Geo Quiz

Irish uilleann piper Paddy Keenan

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We’re heading for Ireland in the Geo Quiz:

Ireland is divided into counties: Country Clare, County Limerick, County Cork – you get the idea. We’re looking for a county in eastern Ireland. It touches the Irish Sea, but just barely. It has only about 6 miles of coastline. If you head up the River Boyne you’ll eventually come to the town of Trim. Water from the river fills the moat around Trim’s massive stone castle. It’s the largest castle in Ireland. You might have caught a glimpse of it the movie “Braveheart.”

So what’s the name of this Irish county that’s home to a famous 12th century castle? Well, there’s a musical answer to today’s Geo Quiz, and of course, it’s got a Celtic twist. The World’s David Leveille profiles an Irish piper who comes from long line of travellers.

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Leveille: This is a slow, Irish air that Paddy Keenan likes to play on a low whistle. He says it’s a song that captures memories of the times he spent travelling the roads of Ireland. Keenan was born in the 1950′s in a small town called Trim in County Meath. But he pretty much lived on the road:

Keenan: “At the time we were travelling in horse drawn caravans which sounds pretty romantic right now but pretty tough back then. This is the caravan I was brought up in till the age of 6.”

Leveille: He’s pointing to an old black and white photo of a horse drawn “barrel top” wagon. Keenan’s family was one of thousands of landless Irish travelers.

They camped alongside roads or wherever there was grass enough for the horses. They were often seen as trespassers and forced to move on. Eventually Keenan and his family landed in Dublin.

Keenan:“That’s where I learned to play the whistle first, the penny whistle as they call it, and then moved on to the pipes. My Dad played most instruments so it wasn’t that difficult. I knew the music, it was just a matter of taking up the instrument, learning the scale, traditional Irish reels, jigs, slow airs, and stuff like that.”

Leveille: The pipes he’s plays are Irish uilleann pipes. They’re almost as complicated to play as a church organ, Keenan says they’re very temperamental.

Keenan:“I think anyone who takes up the instrument is not only fussy but a little off their rocker because it’s a very difficult instrument, it changes with the weather, changes with the wind. You’re totally at the mercy of the air you’re pumping in if it’s too damp will affect the reeds possibly for the worse, or it’s too dry it will affect them badly, and seemingly it’sright in Ireland, little moist but not too moist. They are a beautiful instrument when going right.”

Leveille: As finicky as they are, the uilleann pipes are Keenan’s link to the past: his father and grandfather were pipers. He pays tribute to his father on Johnny’s Tune:

Keenan:“The tune you’re listening to is a tune I composed in memory of my father who died back in ’92. There’s a whole life story in there concerning my Dad, his life and then his death which was a heart attack, and if you listen to the end of the tune it does step down and finishes pretty abruptly.”

Leveille: Once Keenan nearly tossed out his pipes and abandoned traditional music altogether. It was back in the sixties during his hippy days in London, when he says it all “seemed so square”. He even turned down a meeting with the Beatles who at the time were experimenting with exotic sounds. But luckily he held on to those pipes and rebounded with this tune called Cahir’s Kitchen named after a rowdy pub in County Clare. It’s become a favorite at Irish raves where he says kids “dance crazy” to it.

Keenan now lives in the US but he circles back to Ireland this month for concerts. In March he’s off to Australia where there are plenty of Celtic music fans. It’s a lot of travel but he seems to like it that way. And he says his musical moods shift around a lot too:

Keenan: “It’s all an expression of myself, you know each time I sit to play let it be the same tune or not, however so subtle it will be different. This is what music is to me, it’s mood and there’s a lot of the past in my playing. It could be when I was 3,4, 5 years old or it could be couple years back or it could be the present, right now.. it’s definitely a mood.”

Leveille: Here’s Paddy Keenan in a frolicking mood to take us down the road — playing with his old friend, guitarist Tommy O’Sullivan on a tune called “The Garden of Daisies/The Cork Hornpipe.”

Piper Paddy Keenan originally from County Meath, Ireland the answer to our Geo Quiz.

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