Songs to raise the roof

"MUSIC:�Joe Holmes: Here I Am Amongst You�By Len Graham Four Courts Press, 328pp. €55/€25

‘THE SUB-CULTURE of the c�il�-house,” Len Graham writes in this spirited study, “was that of ordinary people with extraordinary skills and imaginations.” A vernacular culture was in safe keeping while musical families in Ireland went about maintaining and handing on a wealth of indigenous songs and tunes, with variations from district to district only adding a touch of localised esprit.

Graham’s subject is the Co Antrim singer and fiddle- player Joe Holmes (1906-1978), and all the songs he includes in Here I Am Amongst You�come from Holmes’s repertoire."

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