Tuning in the new year

“The only truth is music”
- Jack Kerouac.

Unlike most couples Bernie and Antóin Mac Gabhann can’t remember the exact time and date they met up for the first time.

Now married for over 40 years they were part of a small but steadily expanding traditional Irish music scene in Dublin in the late 1960s and ‘70s; like-minded people who met up to play music and dance on a regular basis. Because they loved it.
Bernie, an accomplished Irish dancer and Antoín, a talented fiddler, evolved into a relationship that blossomed and has clearly remained strong over the years.
“We don’t really know how we met, we just seemed to have been always there,” Antóin says with his characteristic laugh, Bernie smiling in agreement. “We would have met long before we ever went out, we were just a part of a crowd that would gather every week, there was never one meeting.”
Now they have a family of four - Séan (a local Fianna Fail councillor), Áine, Bernadette and Caitlín Bríd - and a troupe of grandchildren.
They also have the music and the dancing. Always the music and dancing. It was those activities brought them together; helped them forge a fellowship of friends and acquaintances in places like America, Australia and Japan. As a fiddler Antóin is known far and wide. Bernie is the same when it come to Irish dancing.
When the Meath Chronicle visited their home at Baltrasna, near Ashbourne early one morning last week the couple were up and about and busy making plans.
A retired Civil Servant, Antóin - who is originally from Mullahoran, Co Cavan - is rarely short of something to do and he had requested an early morning meeting so that he could attend to some assignments later on.
Despite the early start a fire burned in the stove and there was a real, warm Irish welcome with non-alcoholic punch among the refreshments offered.
In the corner was a glittering Christmas tree while the walls were festooned with pictures of family members, their musical instruments in their hands. Music is as much a part of the Mac Gabhann clan as the bricks and mortar that make up their home.
Their bungalow, located between Ashbourne and Ratoath, has become something of a landmark in traditional Irish music circles.
On the first Saturday of every year musicians and their friends gather in the Mac Gabhann front room for a night of ceol agus craic that continues into - what Van Morrison describes in his song ‘Memories’ - as “the wee, small hours.” It has by now surely become one the largest domestic music gigs in the country.
The New Year ‘housedance’ first started as soon as the Mac Gabhann’s set up home in Baltrasna in the mid 1970s. Since 1995 the music played at this now well-established annual event has been recorded live by RTE as part of Kieran Hanrahan’s popular ‘Ceili House’ programme - and 2017 will be no different.
While she grew up in Dublin Bernie Mac Gabhann’s people are from Clare. Her aunt Josie used to hold a housedance at her home on Longwood Avenue, off the South Circular Road on the first Saturday of every year for country people who didn’t make it home for Christmas. When they moved to Meath the Mac Gabhanns kept up the tradition.
Early on Saturday morning, 7th January, the Mac Gabhanns will start moving their furniture out of their front room which for a few hours later that night will become a temporary studio. Even the doors will be removed from their hinges to make extra room.
Up to 80 or 90 people will cram into their house, their cars filling up the family’s ample garden at the back. By the time the first notes waft their way off Antóin’s fiddle for the first tune of the evening there will be standing room only - at least for the audience.
“The musicians will be here and they have to work, by and large, without floor microphones so RTE will fit microphones onto the lamps and the curtain rails,” explains Antóin. “It’s the first Ceili House programme of the year, every year. The musicians come in about 8pm so RTE get a very quick sound check but there’s no room for rehearsals, nothing like that.”
Once the introductions are done it’s live; there’s no going back. “This is the great thing about it,” adds Antóin. “When you’re live it must work, all who are involved are very focused, a soundman just can’t say: ‘Lets do that again.’ You get ready and you go. That’s it.”
But it’s not totally an impromptu session. To help keep a certain freshness Antóin picks a new set of tunes each year. A couple of weeks before the session he will send the list of tunes to the musicians he expects to attend. Usually it’s the same core of players that shows up year in, year out.
The Mac Gabhanns don’t send out invitations but neither are people turned away. Anybody who is anybody in the Irish music scene has played or danced in their very own trad-fest over the years.
At one time the housedance at Baltrasna was part of a series of similar events that took place in homes across Meath and Kildare. “We would go to theirs and they would come to ours and there were one or two rules made at the very start at that time. One of them was that there would be no alcohol. People can’t dance or play with a bottle in their hand,” adds Antóin.
“The other one was that people who are having the housedance would not provide any food because some houses would tend to do a good spread and other houses might be afraid and say: ‘Well, I couldn’t do that,’ so they wouldn’t have it.”
People come from far and wide for Mac Gabhann’s gig. Some years ago two devotees of Irish trad came all the way from Japan, where the Mac Gabhanns have performed. The Japanese duo flew to Ireland on a Friday, attended the housedance on Saturday night before starting the very long trek home again the following day.
Antóin and Bernie see their housedance as one of the ways they can help foster traditional music and dance. It’s a mission they have been on all their lives - and nobody can gainsay the significant contribution they have made.
Antóin’s contribution has been recognised in a number of ways including the awarding to him of the prestigious ‘Gradam Speisialta’ which he received at the Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in Clonmel. Also included in his extensive CV is his part in setting up Gaelscoil na Cille in Ashbourne in 1981. Then there was his role in the formation of the Ashbourne branch of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann where countless young musicians have discovered the charms of trad music.
Two years Bernie she appeared before 6,000 people in Paris as part of the Irish Celtic Spirit of Ireland show. This fittest of grandmothers didn’t realise just how many people were there until the houselights went up at the end. It was part of a gruelling 59 shows in 60 days schedule.
“Initially you can only see about four rows in front of you, the music starts, and you hit the floor in spots. You know this is your opportunity. This is what my parents were born for, they handed this onto me and please God I’ll hand it on. I HAVE handed it on, all ours are lovely dancers and musicians thankfully,” she adds without the least hint of arrogance or boastfulness.
The Mac Gabhanns are simply too decent; too true to themselves and their tradition, to be anything but genuine.