Something For The Weekend: Ye Vagabonds' Cultural Picks

Ye Vagabonds are brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn, who grew up playing music together around their hometown of Carlow. After a chance meeting at Electric Picnic in September 2015, the brothers performed onstage with Glen Hansard, who invited them to open for him on his European tour the following October.

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The success of their 2015 EP Rose & Briar and 2017 self-titled debut album saw them tour Ireland, the UK and Europe to packed venues. Their second album, 2019's The Hare’s Lament, garnered them a BBC Radio Two Folk Award and three RTÉ Folk Awards. January 2021 saw the release of their I’m A Rover/Bothy Lads single - and a new album is in the pipeline.

Ahead of their debut headline concert in the National Concert Hall on November 28th, we asked Vagabond Diarmuid Mac Gloinn for his choice cultural picks...

FILM

The Green Knight – I’ve always had a thing for mythology and esoterica so I loved this weird stylised retelling of Gawain and The Green Knight. Also, it's filmed in Ireland and Barry Keoghan is in it (he’s got a great part too). It wouldn’t be for everyone but I think it does justice to the fusion of medieval Christian symbolism and the lurking presence of the pagan imagination that makes the original text so compellingly strange.

MUSIC

When it comes to music one suggestion is never enough. For something old: Tony McMahon and Noel Hill – I gCnoc na Graí - Since Tony McMahon’s passing I’ve been listening to this album a lot. It’s an expertly staged live "session". They mic-ed up the room like a film set and had people whooping and dancing for atmosphere.

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Something new: John Francis Flynn's I Would Not Live Always – a lot of people are justifiably excited about this album right now. It’s John’s debut solo release on the River Lea label. He blends his diverse influences to go way beyond the bounds of his traditional roots and makes a valuable contribution to tradition all in the one stroke. Gwan John!

BOOK

I recently read Dune and I’m glad I did because the movie doesn’t do such a great job of telling the story (even if it’s visually spectacular). The book is a sci-fi classic. A richly imagined world with its own complex dynamics of religion and politics. However, with it’s race of desert-dwelling space-warriors, based heavily on Arab and Amazigh peoples, it’s also an example of extra-terrestrial Orientalism. I think, short of reading Edward Said’s seminal text on Orientalism, it’s worth learning a bit about what that means if you want to read this book (or watch the film) critically and engage in the online debates that are happening after the release of the movie. Where the books were attempting to critique the Western saviour narrative it’s debatable whether the films, with their stark absence of Arab or Amazigh actors could hold to similar claims.

PLAY

I was recently lucky enough to attend an early viewing of a play called The Spin by up and coming writer Eimear Reilly at the Backstage Theatre in Longford. Eimear’s play will debut for the general public in September 2022, but before then I’d be very interested to check out Floating On A Dead Sea by Catherine Young, another production that will appear at the Backstage Theatre this November, which offers a glimpse into life in Palestine through the media of dance, music, film and text.

I’m definitely going to check out the new Amazon series The Wheel of Time because I read a few of the books when I was a teenager. It’s unsurprising to see a depiction of Robert Jordan’s mammoth fantasy book series as the next production to sate the appetites of a fantasy audience that’s been growing steadily in the wake of Game of Thrones, Vikings, The Witcher etc. I’m not sure if I have high hopes for The Wheel of Time or not but I’m curious to reconnect with the world of the books for nostalgic reasons if nothing else.

ART

The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now is an exhibition at Irish Museum of Modern Art that traces the urgent themes that have faced us in the last 30 years through the work of a diverse array of artists working in various media. Chapter One is called Queer Embodiment. Check out The Land Question by Eimear Walsh, a video that features as part of the exhibition and is also available to watch online. In it, she casts a brief history of land contestation in Ireland through a humorous lens. It's absolutely hilarious and also makes some great points in a brilliantly absurd way. The video also features some nice uilleann piping from Ian Lynch of Lankum.

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THE NEXT BIG THING...

I think a really fruitful fusion of ambient electronic and folk music - let's not even say fusion, a friendship between ambient and folk music is going to blossom and sweep the nation, leaving everyone feeling very relaxed and grounded. Also clothing that generates its own electricity and charges your phone while you walk around. Mark my words.

Ye Vagabonds will perform their debut headline concert in the National Concert Hall on November 28th - find out more here.

Something For The Weekend: Ye Vagabonds' Cultural Picks

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