The Rambles of Kitty
“The Rambles of Kitty” was the first recording released by Comhaltas, back in 1967. The LP featured music and song from some of the leading traditional performers of the mid-’60s: there were solos from Liam Flynn, Séamus Connolly, Joe Burke and Michael Crehan; Pilib Ó Laoghaire contributed three slow airs, Dónal Standúin and Seán Keane were featured in two duo items and there were selections from the Connemara Quartet and the Bunclody Céilí Band. Eibhlin Ni Bheaglaoich and Anne Mulqueen each sang two songs, and some items were introduced by Eoin Ó Súilleabháin, a well known actor and presenter of that era. After some prompting, Comhaltas has re-released this historic recording as a CD.
Tracks
You can listen to the tracks from this CD by following the links below.
Original Sleeve Note
We include here the original sleeve note written in 1967 by Liam Ó Murchú of Cork and RTÉ.
One of the most remarkable features of cultural life in Ireland over the past decade or so has been the development of interest in Irish traditional music. A number of factors has contributed to this: the world-wide upsurge of folk-music, born of popular movements for emancipation and self-expression everywhere; a genuine affinity of spirit with the native mood and nuance; and, in Ireland, the many good radio shows which have worked with the persistence of a drip-effect to bring the native music to attention.
Through all of this, organising and promoting and advancing it, has been Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, who present this record. This is music of the grass-roots, fostered and refined at countless anonymous cross-roads and hearthstones down through the generations. True, there was a halt which for a time looked like death when, in Frank O’Connor’s words, “a whole people were struck dumb”; that was the Great Famine of the 1840’s. But a tradition that went so deep is not easily killed It is a matter for pride, in an age when there is much movement from the local, the indigenous and the inborn, that native music should begin again to find its true voice. And it is even more remarkable that it should find it essentially unchanged in a world which has changed so much in the interim.
The musical advisor on this record was Micheál Ó hEidhin, who has travelled much in the Connemara Gaeltacht and knows the authentic breath of its music and song. Production is by Michael Slevin, who has given pace and style to many good traditional music programmes on stage and television.
