Winter Newsletter 2024, & Melify Wrapped
In late spring I came across a field recording from 1938. “Kathleen Mauverneen” was not the only song available in the Library of Congress under the tag “Irish Americans”. No. There were a great deal more. The passion spread, the wave crested, and I held on to these bits of audio for dear life.
They were relics. I felt they were about to slip through the cracks. Like when you’re cleaning out the basement of a dead person, and right before you throw the box into the dumpster, you realize it is full of gold.
The songs reminded me of my Grandfather Pete and my Grandma Pat. I think of them a lot at Christmas. They are both passed on now, but I feel them as being quite present in my life. I make offers of food to the gods, saints, and to my ancestors. Someone really likes fig newtons. I put out a small plate of Rosemary Garlic potatoes, the kind I learned to make by the memory of the smell, and the mental image of Pete arced over the stove with the glass kitchen window gathering condensation.
It’s good to be a Curran. No one can wrest these memories from me. There was once when I interviewed my grandpa Pete. This was toward the end of his life. I don’t know where the recording is anymore. I do know that I would like to hear his voice again. Sometimes I hear my Grandpa Pete in my dad’s voice. Sometimes I hear my dad’s voice in my brother’s voice, and therefore I hear grandpa Pete two generations removed. Sometimes I hear something Grandpa Pete-like in my dad’s cousin Kevin’s voice. Kevin lives here in the city.
Last night at the Greek restaurant Kevin told stories from parochial school, conjuring the first and last names of third-grade classmates, describing the shenanigans of dodging gazes of nuns. I listened to Kevin and thought, this man speaks incredible literature. As he wove the memories into story, I felt the nearness of my Grandfather, and of the writer uncle I never met, Colin, who died in this city in the 1980s. I felt the nearness of God, or a heavy old swelling I know as spiritual material.
I remember when I asked Grandpa Pete during that interview if his dad, Frank from Donegal, ever spoke Irish in the home.
“No,” said Pete. Next question.
I remember that one word answer. I still hear Pete saying No, sitting on a woven brown and white midcentury couch in a 1930’s living room with a 1970s TV tucked away in a cabinet, the low fall sun drawing on his features, him looking both young and ancient at once, illuminated by light filtered through those leaded glass windows. This whole home, which he called “grandiose”, as if it wasn’t actually his, was the product of a 20th century which gave us many material implements, but brought us further and further from the root of a language which I believe still animates the way Currans think and talk.
In Irish there is no word for no. No is an English thing. No is definite. No divides. No is a complete sentence. The “No” that came from Pete’s mouth that day felt like a jail cell slamming shut. It was a hostile “no". It was a whatever you’re talking about granddaughter you’d better cut it out right now kind of “no”. It was a “no” so heady and laced with thought a guillotine could slice it clear from the neck.
The Library of Congress field recordings of Irish Americans took over my life. They were stand-ins for the recordings of my grandfather’s voice that no longer existed. Or for his parents, for the voices of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather who I never met.
As historical objects, the recordings cast light on that moment in time when the Irish assimilated into Americanness. The are recordings from the cusp of two worlds. I transcribed the songs and I learned them by heart. I played them on my instruments and sang them with others. I brought them out on stage. I went on tour with them in October. I wrote and printed a spiral bound zine called “Happy Within: An Irish American Songbook”, contains the lyrics of lore of songs I found. I did this so others might find their way back to the liminal land where the Irish became American and music did too.
The practice of learning and performing these songs made me a better artist. I am more aligned with a spiritual and ancestral source. I feel softer when I perform. I don’t need to work as hard. The music and the history is attractive. I think my rough exterior is nearly hammered into place after a year of living this way.
I learned a lot about scuffed and scared edges when I wrote about the font, Papyrus. Papyrus is the font people use when they want something to look old or indigenous, organic and eastern, folkloric and non-threatening. The year was full of visitations from Irish [American] men. They popped up in the weirdest places. Are Irish American males, or Irish men living in America, or Irish men living in Ireland but filtered through an American media lens, experiencing life in human form the way papyrus experiences life as a typeface?
My life feels very simple today. I work entirely for myself, all in service of the Irish American Song Project. That’s what call what I am doing with the field recordings and the songwriting process and the performing. It’s helped along by your community support. This November I fundraised for my project and was warmly received back on my home island, Bainbridge.
You can support The Irish American Song Project with a year-end tax deductible donation through my fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas!
In 2025 I am planning four month-long tours. February’s is in the South Eastern United States! Please let me know if you live there and would like a performance, or would like to collaborate. This tour is all about merriment, and having warm experiences together as the earth takes its first steps toward spring. I am printing one more zine to complete the 2024 four pack. This next one is about my experience coming into relationship with the Irish Goddess and Saint, Brigid. It should be available on her saint day, February 1st.
I also love helping people express themselves. I offer “brandscaping” services to those who need help with websites and organic social media approaches. I offer writing guidance for folks working on books or essays. I offer guitar and banjo lessons too! 2024 showed me how to share with you the many gifts I came into the world with.
For you, I offer the gift of
****Melify Wrapped****
CLICK! MELIFY WRAPPED! CLICK!
This document describes in detail the musical moments of 2024 that stick with me and play in my head, over and over again. I am utterly rich. The people populating my world help me express at all costs. You inspire the shit out of me. Let’s keep going. I not only have a feeling this year is for me and you, I know it to be true.
-Love Melanie Beth Curran
P.S.
Want to revisit last year’s Winter Solstice PDF supplement? Check out:
P.P.S.
All pics are from this glorious fall, touring and being with folks I enjoy and admire.
