From the heart of the tradition

'How do we engage with music that exists as written and yet seems more essential in its unwritten, performative form' - The Gypsy Canavan

Like most of their history and customs, songs from the traveller community were past through the generations via oral tradition.

Little is written down, and countless are still unrecorded, living only in the memory of the waning few who still practise traditional singing.

Kathleen Joyce

'When I was young you always used to be hearing your mother and father singing the songs around the fire and they would be trying to teach you the songs... All the O'Leary family used to play the accordian - they taught each other... The father taught the children, they picked it up and they went along...They all used to sing - if one started they all joined in. Five or six families at the one fire... - all friendly together.'

-Moving Stories, Traveller Women Write

Joe Boyd, an American record producer and writer (amongst much else) who played a crucial role in the recording careers of artists from Pink Floyd to Nick Drake, spoke of the folk revivial as 'a very middle-class, derived way of singing'. He makes it clear that what sets apart the more authentic Sam Lee, and his 'totally different way of singing', is the process of learning. By learning old folk and traveller songs from books or others who are removed from the community of gypsies, one simply learns the notes and words without fully grasping the essence and feeling through the singers themselves that comes from a lifetime on the road.

Kitty Cassidy - Irish Traveller

Kitty remembers her father, having grown up in boarding houses in close proximitary to orphans and families, having an endless repetiore of songs that she would pick up. It was her mother's story, however, that drew me to Kitty Cassidy for this project. Being renowned for her voice, she would silence a pub with her songs. The crowd would call out, 'let the woman sing again', though her husband would rarely allow her, Kitty susposed due to jealousy.

I couldn't help but to be instantly reminded of Grace, standing on a stool in the middle of a pub singing to a silent group of men, who would usually be brawling.

When listening to Kitty's voice, what shocks me into attention is the confusing, yet undeniably captivating, mix of harshness and delicacy. Notes are rarely hit directly but slide from a semitone above or below creating a very fluid, lazy sound. The melismas are not clean but this adds to the natural and unpolished ease, in which she conveys her story.

Kitty Cassidy - Lovely Willie