An Irish music revolutionary
Liam Clancy is a Celtic folk hero
"There's two great things about turning 70," Liam Clancy says, his voice hushed and urgent. You can almost feel him leaning into the phone, whispering just to you, sharing secrets. Then you remember that's how he sings, too, before crowds of 50 or 50,000. And it's why he's the most important Irish singer alive, claimed as a primary influence by everyone from Bob Dylan to new Celtic stars like Cara Dillon.
"Number one is that you can't die young," he says. "Number two, you don't have to give a good damn. You're free: free of fear, of inhibitions, of ambitions. I love that."
He does not, however, think too much of touring anymore. He rarely leaves his home in Ireland, and his appearance at next weekend's ICONS Festival will be his first local show since the mid-'90s.
With his late brothers Paddy and Tom, and Armagh singer Tommy Makem, who passed away last year, Liam Clancy was among the biggest folk stars in the world. The Clancy Brothers and Makem both rescued and revolutionized Irish music at the dawn of the '60s folk revival. In 1961, they appeared on Ed Sullivan's television show for a history-making 16 minutes.
That's even more remarkable, given the sorry state of Irish music then. In the 1950s, it was in mortal trouble. Ireland wanted to be seen as a modern European nation, to forget its centuries of poverty and oppression. Irish folk music was widely rejected as "bog music," peasant fare.
You might call Seamus Connolly the Michael Phelps of the fiddle; he won an unrivaled 10 consecutive All-Ireland championships. As an Irish boy in the '50s, however, he hid his fiddle under his coat so his neighbors wouldn't know he played traditional music.
"Most people saw it as the music played by the country people," Connolly says. "They wanted to elevate themselves from that by associating with music from England and America."
Connolly stressed that even he, growing up playing Irish music, had never heard most of the folk songs the Clancy Brothers popularized. They were all but extinct in Ireland.
"We presented the songs in a new way," Clancy says, "this hybrid we created in America, with that American can-do, upbeat joy, in a format like the Kingston Trio or the Weavers."
Overnight, attitudes in Ireland changed.
"I think the Clancys are responsible for a lot of people like myself doing what we're doing today," says Dillon, 33. "They were household names when I was growing up. It made you realize that folk music was a proper job."
Asked about that legacy, Clancy laughs. "We certainly weren't conscious of any of that at the time," he says. "And if we had been, it probably wouldn't have worked. It was the very fact that we were four blackguards out there having a great time that made it work."
Seamus Egan, founder of the Irish group Solas, says the Clancys virtually invented the modern Celtic ensemble. Before them, vocal and instrumental repertoires were separate, and singing was mostly unaccompanied. The whole idea of accompanying folk songs with musical instruments was radically new.
"It's the first time you really saw Irish folk songs arranged in a performance atmosphere, where there's stagecraft, instrumentation, harmonies," Egan says.
Apart from all that, Liam Clancy's individual legacy is enormous.
"In terms of that ability to sing a story and mean it, and bring the audience into it, I've taken a lot of what Liam does on board," Dillon says. "If you're a serious folk singer, that's what you're trying to achieve, because it's the music of the people. And there really isn't anybody does it as well as him."
Beyond that famous hush, there's an even rarer magic to Liam Clancy's singing. It's an aura of pure wonder, a sense he's sharing something precious, the way a child shows you a new toy. And in that, even at 72, he is every inch the strapping, wide-eyed bucko he was so long ago.
"You find a song that moves you," he says, "and you want to do it justice. It's a compulsion, like two people standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. They know they're both looking down at the majesty of it, but one of them is going to say, 'Look at that.' You can't help it."
Clancy performs Sept. 14 as part of the ICONS Music and Arts Festival, which also includes Dillon, Solas, and many others. Irish Cultural Centre, Canton. 781-821-8291, www.iconsfestival.com. 