No’am penned this review.
Torrential rain didn’t deter most of the audience from attending the third and final concert of Dervish’s short Israeli concert tour on Saturday night at the Henry Crown auditorium in Jerusalem. A brief show of hands towards the end of the concert showed that about half of the audience had been in attendance at Dervish’s previous Jerusalem appearance, sixteen months ago, and so it’s possible to deduce that the group’s Israeli audience is growing.
“Dervish” is a concept taken from the Sufi branch of Islam, generally referring to people who achieve a state of ecstasy via dancing. Although it might seem an inappropriate name for an Irish group, its meaning in this context is clear! But it wasn’t until towards the end of the second half of the concert that the whirling dervishes of the audience materialized. In a rather non-committal review of an earlier Dervish concert which appeared in the Israeli newspapers a day before this concert, a reviewer mentioned the high proportion of audience-pleasing jigs and reels. Either the reviewer didn’t know what he was writing about, or else Dervish changed their set list, because the concert which I attended consisted mainly of slow instrumentals or mid-tempo songs, and reasonably few fast numbers (although the tempo heated up as the concert progressed).
Dervish are a seven piece group, most of whose members hail from the western side of Ireland. One half of the group provides the rhythm and chordal accompaniment (Seamus O’Dowd: guitar; Michael Holmes: bouzouki; Brian McDonagh: mandola), whereas the other half provides the melody (Liam Kelly: flute; Tom Morrow: violin; Shane Mitchell: accordion). Balancing and enhancing these is singer Cathy Jordan, who also adds bodhran and percussion to the sound.
Jordan is very much the “front man” of the group. As well as being the singer, she introduces most of the songs in an amusing style. She makes contact with the audience by explaining the lyrics of the songs and introducing local colour. Thus we had two stories about men who left Ireland and went to Jerusalem to look for their fortune. In one case, the man returned to find that his betroved was still waiting for him after seven years, whereas in the second his girlfriend had taken up with someone else. I assume that Cathy changes the name of the capital city to correspond to the country in which she is performing.
She also makes an attempt at providing some form of visual show; she jigs from side to side, waves her arms around (at one time she was performing some kind of Irish Macarena) and generally makes herself worth watching. On the other hand, her male cohorts could be carved from stone. Most of the time they barely moved and had a stage presence approaching zero. Apart from changing instruments (guitarist Seamus O’Dowd frequently moved from 12-string to 6-string, and Brian McDonagh changed from mandola to mandolin often), the only time they really moved was right at the very end when O’Dowd and McDonagh played head to head (as in a rock concert), making themselves look fairly ludicrous.
The first half of the concert lasted about fifty-five minutes, and this was mainly in low gear, with some fine restrained instrumental tunes interspersed with songs. Whilst most of these are traditional Irish pieces, an early surprise was the inclusion of the Dylan song, “Spanish Boots In Spanish Leather,” which Cathy introduced by telling that she had sung it at Dylan’s 60th birthday party. Although at the time I was skeptical of a traditional group performing such material, the arrangement was actually quite worthy. Other highlights included the instrumental “Swallow’s Tail,” featuring a complex flute line and bold dynamics, and a couple of new items to the Dervish repertoire: “Tatter Jack Walsh” (an instrumental set) and “The Cocks Are Crowing.” This latter piece featured three part harmonies from Jordan, O’Dowd and flautist Liam Kelly; the male vocals added great depth to the sound, and displayed the variety that the group are capable of.
More variation was provided at the beginning of the second half, with two songs which to my ears were alien to the Dervish repertoire and style. The first was the Tony Joe White song, “As The Crow Flies,” played solo on slide guitar by O’Dowd, followed by a full band version of Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” which they started performing after the events of September 11. Whilst the song is very strong (it was actually written the eve of Nixon’s inauguration ball), the arrangement was not convincing and seemed unsuitable for the occasion.
One of the highlights of the second half was “Midsummer’s Night,” the title track from their fifth disc, which was released two years ago. This piece features all the instruments at the beginning, and then splinters into three duets (guitar/violin, bouzouki/flute and mandola/accordion). In this piece, Dervish show their mastery of their instruments, of the Sligo styled Irish traditional music, and also of their understanding of dynamics.
The concert ended in signatory style by Cathy Jordan requesting all the audience to stand on their feet; once standing, it wasn’t hard to convince the more flexible concert goers to abandon their inhibitions and become whirling dervishes, accompanied by the fast-paced instrumental, “Apples In Winter.”
One nice touch at the end of the concert was the presentation of individual bouquets to the band members by promoters Avshalom Farjoun and Iris Peled. This seems to be a common habit in Israel which hasn’t caught on in other countries, and the band seemed most thankful of their hosts for their warm hospitality. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the reasons why groups such as Dervish make reasonably frequent trips to Israel (another reason must surely be to quench the world-lust of the western Irish).
Only once or twice were there references to the recorded legacy of Dervish, primarily I suppose because they have no new recorded material. Despite this, their compilation Decade sold well in the foyer, and after the concert all seven band members were on hand to chat and sign copies.
The group’s website has a wealth of information about the group: biographies, albums, concert dates and Irish music, and is worth visiting (even though the site itself is rather cumbersome and difficult to navigate).
(Jerusalem, Israel, November 17, 2001)
