Ireland: The Magic of Its Music and the Need for Good Old American Marketing

  I wouldn’t describe the airplane trip from Newark to Dublin as “hell on earth,” but it was pretty close.  I don’t want to whine, but I am just too old to be a sardine for nearly seven hours.  Just getting out of my seat was painful on my already painful knee, due to how cramped things were.  My fellow seat mates were frequent toilet-needers, requiring me, in the aisle seat, to frequently leave my seat, much to the chagrin of my right knee.  

Besides the sardine-like conditions, sleep alluded me thanks to the Olympic-like snorer sitting in front of me. I tried everything, including foolishly putting in my air-buds and listening to my Rain app.  I find this white-noise very calming and thought it would work—until I turned my head and lost my left air-bud.  The plane was pitch-black and I needed to use my phone light to try to find the missing bud.  I couldn’t find it and in my attempt to search, I needed to remove the things on my lap, including the plane blanket, the plane pillow, my book bag, which I was trying to use as an additional pillow (unsuccessfully), my coat and my small purse. With all that movement and the light from my phone, I woke up the young graduate student sitting in the middle seat.  She then began helping me in my search and found it in less than 15 seconds.  Since we became seat mates just a few hours earlier, she had already showed me where I could plug in my cell-phone, and now this.  She must have thought herself unlucky to be sitting with such a doddering idiot, because I sure felt like one.  

We arrived in Dublin, drank some strong coffee to stay awake, met up with my sister’s friend and headed west to the opposite side of Ireland.  The ride was uneventful and we arrived at the house, made up the beds and I thought that I desperately needed some time in one of them.  After my brief nap, we hiked, went to a lovely dinner with friends and then headed to the pub to hear some traditional Irish music. I was happy to both hear this music and relish in the fact that that our heads had yet to hit the table from lack of sleep.  

We arrived at the pub at 8:40 pm because we wanted to get good seats before the music began at 9 pm. Not only was no one in the bar (we all stood on our toes looking in the window) but the front door was locked!  Twenty minutes before a show and the doors are locked? Granted, we were in a sleepy little village and while driving into town, we did not see one other human, but my sister pulled up the evidence (the advertisement) on her phone to show that we were in the right place.  We then decided to walk to another pub to see if they knew anything about the music.  In retrospect, why we would ask a competitor about something happening in another bar is beyond me…but we did. Immediately upon entering the pub, my sister, whose synapses were working far better than mine, remembered that she had seen a show on pubs in Donegal, the closest town from where we were, and this pub was part of the program.  She began asking the sole bartender whether this pub was included in the show.  He knew nothing about that or whether there was going to be traditional music at his competitor’s down the road. This did not deter my sister.  She found the show on her phone—all 50 minutes of it—and scrolled through it until she found the pub. She then took the evidence to the bartender and while barely looking up, he said, “Oh, I guess the owner forgot to tell me.”  And there is the difference between American and Irish business owners.  If an American bar had been highlighted on a television show, there would have been signs everywhere about their “fame” and the show would have been playing non-stop on one of the televisions hanging above the bar.  But not here in Ireland. It took an American with keen internet research skills to first, find the show and then show it to the somewhat unimpressed employee. 

We weren’t going to take “no” for an answer and then headed back to the first bar….and it was now open.  I walked in and figured there would be a stage, but there was nothing like that.  There were two small rooms, a bar in of them and a few tables in both rooms….and that’s it. The bar was filled with a panoply of ages, young, middle, and old people.   I then saw that the largest table was already filled with people and I figured that they had arrived first (I guess just 20 minutes before when I assumed the doors opened) and got the best place to sit. 

 I was wrong.  These were the musicians.  A few minutes after our arrival, they began to play traditional Irish music…and it was wonderful.  I have been to this country many times and this type of music is becoming more and more difficult to find, regardless of where you are.  But in this north-west corner of the Republic, where tourist buses are few and far between, and American accents are usually only heard when we ourselves are talking, this traditional music, so much a part of how many Americans view the whole of Ireland, can still be heard from time-to time.  It was nothing short of magical.  ..making it impossible for any of our heads to hit the table.