Christmas is a time when many of us will be coming or going 'home', where smaller family groups are bonded into larger family groups for the season.
On Christmas Day, the Lyric Feature is a personal reflection by J.J. O’Shea on his childhood experiences of growing up in London as the child of Irish parents and on his regular visits back to his ancestral home in County Kerry. J.J. introduces The Golden Museum below - listen to it above.
I sometimes wonder how my life might have evolved had my parents remained in West Kerry, the place of their birth, rather than emigrating to London shortly after the Second World War. Would I still be passionate about the same things that interest me today? Would I be drawn towards the same kinds of friends? Would I have different beliefs from those I now hold dear?
The children of immigrants often grow up co-existing in parallel worlds. While they can be immersed in all aspects of their parent`s culture and identify strongly with that heritage they can also feel fully at home in the country of their birth. Even though I was born in London I spoke with an Irish accent until I went to school because we lived in a kind of Irish bubble where virtually all the voices I heard were Irish. Our house in Cricklewood was situated five miles north of Buckingham Palace, but once you entered the front door you could just as easily have been five miles west of Tralee.
As a family we travelled to Ireland every year during the summer holidays. My school friends might be taking their vacation in sunnier climes but we were always heading for West Kerry. And we had no complaints. The journey on the crowded train and boat was an adventure in itself. The atmosphere was always merry in the smoky carriages with people delighted to be on their way back "home". And even though we were expected to help with work on the farm we were given a measure of freedom in Kerry that wasn`t possible in the city.
In The Golden Museum, I reflect on my experience as the child of Irish immigrants growing up in London in the mid-twentieth century. The story unfolds through interweaving threads of original music and song, poetry and commentary from siblings, cousins and myself. The aim was to convey a sense of the dual lives we lived with one foot placed firmly in rural Kerry during the long summer holidays spent on the family farm, and the other in cosmopolitan London Town in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, as seen through the eyes of a curious, growing child. How did we respond to life in Ireland and our Irish cousins? What did our Irish cousins make of us? How did the experience impinge on our notions of "home" and "identity"?
I wrote music and songs to underscore the varying moods of the story and some of my favourite performers brought the music to life in ways that exceeded all my expectations. The wonderful Emma Langford sings The Maid on the Shore and Just a Song. Ten-year-old Sadhbh Nic Fhloinn sings Oak and Ash and Holly Tree, a kind of nursery rhyme in which I tried to put myself back in the mind of a curious, questioning and slightly confused child. The instrumental interludes from The Golden Museum and Open Window are performed in different arrangements by maestros Reidun Schlesinger (harp), Paul de Grae (acoustic guitar) and Barry Lynch (tin whistle and bodhran) and Paul de Grae plays an instrumental version of Just a Song on the electric guitar. I was delighted when Paula Meehan agreed to contribute a reading of some of her poems which I felt echoed aspects of the story. Paula reads from Invocation, You Open Your Hand and Daughters of Memory and these are woven into the narrative.
The Golden Museum, RTÉ lyric fm, Christmas Day at 6 pm - listen to more from the Lyric Feature here.
