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6 February 2004
Leahy at Caltech
What can I say? Let me put it in terms I know best: yesterday's concert and today's were the musical equivalent of Tendulkar's 134 and 142 in Sharjah in 1998. Just when I thought that the Riverdance performance was mesmerising I was left breathless by Leahy. Leahy is a band of eleven brothers and sisters (it just perplexes me how sure their parents might have been of the success of their progeny to invest in so many, or maybe they figured the odds of one good performer would be higher. Well, they hit the jackpot all right!) from Cape Red in Nova Scotia. Their style of music is a blend of Scottish and Irish music, though it is suspect how much of the music I heard today was Scottish-inspired. In addition to each of the siblings being good on at least two out of three instruments -- not all that unusual you would think -- all of them can tap-dance too. Their style of dancing is the French-Canadian step dancing which was born of lumberjacks in the Canadian woods spending casual evenings by the fire with ale and music by their side.If there was one grouse I had, it was with their vocals. Pathetic. Only the ladies demonstrated their voices and they were flatter than the ones on that stultifying show on FOX. And if the vocals were unimpressive, the lyrics were a bigger letdown. A more uninspiring collection of words I have not seen or heard sung. So, it shows how spectacular the remainder of the concert might have been for me to deem it a better show than the night before's. The fiddlers were incredible in their stunts, express bowing, precision fingering and rich timbre. Each piece comprised of a slow prelude followed by a steady working up the metre climaxing to stunning displays of plucky string music (been a while since a pun appeared anyways). One particular piece stood out -- a tragicomic melody alternating between soulful, deep songlets and quick charges of high-octane music. The intermission followed subsequently after an obligatory homage to bluegrass. Soon after the intermission, we were treated to a mentor-protegé performance of step-dancing by the drummer's missus and her eleven-year old student dressed in casual baggy pants which made his immaculate steps all the more unbelievable.
The star attraction of the post-interval session was the "impromptu" jamming session whence each of the siblings took a chair and did a guitar-violin jig. But, this time it was all fiddle no bow -- more like strumming a special guitar holding it under the chin. It was awe-inspiring. The audience was galvanised into offering their own mushy beat loud enough possibly to distract a lesser group of performers. An encore performance at the end of a long standing ovation saw the ladies alternate between their instrument of choice for the evening and the fiddle and the gents joined in too with their own violins and in a daring tour de force, all six of them (not counting the drummer and the occasional pianist) did a little step-dance routine while playing their violins. What more can be demanded of a performer in times to come to seize the attention of the unsuspecting on-looker?
