Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Since the 1970s, various bands have tried to blend traditional with more progressive
genres with mixed success. The first band to pull it off was Moving Hearts, led by Christy
Moore, who went on to become an important folk musician in his own right.
LUKE KELLY: THE ORIGINAL DUBLINER
With a halo of wiry ginger hair and a voice like hardened honey, Luke Kelly (1940-84) was perhaps the greatest
Irish folk singer of the 20th century, a performer who used his voice in the manner of the American blues singers
he admired so much - to express the anguish of being 'lonely and afraid in a world they never made' (to quote
AE Housman). He was a founding member of The Dubliners along with Ronnie Drew (1934-2008), Barney
McKenna (1939-) and Ciaran Burke (1935-88), but he treated Dublin's most famous folk group as more of a
temporary cooperative enterprise. He shared the singing duties with Drew, lending his distinctive voice to classic
drinking ditties such as 'Dirty Old Town' and rousing rebel songs like 'A Nation Once Again', but it was his
mastery of the more reflective ballad that made him peerless. His rendition of 'Raglan Road', from a poem by
Patrick Kavanagh which the poet himself insisted he sing, is the most beautiful song about Dublin we've ever
heard; but it is his version of Phil Coulter's 'Scorn Not His Simplicity' that grants him his place among the im-
mortals. Coulter wrote the song following the birth of a son with Down syndrome and even though it became one
of Luke's best-loved songs, he had such respect for it that he rarely sang it at The Dubliners' boisterous gigs.
