manx celtic music and dance

Mona's Isle concert a great success

01 Oct 2012


This fabulous concert featured Paul Bradford & Clare Kilgallon, Charles Guard & Annie Kissack, Rachel Clarkson & John Kilgallon with Sharon Christian, Caarjyn Cooidjagh, Cliogaree Twoaie and The Band - a group of songwriters, musicians, singers and arrangers who had developed new songs inspired by Mona Douglas’ collected material, her poetry and her life. The songs performed were: Winds of Summer (Carswell); Fabulous City (Joughin); Revolt (Kissack); The Garden (Mclean); Who is that Mona Douglas? (Kissack); Kiaulleeaght Kiune (Maddrell/Clague/Carswell); Thie ny Garee (Kissack); Snaih (Clague).

The Band was: Dave Mclean, Greg Joughin, Clare Kilgallon, Annie Kissack, Breesha Maddrell, Chloe Woolley, David Kilgallon, Bob Carswell and Aalin Clague. Bob Carswell prepared images which were projected in the main hall, as well as an exhibition in the Atholl Room. Jeant dy mie, Dave & co!

Fockle ny ghaa - a word or two from organiser, Dave Mclean

The credit (or blame!) for the idea behind the evening should go to my wife, Lizzie. We have several CDs of musical collaborations in our collection, notably ‘The Cecil Sharp Project’, where musicians had got together for a week to write a set of songs to honour the English folklorist/collector Cecil Sharp, and then they performed them at Shrewsbury Folk Festival. Lizzie said we should do something similar on the Island, and I immediately thought of Mona. By a spooky coincidence this year was the 25th anniversary of her death. With a large dollop of ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’, I asked a bunch of Manx musicians, all better players and stronger characters than me, to get involved, and a couple of workshops and a few rehearsals later we had a set of songs, all very different, but all in some way connected to Mona. I thought, if it all goes wrong, I hope Mona’s spirit will realise that we did it with the best possible motives, i.e. to remind the Island what a huge debt we (and future generations) owe Mona (and a few other notable people, of course!) for preserving so much of our cultural heritage that makes the Island such a special place. I would also like to thank the Manx Heritage Foundation and the Centenary Centre for making the project possible at all.

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