Interview of Vincent Salafia: Family History Up to Carrickmines Castle Campaign

How can Ireland balance its growth and improvement with the need to preserve its heritage and its environment?

Vincent Salafia has been in the forefront of several important instances in Irleand where many argue there was an imbalance toward growth without proper consideration of heritage and the environment. As we will see in the following interview, Vincent was uniquely equipped by his background in the US and Irish cultures, with his knowledge of the legal heritage, millennia old, in Ireland, and by his own personal commitment to see things done right.

But before we go to the significant instances that have drawn worldwide interest, let’s hear about how Vincent came to live in Ireland.

Question: What is your history with Ireland?

     Brief family history: Our family has had a long tradition of emigrating and returning to Ireland. Starting with my grandmother in the mid-nineteen twenties, she left Ireland.  She was one of ten children. One of the McGees from the Longford area. Her brother was supposed to go to America, but got pleurisy after playing Gaelic football. So the ticket was given to her and she came into the lower east side of Manhattan at 16 years old. She had a tough time working in sweat. She married an Italian-American called James Salafia. They had four children there in the States. She always wanted to return to Ireland. They did pretty well over in the US. He was an electrical engineer and built houses, army bases, and other structures in New Jersey. She moved back to Ireland in 1957, and bought up some property in Wicklow. My mom was put into school and my uncle, who had done a year in Georgetown, was here. There was my mother and her three siblings. Three of them went to university here.

     My mother, when she was in the town of Arklow, she met my father who was an O’Toole. The O’Tooles had this farm across the way. They got married and I came along. They didn’t seem to get along too well, so she ended up going over to England to study to be a nurse. I was raised by my grandmother on the farm down in Wicklow.

     After being raised and going through boarding school, I graduated in 1983. By then my mother had moved back to the States. She was living in upstate New York working as a nurse. She was in the Finger Lakes district, Hammondsport, New York, which is gorgeous country. I visited there a few times. She got married again and they bought a motel in Florida.

     When I headed over in 1983, I landed in Florida. I did a year in High School there to kind of integrate a few areas and sort myself out. I went to Saint Leo College, a small Catholic College, which is about an hour north of Tampa. I had a lovely time there. Studied pre-law political science and also worked as a DJ part time. I took a year off before graduating, went to Pittsburgh, worked as a DJ, came back and graduated.

     Then I went to work in the family business for a while. Then I went up to New York and worked in some law firms to see if that was what I wanted to do. Entertainment law was what I wanted to do.  I went to law school in Fort Lauderdale in 1993 and graduated there in 1996.

     I worked for a while in Florida.

     I got married and moved up to the Indiana area, Carmel, outside Indianapolis. That went well for a while and then not so well. Around 1999 I decided I’d leave America. I’d always wanted to get back to Ireland. Seeing that certain things had come to an end, it would be nice to get a fresh start. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of my grandmother while living in the States, so I’d decided I’d see a lot more of her on this side of the Atlantic. I came back.

Question: When did you return to Ireland?

     The year 2000 is when I started to settle back in. Almost immediately upon my return, I started working on this project called the Brehon Law Project, which I’d started in Florida (Ireland’s own indigenous system of law dating from Celtic times, which survived until the 17th century is known as the Brehon law. Written down in the 7th century AD for the first time, Brehon law was administered by Brehons (or brithem) who served more as arbitrators.) I”d had an amateur type interest in the early Irish legal system. I’d done a paper in an art, literature, and law class. The Internet was just getting started then, so I made up a web site and got in touch with various professors who were working on translating the Brehon laws. I started to put on a series of symposia where I gathered together a lot of different scholars and judges. I did that three years in a row and focused on various aspects of early Irish law.

     During that process I got to know more and more people in Dublin and was fitting back in. I was interested in the O’Toole history as well and part of the reason for studying Brehon law was the tie in with my own family history.  The O’Tooles had been chieftains of Leinster. They had been great warriors against the British in their day. There was the history of Saint Lawrence O’Toole who was the patron saint of Dublin. I studied his involvement going all the way back to the Northern invasion. Strongbow, when he came over, married Aoife of Leinster. She was the daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and Mor O’Toole. The marriage was performed by Saint Lawrence O’Toole.

Question: So you really liked that history?

     This history fascinated me. I read in the paper there was a Norman castle, known as Carrickmines Castle, outside of Dublin, being attacked by a motorway proposal for the ring road around Dublin. The Castle had been blown up in 1642, so there wasn’t a whole lot of it left, but the huge defenses around the Castle were being excavated in preparation for the motorway to go through. The motorway had been built up to either side of the Castle by the time these protests broke out. It was the tail end of the excavation. The archaeologists were being rushed out of the site. They were furiously objecting, saying they’d made these important discoveries, the site should be a national landmark, and it shouldn’t be destroyed.

     A bunch of us went in and occupied the castle site. We were called the Carrickminders. I got together a legal team and we proceeded to the High Court (In the Republic of Ireland the highest court is the Supreme Court. The court just below that for civil cases is the High Court). We lost in the High Court but won in the Supreme Court obtaining an injunction which held up the road to the dismay of the Taoiseach and many others (The Taoiseach (pronounced approximately TEE-shock) is the equivalent of a prime minister in the Republic of Ireland).

Next Post: Interview of Vincent Salafia: Carrickmines Castle Campaign to Hill of Tara Campaign

Aoife Clancy: Interview at Catskill Irish Arts Week

Aoife Clancy, the outstanding Irish singer, honored me with an interview early Saturday morning near the end of the Catskill Irish Arts Week, just after a long singing session at the Wayside Inn.

She lives in Fairhaven Massachusetts, near New Bedford, but was brought up in Ireland.

Her father, Bobby Clancy, was in the Clancy Brothers, the famous group that brought Irish folk music to America in much of the 1960s. Consequently she was brought up listening to and playing music at an early age.

Her father insisted his children all have their daily dose of Irish music.

She was playing the banjo at 7 or 8 years old, which she didn't really like. She progressed to the guitar when she was about 11 or 12.

Her mother came from an Irish speaking area, a Gaeilteach, in Ring (An Rinn, in Irish), County Waterford, Ireland.

As a result, she was exposed to a bit of both worlds of Irish music. She heard the ballads from her father, and then she'd go down to Ring and hear the sean nos songs in the Irish language and style. She stuck mostly to her father's style of songs, but she was influenced by the sean nos (“Sean nos” means “old style” and is the style of singing where a solo performer sings unaccompanied, usually in Irish, and often in free meter).

In fact, her mom often reminded Aoife of how she, Aoife, didn't get her Irish music heritage just from her father - her mom's traditions helped form her style as well.

Aoife started performing in her teenage years. She remembers at the age of 13 and 14, her father took her out to country pubs in the middle of nowhere. He'd say, “Come on, we've got an afternoon gig.” And she'd go, “What!?” shocked at the lack of adequate warning. Still, he'd take her to these beautiful little pubs. Some of them didn't even have electricity in them. The pubs sold only large bottles of beer, no drafts. Patrons bought large bottles or nothing. Such experiences were her early exposure to public music, watching her father and observing him perform in a small little intimate setting. The people in these places were very supportive. She was extremely shy and he would encourage her to sing. But many times he would tease her by introducing her as “kind of shy” and she'd think, “Why did you say that?”

Over the years, she got more confident singing in front of a crowd. She thanks her father, because of his attitude toward performing. He was very much about “enjoy yourself and sing from the heart”. He told her don't make it so much about performing for people and how they are all looking at you, as much as about how you are enjoying the song yourself and how you are bringing it across. She learned a lot from performing from that perspective.

Aoife was a solo performer when she came to the United States. She brought a CD with her titled “It's About Time” and was published by Rego (Irish Music) Records in 1991. Aoife did a tour with Patty Noonan who ran the Rego label. Joanie Madden heard the CD, Cathie Ryan was leaving, and Joanie and Aoife met on an Irish cruise Aoife's father and uncles had put on in the Caribbean. The Cherish the Ladies group was on the cruise and Joanie had a substitute singer to cover for Cathie. Joanie didn't say anything to Aoife at that time, she just kind of observed Aoife singing at the session. A few months later Joanie called Aoife and said, “Doll, we're looking for a singer. Would you like to join the group?”

Aoife had often looked at the group with admiration as they have so much variety, the dancers, the tunes, the instruments, the songs. Of course, Aoife jumped at the chance and the next thing she knew she was appearing with Cherish the Ladies.

She sang with Cherish the Ladies for about five years.

When she left, she was in bands of various configurations with her own band, the Clancy band, and Matt and Shannon Heaton. Fling played with her for awhile. She played with other musicians including Owen Marshall.

Now she's in the Clancy Legacy with her cousins Robin O'Connel and Donal Clancy. They just brought a CD out in March titled “The Clancy Legacy” (btw, they first performed together at a workshop called "The Clancy Legacy" during the Irish Arts week in East Durham, NY in July 2006).

Aoife came to be at the 2010 Catskill Irish Arts Week because she was there a number of years ago. Myron Bretholz, the bodhrán player, encouraged her. There was one year when he was in charge of the bookings for the event, like Paul Keating was in 2010 (and before). She met Myron at a festival in Philly and he was the MC. They started chatting. Myron asked her, “Do you ever teach?” and soon asked her to come teach in the Catskills.

She did it and loved it. She had a fantastic bunch of people. She just had to talk about her father and her uncles, and then led the group in the songs that had been passed on to her. She found a whole slew of songs that over the years she'd forgotten about until she started looking back on them.

She couldn't believe the number of people who wanted to learn the songs passed on to her by her father.

Then she started getting into it. She started teaching the songs at other workshop events too.

For the last three or four years she hasn't been to the Catskills Irish Arts Week because of a competing festival, but she was invited this year and she decided it was time to return to the Catskill Irish Arts Week.

She said the 2010 week was a great week, and everyone worked her hard. There is so much going on, so many people she knows, she wishes it could be spread over two weeks. The evening sessions at the pubs alone are a dilemma – if you are at one, you cannot go to another.

The students were exposed to such wonderful music that week.

Aoife said the standard of musicians and teachers here for the week doesn't get any better. You don't get any better than the Kane sisters, Edel Fox, Joanie Madden, Cherish the Ladies, or Liz Carroll. They are the crème de la crème of Irish musicians. Anybody would be so lucky to have these people as teachers. They've been playing since they were small and now they are passing on the music to their students. That's what keeps the music alive.

On a personal note, Aoife loves when she sits at a session and somebody comes in and sings a song that she taught them.

Aoife said the Andy McGann Festival on the last Saturday of the Catskill Irish Arts Week would be great because even more performers come in. Bua is playing. The performers represent the standard of the musicians the place attracts.

She hopes to be asked to return to the Catskills next year, but she hopes to arrange a night off that week to catch her rest!


Aoife's online calendar is here: http://www.aoifeclancy.com/calendar .
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More Irish Musicians in Shamrock Road blogs:

- Brían Ó hAirt (Brian Hart)
- Bernadette Nic Gabhann
- Aoife Clancy
- Matt and Shannon Heaton