Donegal's Deirdre Bonner and Morgan Campbell Provide Beautiful Music for a Good Cause
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By Denise Foley
A year ago, Deirdre Bonner was spending far too many hours in the oncology unit of the Letterkenny General Hospital in Donegal. Her father Terence Bonner had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare and incurable cancer of the white blood cells. The 62-year-old was scheduled for a blood stem cell transplant, a treatment that could significantly increase his odds of survival.
“Being there every week, I could see that the facilities were really poor,” says Deirdre, a teacher and prize-winning traditional Gaelic singer from Ardara, on Donegal’s west coast. “There was not enough room for all of the patients to sit and get treatment. And I said to myself, ‘If he gets better, I’m going to do a CD to raise money for the oncology unit.’”
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| Morgan and Deirdre |
She and Morgan are in the U.S. for three weeks to promote the CD, which is getting wide airplay in Ireland. You can hear them live on Sunday from noon to 1 p.m.on Marianne MacDonald’s Irish Show show at WTMR radio, 800 AM. They’ll also be performing Saturday, June 10, at 8 p.m. at The Hermitage Mansion, Henry Avenue and Hermit Lane, in Philadelphia, and on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Irish Center, The Commodore Barry Club, Carpenter Lane and Emlen Street, in West Mt. Airy. Tickets are $10.
Deirdre’s musical roots run deep, and she’s had a personal experience with the co-mingling of Irish and American traditions. Her grandfather emigrated to the U.S. and lived in New York for 17 years before he returned home, bringing with him a love of opera, which at that time was not performed in Ireland. “Oh, he was mad into it,” says Deirdre. “He would perform, la, la!”—she mimics the lofty tones of operatic style—“ and people would come to hear him in small halls around the area.”
Her great aunt—like Deirdre herself, a teacher—sang on Irish radio, and, at the age of 12, her father won a scholarship to St. Enda’s College in Galway to study music, with a focus on traditional songs. Her uncle, historian Padraig Bonner, wrote about the queen of Donegal’s distinctive sean nos singing style, a woman known as Roise Rua (Red-haired Rose), who lived most of her life on isolated Arranmore Island and had a unprecedented collection of Irish and English songs.
“My uncle went to collect the songs, but she couldn’t write, so he taped her and wrote out the words, which is quite difficult because Gaelic words often flow together when they’re sung,” says Deirdre, who is a native speaker herself.
When she “came of age,” Deirdre says, “and they knew I could sing, I had the penance of learning all those songs.” She laughs.
But it paid off. She has won two coveted Ulster Fleadh Cheoil, an annual competition whose goal is to establish standards in Irish music through competition. And she’s also won the All-Ireland Oireachtais, a celebration of Irish music and arts, and was the recipient of the Joe Heaney Award, named for a much-acclaimed sean-nos singer. “I sang those songs at the Cheoil and Oireachtais when I won,” she explains. “One of the requirements is that you sing traditional songs from your own area. And these were songs from Donegal—and songs very few people had really heard before.”
You can hear Deirdre singing those same songs—as well as country-western tunes—in her pure, crystalline voice, every weekend at The Corner House, a cozy pub in Ardara, where she met Morgan Campbell, who has been a traditional musician for many years. And you could have heard them both on Tuesday night when they sat in on a rollicking session at The Shanachie in Ambler with more than a dozen other musicians. But this weekend, you’ll find them center stage at the Irish Center, weaving Irish and American music together. And you’ll see that it’s always been the same cloth.
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Ardara - is the best! I
I lived in this city, it is
i like Ardara! nice town
Ardara are one of the best
Ardara is nice and beautiful
Ardara is a great and
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