From: Born of Ireland
On the border of Cork and Kerry, around the upland country of Sliabh Luachra, a style of music grew up that is played and danced unlike any other in Ireland. Where much of the country favours jigs and reels, Sliabh Luachra is the heartland of the polka and the slide, tunes with a driving, lilting pulse that suited the kitchen dances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The district around Rathmore, Gneeveguilla and Knocknagree produced some of the finest fiddlers and accordion players in the country. The music was handed down in the houses of the area and played at crossroads and house dances, often for couples on a flagstone floor, and a tune would be played again and again because it was there to move feet and not for show.
The music crossed the ocean with the emigrants, and it is still played in Boston, London and New York by players who learned it from a father or a grandmother. For many families in Cork, Kerry and Limerick, a polka in a kitchen was the sound of home.
On the border of Cork and Kerry, around the upland country of Sliabh Luachra, a style of music grew up that is played and danced unlike any other in Ireland. Where much of the country favours jigs and reels, Sliabh Luachra is the heartland of the polka and the slide, tunes with a driving, lilting pulse that suited the kitchen dances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The district around Rathmore, Gneeveguilla and Knocknagree produced some of the finest fiddlers and accordion players in the country. The music was handed down in the houses of the area and played at crossroads and house dances, often for couples on a flagstone floor, and a tune would be played again and again because it was there to move feet and not for show.
The music crossed the ocean with the emigrants, and it is still played in Boston, London and New York by players who learned it from a father or a grandmother. For many families in Cork, Kerry and Limerick, a polka in a kitchen was the sound of home.
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