Even after 40 years, Celtic band finds some songs too touchy to play

Published: 2007-03-05

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Even after playing professionally for 40 years, Cathal McConnell, a flutist and vocalist for the Celtic music band Boys of the Lough, finds there are some songs that are too sensitive to make the group's repertoire. They deal with the dicey relationship between religion and politics in the British Isles. "Although I'm Catholic and Dave (Richardson, the band's other original member) would be Protestant, I suppose we tend to avoid all those type of things," McConnell said in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service from Richardson's home in Edinburgh, Scotland. "I have some political songs in my repertoire, but for the most part I tend to avoid those. It might be OK to try some of those songs -- some of those songs are very good -- but that would be a democratic band decision." McConnell added, "Myself being from Northern Ireland, you know, 30 years ago, it wasn't safe to sing some of these songs, you know? You would tend to be careful. You wouldn't want to hurt somebody's feelings. The answer to that is we tend to walk a fairly conservative line." While some bands may specialize in that branch of music, "that's their situation," McConnell told CNS. "If I were to sing political songs they would be much older songs like 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley,' which was written in 1798, or something like that."

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