Celticly-connected (part 2

I wonder, now, did John Lennon or Lonnie Donegan ever realise they both had family from the same small little town in Tyrone?

But it doesn’t stop there. And this is where it all starts to get a little abstract…

The song Lennon was singing on stage that day was ‘Rock Island Line’, a song that Lonnie Donegan made famous.

But it was originally written by Leadbelly, an American Blues artist from the ‘30s.

Leadbelly was serving a life sentence for murder when he was discovered by folklorist, Alan Lomax, who got him pardoned and released from prison under his supervision.

He made several recordings, one of which was ‘Rock Island Line’, while another was a song called ‘In The Pines’, or ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’.

Now, flash forward to 1994, and Nirvana cover this song on their ‘MTV Unplugged’ performance.

Many consider this to be their finest track.

It’s the last track on their last released record, which kind of makes it full circle. if you consider the start of the circle being the fact that Kurt Cobain’s family also root back to Tyrone, just outside Omagh.

I read somewhere recently, that, while gigging in Ireland, Cobain walked around in a peaceful daze, and said to those close to him that he felt a deep connection here, and that he always felt that he was Irish.

Even though he didn’t know it, he knew it.

So let’s take a breather, and look at what we got… We have Donegan, Lennon, and Cobain, all who never met each other, all having family roots in Tyrone, and all, for some reason, singing Leadbelly songs.

What was it about this blues music that resonated so much with these young men, and which resonates with people in general from around here?

Like, why was I listening to Leadbelly as a teenager?

It doesn’t make sense.

Why does blues and country music hit such a nerve with the Irish, when it comes from away over yonder in the mountains of America?… Or does it?

Let’s zoom back 200 million years, when Earth’s plates collided to form Pangaea; the supercontinent that included all continents of our world.

Out of this collision, the Appalachian Mountains were formed; a mountain range that runs over 3,000 miles.

Then, a mere 25 million years later, Pangaea began to break up, and with it, the Appalachian mountains scattered to different continents, most of which across America, but there are remnants of the Appalachians across Ireland, including right outside Omagh.

That’s why the mountain range up there looks so similar to the American Appalachians – they are literally the same mountain range.

So, lets get back to the late 1800s/early 1900s, when Irish and European settlers wound up in the American mountain range.

They took with them their songs and ballads from back home, and sang them up there on those mountains.

This planted the musical seed for everything that followed. Appalachian music was the start of bluegrass, blues, country, jazz… mountain music.

As my good pal, Howe Gelb, put it: ‘’I can only tell you that I believe Ireland invented song. And Africa invented rhythm. And in America, those two influences collided, and became things like country music and jazz. Like blues, and rock and roll.

“And some of us, at a certain point growing up, took notice of how Hank Williams handled it.

“How Thelonious Monk handled it.

“How Bob Dylan enlightened the path by forging his own pen upon the stage, with both of those influential territorial sparklings.’’

So, maybe that’s what struck such a chord with Donegan, Lennon, and Cobain, when they heard people like Leadbelly.

It was in their blood.

It was in their DNA.

They knew that music before they were even born.

And American music is Irish music.

We brought it there, and they sent it back as country, and we send it back as something else, and they send it back as something else, and so on and so on…

It’s a game of musical ping pong.

Across the Atlantic.

It goes back 200 million years.

An ancient thing, that is probably unexplainable.

A magic that is best left unexplained.

So, I shall stop trying to do so.

I’ll just leave you to ponder it all.

I’ll go out with a quote, from George Harrison.

’’Without Leadbelly, no Lonnie Donegan. Without Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles.’’