An Irish Stew Simmering With Politics And Hip-Hop
Byrne v. British Broadcasting Corporation
The Record (Bergen County, NJ) - 7/21/00
DISCLAIMER:
BBC logo used only to identify adversary
BY TOM DUNPHY
MUSIC PREVIEW
SEANCHAI AND THE UNITY SQUAD: 10 tonight and most Fridays. Rocky
Sullivan's, 129 Lexington Ave., Manhattan. $10. (212) 725-3871.
Chris Byrne is an unrepentant Fenian bastard.
That's not a smear, mind you: The Brooklyn-born uillean piper, who
recently departed the Irish rock band Black 47 after a decade, will
freely tell you that, and rap you that.
A Fenian is a supporter of the Irish Republican Sinn Fein political
party; Fenian bastard is a common anti-Catholic slur in Northern
Ireland.
In"Fenians,"a track from Seanchai and the Unity Squad's 1997
debut release,"There Will Be Another Day,"Byrne defiantly chants,"Say
it loud, say it proud, I remain an unrepentant Fenian bastard/Respect to
all who refuse to be mastered."
Byrne, who uses the stage name Seanchai (Gaelic for"storyteller"),
sought to turn the slur around."I wanted to take an expression that
meant nothing but pain and turn it into something positive,"he says.
How did Byrne, who had played in folk and traditional groups before
founding Black 47, get interested in rap and hip-hop?
"When I first heard 'Rapper's Delight when I was 18, I thought it
was just another disco song,"Byrne says. "But when I heard Melle Mel do
'The Message, I realized there was something much more there."
Byrne worked his dual passions for Irish politics and rap into
Black 47 songs 1 like"It's Time to Go,"and formed a side project called
Paddy-A-Go-Go in the early Nineties with fiddler Eileen Ivers and singer
Patrick McGuire.
But Seanchai and the Unity Squad is the culmination of Byrne's
Irish hip-hop musical vision. The group, which features vocalist Rachel
Fitzgerald, guitarist Jason Goodrow, mandolinist David"Monty"Monaghan,
saxophonist Geoff Blythe, and turntablist"DJ Flo" McDonald, serves up a
percolating mix of rap and traditional, but there are thick slabs of
funk, jazz, and reggae, too.
The group's latest indie album,"A Sunday at the Turn of the
Century,"is a thematic romp through a typical Sunday in Byrne's life,
culminating in a Sunday night gig."Some say Saturday's a phatta
day/Ixnay, Sunday's a hummin day,"Byrne raps on the title track.
While Byrne co-founded Black 47 with guitarist-songwriter Larry
Kirwan, and gave up a career as a police officer to devote his
full-time attention to the band, he had no regrets leaving the group.
"I needed to give Seanchai and the Unity Squad a fair shake," he says.
"I couldn't get it to the next level without doing it full time."
Seanchai and the Unity Squad will embark on a short tour of Ireland
and Scotland in late August, and plans an outdoor gig on Belfast's
Garvaghy Road, a site of contentious Orange sectarian parades in recent
years. (Police erected barricades this year so the parade would not pass
through the largely Catholic neighborhood.). "It's good to see that there hasn't been
the violence that there's
been in previous years, but they still haven't reached a solution,"
Byrne says of the Northern Ireland peace process.
In May, Byrne filed a $5 million lawsuit against the BBC. He
contends that the broadcaster failed to obtain legal clearance for a
clip of his song"Fenians,"which ran in a BBC"Spotlight" documentary,
about a case of alleged IRA gun-running in Florida. The case is pending.
"I was astounded that they would use my work,"Byrne says."I would
have never granted them permission."
Most Fridays, the band plays at Rocky Sullivan's in Manhattan, a
pub Byrne co-owns with journalist Patrick Farrelly. Often, members of
the audience are invited onstage to sing, rap, or read poetry. It's an
ethos that Byrne contends is an 1 extension of the hip-hop tradition.
"Somewhere along the way, hip-hop lost the plot, a rock star mentality
took over,"he says.
"The audience is every bit as important as the performers,
especially in a small venue,"Byrne says."We want to bring back the
spirit of hip-hop."
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