When Dan Worrall stumbled upon a family link to the concertina, he went on a journey that led to him writing an Irish history of the instrument, writes Siobhán Long
What do you get when you cross a retired Texan geologist with a small musical instrument, the playing of which is associated primarily with Co Clare? Why, an online erudite account of the concertina's roots from 1834-1930, of course.
You'd be forgiven for considering the small (but perfectly formed) concertina to be forever consigned to the margins: ever the bridesmaid and never the bride: the aisle being clogged by its louder, brasher cousin, the accordion. Such an assessment might be disputed by the likes of Noel Hill and Niall Vallely, two of our foremost players of that alternative squeeze box, which lilts and whispers where its more strident cousin hoots and hollers for attention.
Dan Worrall's maternal grandparents grew up in Co Clare, although his mother was a New Yorker who moved to Texas when she married his father during the second World War. Worrall's first encounter with a concertina, while walking past the window of a music shop in Austin, was enough to stop him dead in his tracks. "It was like it was calling out to me," he chuckles, "and even though I didn't have two red cents to rub together, I almost starved myself for a couple of months so that I'd gather enough money together to buy this cheap little German concertina."
Oblivious to any family involvement with the instrument, Worrall took it home during Thanksgiving, only to discover that his grandmother, from Inagh in Clare, had played the instrument during his mother's childhood. His mother's unexpected emotional response to his musical purchase tweaked Worrall's interest even further, and so he embarked on a journey of exploration that has, in the past few weeks, resulted in the online publication of the history of the instrument, as it was played in Ireland between 1834 and 1930.
DESPITE ITS LOW profile, the concertina has had a colourful past. Benefiting from the online availability of vast amounts of information from Irish, British and American newspapers, periodicals and books, Worrall used digital search engines "to locate the needles buried in many 19th and early 20th century haystacks". Tantalisingly, Worrall takes care to mention the significant role of the concertina in American folk music too, and its considerable presence in early American cinema.
"The concertina was big here in the US too, around the turn of the century," he says. "It was big in minstrel music and in covered wagons and in all kinds of places. People had mostly forgotten about it, but there was what I'd call a 'cultural echo' in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s in American movies. It might have been a Bob Hope movie, and he'd play a concertina in a covered wagon. I used to see these and my eyes would roll. I really didn't believe it, but in fact the concertina was played back then. There's a famous scene in High Society with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, where they're on this yacht and Bing is crooning to her and playing a concertina - of course he's faking it, and the sound you hear is an accordion, not a concertina - but of course concertinas were played at sea and the movie makers had a memory of their own parents listening to this instrument, even though it sounded and looked pretty ridiculous to me when I first saw it."
Worrall's discoveries revealed a picaresque back story of the concertina as it was played in Ireland, an instrument long consigned to the shadows: tales of a prisoner who had used a concertina to perpetrate a crime; of emigrants playing this lonesome sound in steerage; of a publican fined for playing one too loudly at night; of concertina contests; and of a patriot playing to rouse the spirits of his colleagues while under siege might register singly as mere anecdotes, but, as Worrall remarks, "when gathered together, and assigned to place, time and social context, a somewhat consistent picture begins to emerge".
Theories abound with regard to the concentration of concertina players in Co Clare. Worrall notes that in the early 20th century, "almost every house had a concertina, usually kept in the chimney corner nook". The Shannon estuary, a trade route plied by (evidently musical) seamen might have provided the ideal pathway for the transport of the instrument to the county, but Worrall's research reveals that the first recorded Irish concertina player was William Mullaly of Mullingar, Co Westmeath. By running a fine comb through Irish social history of the period, Worrall notes that this modest instrument "was a bystander to three particularly important events in the country's history: the Great Famine, the rapid shift to the English language in most areas following that famine; and the emergence of the independent Irish Republic".
Worrall's online account of this period paints a vivid picture of political interference, social upheaval and musical spirit, each vying for position amid communities riven by poverty. It's a spellbinding read. Worrall does a fine job in luring the reader into this world where tunes were played, shared and sometimes lost in the turmoil of the period.
THROUGHOUT HIS DISCUSSION of his research (undertaken with ease now that he's in semi-retirement on his farm in southeast Texas), Worrall is anxious to emphasise that behind such scholarship lurks no Texan-Irish concertina playing genius, awaiting discovery.
"I really love Irish music, but I don't play it so much these days," he says. "I guess the reason is that there's a lilt to it that's an awful lot like an Irish accent, and I felt a bit like an imposter trying to play it. Irish music is better served with me as a listener.
"I'm an active amateur player, however, and have enjoyed playing this instrument for over 30 years. Here in Texas I play in a regular local session where we do a mixture of American, Irish, English, Scottish, and French tunes, as befits the polyglot culture that we are. I think all music is really local, and it's most fun to play your own music."
Dan Worrall's account of the beginnings of concertina playing in Ireland (1834-1930) can be found at www.concertina.com/worrall/ beginnings-concertina-in-ireland