were volunteers in the Derry Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army from the predominantly republican "Top Of The Hill" area of the Waterside, Derry, Northern Ireland.

Willy Fleming and Danny Doherty were killed in a pre-meditated British ambush in the grounds of Gransha Hospital by the SAS and 14 Intelligence Company soldiers of the British Army on 6 December 1984.

 On 6 December 1984, Fleming and Doherty were driving a motorbike into the grounds of Gransha Psychiatric Hospital, approximately 4 miles from Derry City Centre. The hospital was also the administrative headquarters of the Western Health and Social Services Board. It was reported at the time that the pair were at the hospital in an attempt to execute an off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment who worked at the hospital as there was a shift change at the hospital at 8am.The SAS unit were aware that an IRA operation had been planned to take place in the vicinity of the hospital after receiving a tip-off. An SAS unit from the "Londonderry Detachment of 14 Intelligence Company", without the knowledge of the RUC or the hospital authorities, were on duty at the hospital for two weeks prior to 6 December, however they had little prior information as to the details of the operation.

At 8 am an unmarked car driven by a member of the SAS rammed into the motorbike, dislodging Fleming from the pillion seat and causing it to go out of control. After Fleming had been knocked from the motorbike, two further SAS troopers shot him, claiming he was armed and posed a direct threat. The bike then mounted a kerb and threw Doherty to the ground. Forensic evidence showed that a further six shots hit Doherty while he was on the ground, and Fleming's autopsy showed that he had four gunshot wounds to his head and 56 to his trunk and torso. During the inquest into the shootings, the coroner stated that Vol. Danny Doherty had three gunshot wounds to the head and a further twenty one shots to his body. Proof of not an arrest, but a deliberate murder by the forces of the crown, simply because Volunteers Danny Doherty & William Fleming posed a threat to the forces of British occupation due to their uncompromising dedication to the Republican cause and the goal of a 32 County Socialist Republic.


 Volunteers Danny Doherty & William Fleming, unbowed and unbroken, they lived and died as Republicans and Irishmen. Remember them with pride.

 Beidh Ar La Linn.



Saturday, December 03, 2011

In Remembrance of One of Ireland's Finest Sons, Volunteer Antoine MacGiolla (Tony McBride)

29 August 1957 – 2 December 1984



R.I.P. Vol. Antoine MacGiolla, Tony McBride, one of Ireland's finest sons, Mac Giolla Bhrighde , a volunteer in the South Derry Brigade of the IRA.

Volunteer Mac Giolla Bhrighde served in the regular Irish Army between February 1975 and June 1979. In 1979, while on leave from the Irish Army and secretly holding dual membership of the IRA and the Irish Army, Mac Giolla Bhrighde was stopped by Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers near Magherafelt while in possession of a rifle. He was detained at Strabane RUC barracks and was later imprisoned for three years for this operation.


Mac Giolla Bhrighde, according to IRA sources quoted by journalist
Ed Moloney was noted for his hard line militarist republicanism. He is reputed to have backed a plan to form full time guerrilla units or "flying columns" based in the Republic, which would carry out four or five large-scale attacks in the north a year.

This approach was espoused by the militant Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade led by Padraig McKearney and Jim Lynagh, who wanted an escalation of the conflict to what they termed "total war". They were opposed by Kevin McKenna, the IRA Chief of Staff and by the republican leadership based around Gerry Adams, on the grounds that actions of that scale were too big a risk and unsustainable. The IRA leadership wanted a smaller scale campaign of attrition, supplemented by political campaigning by Sinn Féin.

After his release from prison Mac Giolla Bhrighde, who had made a number of friends and contacts in Norway, became involved in providing information for the Irish republican cause throughout Scandinavia. After returning from Norway in November 1984, Mac Giolla Bhrighde along with fellow volunteer, Ciaran Fleming, undertook their final operation.

In the early hours of Sunday morning on 2 December 1984, in cold sleety conditions, Mac Giolla Bhrighde and Fleming stole a Toyota van in Pettigo, County Donegal. The van was then loaded with 9 beer kegs, each containing 100 lbs of low explosives. They then crossed the border and travelled to Kesh, County Fermanagh. At the Drumrush Lodge Restaurant just outside of Kesh they planted a landmine in a lane leading to the restaurant and wired up a device which was connected to an
observation point. From there a hoax call was made in order to lure the British Army to the restaurant on the pretence that there was a firebomb planted within the restaurant.

Mac Giolla Bhrighde observed an RUC patrol car approaching the restaurant and gave the detonation code word "one", however, the mine failed to explode. There was another car parked in the car park which Mac Giolla Bhrighde believed to contain civilians, and he got out of the van from which he was observing the scene to warn the civilian car to leave the area.

According to the republican sources, when he approached the car, two Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers got out and commanded him to halt and drop his gun. Mac Giolla Bhrighde, who was unarmed, informed the SAS of this and then one of the SAS men stepped forward and shot him on his left side. He was then handcuffed and shot dead.

RIP Vol. Mac Giolla ! Beidh Ar La Linn !



Wednesday, November 30, 2011

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents : The Autumn Rebellion !






FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ Mike Mc Naughton of KILMAINE SAINTS (Pennsylvania), Kat Chish of  THE RAMSHACKLE ARMY (Melbourne), and French Folk musician, Steph Hoy (Paris, France)









As well as lots of Fenian classics, and new tunes by Padraig Mor, Pol MacAdaim, Ciaran Murphy, Derek Warfield, Mary Black, Larkin, Skerryvore, The Druids, The Rebel Hearts, The Fisticuffs, The Currency, The Prodigals, The Wolfe Tones, Eire Og, Sharky Doyles, Catgut Mary, Neck, Scary Eire, The Dreadnoughts, The Dubliners, The Tossers, The Vandon Arms, Mutiny, The Go Set, Mutiny, McAlpine’s Fusiliers, Roaring Jack, General Humbert,





And tons more !

http://www.archive.org/details/RadioRebelGaelAutumnRebellion_/

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Remember The Manchester Martyrs, November 23, 1867


The Manchester Martyrs are hanged in Manchester, England on Nov. 23rd, 1867, for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Fenians from police custody.

These men were :

William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin and William Goold O'Brien





In the early hours of the Eleventh of September, 1867, Colonel Thomas Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy were arrested in the centre of Manchester on a vagrancy charge. News of their arrest was immediately sent to Mr. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, as Colonel Kelly was the most prominent Fenian of them all, having only recently been confirmed as Chief Executive of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and as such was considered quite a capture.

On the Eighteenth of September, the two prisoners were conveyed from the Court House in Manchester to the County Jail on Hyde Road, West Gorton. The two Fenians were handcuffed and locked in two separate compartments inside the Police van, there was a posse of twelve mounted policemen to escort them.

On the journey, as the van passed under a railway arch, a man darted into the middle of the road, pointed a pistol at the driver and called on him to stop. At the same time, a party of about thirty men leapt over a wall at the side of the road and surrounded the van and seized the horses, one of which they shot. The police being unharmed offered little resistance, and were soon put to flight.

The rescuers after a vain attempt to burst open the van with hatchets, sledge hammers and crowbars, called upon Police Sergeant Brett, who was inside the van with the prisoners, to open the door. Sergeant Brett refused, thereupon one of the rescuers placed his revolver at the keyhole of the van and fired, at that moment Sergeant Brett had put his eye to the keyhole to see what was going on outside, the bullet passed through his eye into his brain and killed him. The door was opened from the inside and Cplonel Kelly and Captain Deasy escaped, never to be recaptured.

Other casualties were a police officer shot in the thigh, and a civilian shot in the foot. After a chase, the police made 29 arrests, including, they claimed, the three men who had fired the revolvers. By November, five of the men arrested for taking part in the rescue; William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larking; William Goold alias O'Brien, Thomas Maguire and Edward Stone, were found guilty and sentenced to death. Maguire was pardoned and discharged, Stone's sentence was commuted on the eve before the day fixed for his execution.

Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were publicly hanged on the Twenty Third of November, 1867.

A Memorial was erected to their memory in Moston Cemetary





Sunday, November 06, 2011

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents :
 The November Uprising !




FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/Kieran of GLASNEVIN (Glasgow), Johnny McKelvey of THE RUMJACKS (Sydney), and Paul Bruno of THE KREELLERS (Detroit) !
 
New and Old Tunes by Derek Warfield,  Matt McGinn, Mike Fox,  Chicago Reel,  The Irish Brigade, The Groggers, Roaring Jack, Wolfhound



 

Monday, October 31, 2011

Radio Rebel Gael Presents : The Samhain Sing Song !

It's a Halloween Hooley !

 http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael

FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ CIARAN MURPHY, Damaris Woods of THE YOUNG WOLFE TONES , and Keith Fay of CRUACHAN !!!

http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael
And Over Three Hours of New and Old Tunes by The Druids, The Prodigals, Bluestack, Athenrye, Auld Corn Brigade, The Popes, Neck, Dropkick Murphys







And tons more !



“If I was you I’d give that game up; it doesn’t pay a working-man to write poetry. I don’t profess to know much about poetry……I don’t know much about the pearly glint of the morning dew, or the damask sweetness of the rare wild rose, or the subtle greenness of the serpent’s eye --- but I think a poet’s claim to greatness depends upon his power to put passion in the common people.”





                        -- Sean O’Casey,  “The Shadow Of A Gunman”



http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael


Thursday, October 13, 2011

How Gary White Deer of Ada found himself on the Emerald Isle

Gary White Dear stands at the Irish Famine Memorial garden in New York. The artist, teacher and medicine man always wondered: What does being a Choctaw mean in an age when it seems anyone with a drop of tribal blood could declare themselves Indian? In the end, he found answers, but not on the reservations or anywhere he might have expected. He found them in Ireland.

   
   By HELEN O'NEILL, AP Special Correspondent, Tulsa World


Gary White Deer has spent a lifetime wrestling with his identity, his history, his sense of belonging.
Artist, teacher, medicine man, he has roamed the country — visiting elders, soaking up old stories and songs. He married a Kiowa woman whose family practiced traditional ways. He formed a native dance troupe, prayed at the sacred mound of Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, immersed himself in historic preservation groups, taught tribal history.


Still, he has always wondered: What does being a Choctaw mean in an age when it seems anyone with a drop of tribal blood could declare themselves Indian?

In the end, he found answers, but not on the reservations or anywhere he might have expected.

He found them in Ireland.

He found them in the parallel tales of history — of colonization and dispossession and poverty. And in the Irish love of the land and celebration of ancient places — like the Hill of Tara, ancient mythological seat of the High Kings, and Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old passage tomb carved with Celtic symbols that resembled some Choctaw signs. Even in the way the Irish struggled to preserve their native language, teaching it in schools, using it on road signs and documents, preserving rural Irish speaking areas called the Gaeltacht.

What if, he wondered, the Choctaw had managed to do the same?
___


At 59, White Deer is a genial, gifted artist whose life, until the early 1990s, had largely revolved around his paintings (boldly colored portraits of Choctaw in traditional dress), raising a family of seven, and cultural studies.

He knew little about Ireland other than "they threw a big party for St. Patrick every year." And then he met a group of Irish hikers at a tribal resort in Mississippi. He was working on an art commission. They had come to walk the historic "Trail of Tears," to worship at Nanih Waiya, and to offer a donation of $20,000 to the Choctaw nation.

White Deer was stunned. His own people commemorated the trail, but not like this, not with this determination to learn from the past and act on it.

The Irish-Indian connection, he would learn, dated back more than a century, to a nearly forgotten tale that unfolded in 1847.
"Black '47," the Irish named it, one of the worst years of the famine, which began with the failure of the potato crop in 1845 and lasted through the 1850s. More than a million people died of disease and starvation during An Gorta Mor — The Great Hunger — and another million fled on "coffin ships" to America.

A world away another sorrowing people heard their cries. Under President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Choctaw had been displaced from their homeland in Mississippi just a decade earlier and forced to march 600 miles to Oklahoma, thousands dying along the way. With memories of the Trail of Tears still fresh, they collected $170 — today's equivalent of about $8,000 — and sent it to the starving people across the sea.

The Choctaw donation was largely forgotten until the 1990s when Irish researchers discovered references to it and other small donations from around the world during preparations for the 150th anniversary of the famine. Today, White Deer says the tribe's extraordinary act was "like an arrow shot through time."

On both sides of the Atlantic, the story has changed lives, prompted donations to other starving nations, spurred Irish presidential visits and forged deep bonds between the Choctaw and the Irish.

Perhaps no one's life has changed more than that of Gary White Deer. And it began the day he met the Irish hikers in Mississippi.


Leading the group was a man named Don Mullan, a human rights activist, who had worked with nonprofit organizations fighting hunger around the world. At 53, Mullan brims with ideas, big ones, about combatting hunger and poverty and injustice — and about the power of history and symbolism to do so. And he gets things done. He counts Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sister Helen Prejean and Pele as friends.

White Deer found himself immediately drawn to Mullan and his mission. But it was the Irishman's personal story that impressed White Deer the most.

Mullan, who grew up in a working-class Catholic housing estate in Derry, Northern Ireland, was among the unarmed civil rights marchers fired on by British paratroopers on Jan. 30, 1972. Thirteen young men were killed on "Bloody Sunday" and the rage and pain that engulfed the province became a potent recruiting tool for the Irish Republican Army.

Mullan was 15 at the time. And yet he had turned away from violence, rather than embracing it like so many of his peers.

White Deer was impressed by Mullan's tireless energy, by his faith that nonviolent activism can effect real change. "Don has this genius for how the lessons of the past can be used to achieve real change in the present," White Deer says.

Mullan sensed a similar feeling in White Deer — in his drawings depicting the Trail of Tears, in his study of old tribal ways. He asked White Deer if he could use one painting — of a Choctaw mother and child in blowing snow — as an international symbol to fight world hunger.

The two men kept in touch. And in 1995, Mullan invited White Deer to join him on an annual 12-mile walk in County Mayo. Ireland's own "trail of tears" retraces the trek of hundreds of starving poor in a futile effort to beg the British authorities for help.
 


Mullan was well aware of the symbolism. Newspapers and television stations carried dramatic photographs of the reverential Choctaw, festooned in feathers and beads, bowing in prayer along the trail.

For his part, White Deer understood his role. But he was unprepared to feel so moved. In the desolate beauty of the rocky Mayo hills that seemed to bleed into the Atlantic, he felt "as if the spirits of the famine dead were walking alongside me."


White Deer began visiting Ireland almost every year, invited back by art groups, human rights organizations and environmentalists — anyone who felt the amiable Choctaw with his beads and his blessings could help them with their cause.

Irish people warmed to White Deer with his self-deprecating humor and quick ear. He picked up accents and expressions — "a soft day," ''a wee sec."


He visited schools and museums and pubs, appeared on Irish television and in a documentary about the famine. He planted a "peace tree" in Carrickfergus, where Andrew Jackson's father was born. He sipped tea with the American ambassador and met with the former President Mary Robinson at her official residence in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

On one memorable occasion he stood before a class of rapt students in Dublin, solemnly teaching them about the old native ways.

Suddenly he burst into song: "Oro Se do Bheatha 'Bhaile..."

It's an old Irish rebel song and the teenagers were momentarily stunned. Then they cheered and clapped and sang along.

White Deer — stranger, showman and spiritual muse — had captivated an audience once again.
___

White Deer clearly enjoys his minor celebrity status. But he insists there are deeper, more spiritual motivations for his visits. "Ireland," he says, "made me see my own history more clearly."

Nowhere was that more true than in Derry, where he was invited to create an outdoor mural in 1998. Although peace talks were under way to end three decades of conflict, the province was still a place of barricades, tanks and guns. White Deer recalls wobbling on scaffolding as he struggled to paint an image of a Choctaw woman, in traditional dress, cradling an Irish baby. A military helicopter buzzed overhead. A riot brewed below.

"This isn't an art commission," he thought. "It's a war zone."

And yet he felt at home in the hilly streets of Derry. The city reminded him of the historic oppression of his own people, and of the scrutiny he still feels today in places where he knows he is unwelcome.

He learned to understand the historic divide between the unionists who support British rule and the nationalists who are opposed. It prodded him to think about the divide amongst his own people — between those who favor more assimilation into mainstream American culture and those, like White Deer, who dream of returning to a more traditional way of life.

Back home in Ada, Okla., White Deer began writing about those ways, and teaching them in his class at Bacone College in Muskogee. With his boss, Joe Bohannon, who chairs the division of American Indian studies at the college, he formed a group called the Choctaw Snake Band, invoking the name of a 1900s group that advocated independence. The band hopes to revive the Choctaw language, to one day form a separate Choctaw state.

White Deer speaks and writes passionately about the band's lofty goals. But he is realistic. He knows that many will dismiss them as the self-serving rantings of someone who likes attention. Still, he says, he has to try. Ireland taught him that.

He has taught his Irish friends some powerful lessons, too.

"Gary has a real feel for the two worlds, the spirits of the past and the living and bridging those two worlds," says Aisling Meath a 49-year-old journalist and researcher who befriended White Deer on one of his early visits. Meath lives in Skibbereen in County Cork, a picturesque coastal town in the southwest whose devastation during the famine is immortalized in a song called "Remember Skibbereen." A large grassy field marks the spot where an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 famine victims were buried — wheeled in carts by dying relatives and dumped in a mass grave.

The field is just a short walk from Meath's house. Yet for years, she couldn't bring herself to go there. It was somehow too disturbing.

She visited the field for the first time last year, with White Deer. And she marveled at the irony — that it took a Choctaw from Oklahoma to make her confront the reality of her own history, right outside her own door. "There is something almost spiritual about his empathy with the land, with people, with history," Meath says.


Another friend, Joe Murray, co-ordinator for a human rights organization called Action From Ireland, witnessed that same empathy when he introduced White Deer to a remote fishing village in County Mayo in 2005. The small community of Rossport had made international headlines in its fight against plans by Shell Oil and other companies to build a natural gas pipeline through the area and a refinery nearby.

Five fishermen had been jailed after ugly confrontations with police. And now an entire community had rallied in support.

White Deer was astounded by the crowd that spilled into the parish hall one evening. People had traveled from miles, not just fishermen, but farmers and schoolteachers and businessmen. Yet again, White Deer wondered: What if my own people could muster such passion for our cause?
He prayed with the people of Rossport. And he promised not to forget them.
Back home, White Deer threw himself into efforts to raise money for the Mississippi Choctaw who lost homes in Hurricane Katrina. But he tapped donors for another cause too. In 2007, White Deer returned to Rossport and presented the fishermen with $8,000 — the equivalent of the donation the Choctaw people made to the Irish 160 years earlier.
"It was such a lovely gesture," Murray says. "Like a continuation of history, and so meaningful."
For his part, White Deer calls it a small gesture from the heart. He is speaking not only of the Rossport donation, but the historical famine donation, too. "It was just one dispossessed people reaching out to help another," he says. "They probably would be surprised at being remembered today."
It has become kind of mantra for White Deer. He has said it many times before — in Dublin, in Derry, in Mayo, at the Irish consulate in New York a few weeks earlier where he was a guest of honor at an evening to commemorate the famine.

He repeats it now, on a recent hot evening, sitting in the Manhattan apartment of an Irish friend. The place is filled with photographs and mementoes from Ireland. The windows are open and the city hums outside. It all seems a world away from White Deer's home in Ada, his travels through Ireland and his dreams for the Choctaw.
But White Deer doesn't think so. He believe it is all connected, like beads on a cosmic chain, like the flow of life.
White Deer has just spent two days traipsing around the city with a filmmaker from Dublin, working on a documentary about the Choctaw-Irish connection. Among other places, they have visited the Irish hunger memorial garden in lower Manhattan, a quarter-acre grassy hill with the remnants of a famine-era stone cottage imported from Mayo. Etched into the stone base is a reference to the generous donation by "the Children of the Forest, our Red Brethern of the Choctaw nation."

White Deer chuckles. He had never heard his people called Children of the Forest before. But he understands the power of symbolism and of myth. Ireland taught him that.

It was such a small gesture, he says. And yet the effects ripple to this day, across cultures, across decades, across the ocean.
Like an arrow shot through time.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Radio Rebel Gael Back w/ a Bang and A Whistle !

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents : Righteous Reels and Balladeers Bold !


 http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/


FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ Blair McEvoy of DUST RHINOS and Paul Holohan of WHISKEY STILL (formerly w/ DUBLIN CITY RAMBLERS)

And New and Old Tunes by Davey Arthur and The Fureys, Damien Dempsey, Blood or Whiskey, Dancin’ Knuckles, The Buskers, The Rebel Hearts, Bible Code Sundays, The Battering Ram, The Fisticuffs, The Tossers, The Druids, The Wolfe Tones,



And tons more !



http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/




I always carry gelignite; dynamite isn't safe.

Brendan Behan

Thursday, September 29, 2011


Ever-growing Banjo Burke Festival returns to the Catskills

By Toni Earls, The Irish Emigrant, Sept. 29th, 2011













... The late Joe "Banjo" Burke.



The Pride of Moyvane Céili Band.This year the “Irish Alps” celebrates the fifth annual Banjo Burke Festival, which will be held in East Durham, New York over Columbus Day Weekend, October 7-10. The gathering offers an opportunity to enjoy traditional Irish music, dance and hospitality amidst the beautiful fall foliage of Greene County’s Catskills.


The Banjo Burke Memorial Fund is a public charity founded to honor the memory of the late Joe “Banjo” Burke, a brilliant musician, singer and collector of songs who was also a well-known hurler in his native Kilkenny and at Gaelic Park.


The Fund helps to support Parkinson’s research, as well as Irish traditional arts and sports. The Banjo Burke Festival is the main event on the Fund’s schedule, and has grown into an amazing tribute to a man who was devoted to traditional music, song, and sport.

This year as always the festival will feature performances by gifted Irish musicians, singers, and dancers across the weekend. Various workshops will also be offered, giving aspiring and accomplished musicians alike a chance to study with the experts.


Bridget Burke, who was married to Joe for 22 years before he passed away in 2003, is one of the dynamos behind the festival and a member of the board of directors for the charity. She spoke with The Irish Emigrant, sharing her excitement about the upcoming weekend.


“Our festival is different, it’s not like some of the larger festivals,” Bridget said. “It’s small and intimate, with a great focus on traditional music.”


Those looking for a festival focused strictly on traditional music and song will find exactly that at the Banjo Burke Festival. The weekend will feature continuous performances at all participating local houses, offering fantastic traditional atmospheres whilst keeping all in attendance warm and dry.


“All of our events will take place indoors, so no one has to worry about the weather,” Bridget continued. “Our venues are smaller and more intimate - the festival is a grouping of smaller events in different houses, so there’s more of an ambiance, a closer interaction with the performers.”


Speaking of performers, those bringing their skills to the area over the weekend include [deep breath]: Brian Conway, John Nolan, Aine Meenaghan, John Whelan, Pauline Conneely, John Walsh, Rose Conway Flanagan, Joy Grimes, The Pride of Moyvane Céili Band (Margie Mulvihill, John Reynolds, Felix Dolan, Jimmy Kelly), Hearts Content (Tom Dunne, Linda Hickman, Iris Nevins), Ceol na gCroí Céilí Band (John Nolan, Linda Hickman, Brendan Fahey), Pat Kane, The Jameson Sisters, Lawson, and more. On top of this fabulous lineup, many surprise guests are also set to pop along, both on Saturday and Sunday.


“The workshops will also be small,” Bridget said, stressing the added value of such intimate gatherings for those eager to learn and improve. “Musicians will get far more attention from the teacher; it’s a wonderful opportunity for learning. Not only are there music workshops, there will be Céilí workshops, as well as set dancing.”

The organizers promise that even if attendees have only been onlookers to this point, know nothing about Céilí, or have tried it but still feel unsure of the steps, the classes will open up a whole new world to them.


Instructor Pat Kane is vastly experienced at teaching groups with mixed ability levels, and will pull in beginners whilst still challenging those with more experience. He has been dancing Céilí since the 1970s, and has been teaching Céilí at parties and festivals and as an artist in residence at schools in the Twin Tiers area of western New York and Pennsylvania for many years.

Ron Bruschi and Marie Newman will teach set dances, including pointers on footwork. This year’s festival will also feature conversational Irish classes, a new addition which will round out the Irish cultural experience perfectly.

If you would like to contribute to the legacy of the inimitable Joe “Banjo” Burke whilst learning more about Irish music, language, and tradition, head up to the Catskills this Columbus Day weekend and experience a different type of festival which mixes the best of performance, education and friendship.







For more information about the Banjo Burke Memorial Fund, festival registration, fees and the full festival schedule, visit JoeBanjoBurke.org.

Friday, September 23, 2011

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents :
Olive Green Battle Dressing (On Socialist Salad)

http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/












FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ Mick O’Brien of THE DRUIDS, and Alan Quinn of SHEBEEN

And New and Old Tunes by Girsa, The Rebel Hearts, Emish,  Wolfhound,

And tons more !

http://spinxpress.com/bronxgael/


  
http://www.archive.org/details/RadiorebelGaelOliveGreen_/

“Rise up the Starry Plough in James Connolly's name

Rise up the Starry Plough for his glory and his fame

He joined the Transport Union , so workers could be free

He fought for Irish Freedom, for the likes of you and me

James Connolly came from Scotland , a Rebel to the core,

He wanted not just freedom , but Socialism and more

He said when we gain our Freedom , from England's cruel hands,

We'll have to fight the bankers , we'll have to make a stand,

He held his life for liberty in the GPO,

He held his life for freedom , and he would not let it go

we'll the brits , they bombarded them and they smashed them brick by brick

He held his life for freedom, and the Socialist Republic

Connolly is a hero , and they shot him in a chair

They took him from the hospital, and those who were there

We'll they set his lips on fire, on that Easter morn

As the bullet pierced his heart , an Irish martyr was born

What will his legacy be , now in this land of mine?

Where nothing has a reason, and little has arrived

We fought the yeos in Wexford , we drove out the black n tans

Now we fight the bankers, and their greasy hands.”



- “Starry Plough” By The Druids

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Eoin Colfer to read from Plugged in Brookline Tuesday

- from the Irish Emigrant, Monday Sept. 12th, 2011
Best-selling Irish author Eoin Colfer.
Best-selling Irish author Eoin Colfer.
Irish author Eoin Colfer, who wrote the bestselling Artemis Fowl series, will be in Boston Tuesday to promote his new novel Plugged, released in the US this month. Plugged deviates from the young adult fantasy genre of fairies, aliens and such, which has thus-far yielded sales of more than 12 million copies for the author.

Colfer’s debut novel in crime noir can be found on adult fiction shelves, and has already garnered praise from the New York Post, the LA Times, the Irish Times and the Guardian.

Contacted at his Wexford home, where he lives with his wife and two children, the 46-year-old author shared responses he has received to his new crime caper as he readied to embark on a US tour.

So far the reviews and public reaction have been really good,” he said. “People are surprised, and that is the best result I could hope for.”

As with his Artemis Fowl series, Plugged brims with humor. Colfer’s fans can expect the same wit and hilarity in Plugged as is found in his young adult literature.

I don't expect people to take anything from Plugged other than a couple of hours of chuckling, hopefully in a public place where they will be trying to hold the laughter in,” quipped Colfer.

“Sometimes people just laugh on the inside, so I won't be offended if they keep a straight face while reading.”

Plugged stars the affable Daniel McEvoy, who has served in the Irish Army and has recently landed a job as a bouncer at a sleazy strip club in New Jersey. After his girlfriend is found mysteriously murdered, Daniel finds himself way over his head in a corrupt underworld, suddenly dodging bullets as he becomes entangled with crooked cops and the New Jersey mob.

It is a fast-paced, ‘Walter Mitty, everyone is a little weird’ kind of book, and I would love to see people buying into that weird vibe for a few minutes on the train to work,” said Colfer.

After reading excerpts of Plugged at the Brookline Booksmith this Tuesday, Colfer will spend a bit of time in Boston before continuing his US tour.

“I’m looking forward to visiting Boston again, especially as this time I will have a couple of hours to stroll around and get my bearings. I like to walk cities that I visit and as a sea-side dweller myself I might even get a chance to take a ferry to Cape Cod,” said the Wexford man.


Eoin Colfer reads from Plugged at 7 pm on Tuesday, September 13 at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline. For more information visit brooklinebooksmith.com or eoincolfer.com.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

St. Fintan Sayeth : Don't Be A Heel ! Listen to Irish Rebel Rhythm & Reel !

RADIO REBEL GAEL Presents : The 11th Commandment : Thou Shalt Rebel !





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FEAT. Exclusive Interviews w/ THE FISTICUFFS and Leeson O’Keeffe of Irish London Psycho-Ceilidh Punk Legends; NECK !!!


And New and Old Tunes by The Rebel Hearts,  Athenrye, The Druids, The Mighty Regis,  The Wolfe Tones,



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“It’s anonymous….The anonymous stuff, from the really early times moves gradually on down through the centuries and into lyrics of Irish songs….The poetry doesn’t date either. It’s an oral tradition. It was an oral tradition, and started being written down in, I suppose the 16th century. But they were still (much earlier) carried by the people. They are all songs, really, all those old Irish poems. ‘The Midnight Court’ would have had a tune. Or it would have been lilted. That’s why Irish songs don’t date, because they come from the same tradition. That’s why I’d much rather be remembered as an Irish songwriter than a rock songwriter...Because it’s immortality. To have one of your songs accepted into the tradition is a real honour.”

                                                         —— Shane MacGowan