[BRIEF NOTE] Sinéad O'Connor and the Opposite of Celtic Twee

[rfmcdonald]

I brought my CDs over from my office yesterday. For the first time in months, I've been listening to them instead of my mp3 collection. I was struck by Sinéad O'Connor's song "Jackie," from her 1987 album The Lion and the Cobra.



Jackie left on a cold, dark night
Telling me he'd be home
Sailed the seas for a hundred years
Leaving me all alone
And I've been dead for twenty years
I've been washing the sand
With my ghostly tears
Searching the shores for my Jackie-oh

I remember the day the young man came
He said, "your Jackie's gone
We got lost in the rain"
And I ran to the beach
And laid me down

"You're all wrong", I said
And they stared at the sand
"That man knows that sea
Like the back of his hand
He'll be back some time
laughing at you"

And I've been waiting all this time
For my man to come
Take his hand in mine
And lead me away
To unseen shores

I've been washing the sand
With my salty tears
Searching the shore
For these long years
And I'll walk the seas forever more
Till I find my Jackie oh
Till I find my Jackie oh
Till I find my Jackie oh
Jackie oh
Jackie oh
Jackie oh



It's a classic sea ballad: woman has man she loves; woman loses man she loves to the sea; woman waits for the man's return. If, instead of being written and performed by Sinéad O'Connor, "Jackie" was written and composed by an Atlantic musical artist, I can sadly predict that it would be a slow song, sung with an excess of emotion, backed by a busy melancholic fiddle track, and ending fairly quietly. Sinéad doesn't do that, bless her. She takes the sea ballad and modernizes it superbly, taking the well-constructed lyrics (they are well-constructed, right, talktooloose?) making it urgent and energetic and something that can be appreciated on its own terms, not as an artifact from a scenic/ally marginal culture that you spend a week visiting on your vacation from your day ob in Toronto or New York City or London.

One thing that I hate particularly about what's happening to so much of the North Atlantic Celtic fringe--yes, this includes Prince Edward Island--is the way in which unique and important cultural traditions are willingly degraded by their practitioners into purely commercial forms, meeting the lowest common denominator of the audience, becoming nothing more than background music. While her musical career was active, Sinéad O'Connor's willingness to transform and assimilate Irish traditional culture made her a shining star.

I wish more people like her would appear.