Irish Trad Music Blog

The Pogues and Kristy MacColl’s “Fairy Tale of New York” is officially the most played Christmas song of the 21st century. Music body PPL totals up every public airing of the song in Britain. Its calculations include plays on the radio, TV, and as background music in shops, bars, gyms, and restaurants. They began their calculations in 2000. The song, released in 1987, never reached number one in the charts in Britain, but is played around the world every Christmas. It has also been featured in the UK’s top 20 chart on seven occasions. Jonathan Morrish, spokesman with PPL, said “Fairytale of New York is a timeless classic which everyone knows and rightfully deserves its place at the top spot”. Writing in the Irish Times, Joe Cleary, a lecturer in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, said that the song told the story of the reality of Irish emigration and what lay behind the “American Dream”. He wrote, “With the exception of Joyce's ‘The Dead’ or Patrick Kavanag...

Storyteller Tomáseen Foley and his ensemble of dancers, singers and musicians bring to life earlier times in Western Ireland, where the spirit of Christmas drew families and neighbors together for evenings of lighthearted, jovial fun. "A Celtic Christmas" recreates such a night before Christmas in a thatched farmhouse in Teampall an Ghleanntáin, where the rafters ring with Irish songs, traditional music and dance and stories of life in the distant parish, also Foley's birthplace. ian.org "I play the man of the house in the show," Foley says. "The singers, musicians, dancers and audience play the neighbors. We engage our audiences, and there's a lot of spontaneous laughter." "A Celtic Christmas" will be presented at 3 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 21, at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, 23 S. Central Ave., Medford. New songs, dances and stories fill this season's production, mixed with material from previous ones. "The...

"Many Americans tend to have a provincial view of the world, thinking that the way things are done here is much the same everywhere else, especially when it comes to holidays. However, as traditional Irish band Danú showed Friday night at the Macky Auditorium in Boulder, Christmas traditions can vary widely. What else can you make of the “wren dance,” which commemorates a tradition where Irish people hunted wrens on St. Stephen’s Day (the day after Christmas) since a wren betrayed Stephen’s position to a passing Roman garrison? As demonstrated, the ritual seems to part-Samhain, with men dressing in costumes of straw and traveling around from house to house singing and taking tips of beer and other libations." Danu brings a taste of an Irish Christmas to Danu brings a taste of an Irish Christmas to Macky Auditorium | Reverb — Reverb Music — The Denver Post :