(and Christy Moore)
I LIKED LUKA BLOOM EVEN BEFORE I met him. And not just because his real name is Barry Moore and he’s the younger brother of Christy Moore, one of Ireland’s best loved and most notorious folksingers. And not just because I once missed by a week one of his folk club performances in Yorkshire, England. Luka appeared with Christy when he was barely fourteen and I, at around twenty or so, was still occasionally performing in folk clubs with my sister Lynne (she with the Joan Baez–like voice—at least in my opinion). And not just because a few years ago he’d toured the States playing with one of my favorite female country groups, the Dixie Chicks. And not just because he was coming to Beara specifically to perform a benefit concert for the emerging spiritual care hospice at the Dzogchen Center and we’d managed to finagle a couple of grab-’em-fast tickets from the owner of the whole foods store in Castletownbere.
I think one of the primary reasons for my liking this man, whom I’d never met before, was the occasional snippet of his songs on the local radio—some from his Before Sleep Comes album, which he describes as “nine soft songs for insomniacs,” and others from his latest and strangely powerful Innocence album. The DJ had asked him in an interview about the odd mix of themes, from gentle songs of love and forgiveness to strident antiwar and antidiscrimination ballads to roaring chorus songs of immigration and emigration. Luka chuckled and answered very softly that they all came from his own grab bag of personal experiences and then added: “See, life’s really an endless stream of challenges, and for this singer at least, the most important ingredient to hang on to is innocence and our wonder at the whole world.”
Immediately I heard that I was back in the heady 1960s, immersed in that enticing world of folk music, during which time I even made a record with my sister (no—it was never a best seller, in fact it was never released). And although I’ve never used that word innocence before to describe the era, I knew Luka had captured its essence perfectly. We were indeed “innocent.” Even the big names in the British and American folk field—Martin Carthy, Ewen MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger, and all the Irish groups too, most of whom had ample opportunity to pursue lives of hedonistic rock star excess (yes, even folksingers had “groupies”)—were mostly modest, soft-spoken, even self-effacing individuals who truly believed in their troubadour tales of courageous battles and deep romance and chivalrously noble behavior.
There were notable exceptions, of course, and occasional overindulgences of free-flowing beer and other more exotic stimulants, but for the most part we were a good-natured, earnest, well-intentioned lot. Which I guess could explain moments of outrage when the order of things in our little world was disturbed—when, for example, Scottish-born Donovan tried to copycat Bob Dylan; when there were rumors that not all of Alan Lomax’s “authentic” Appalachian folk songs were truly authentic; when there was confusion over how really pro-Communist Pete Seeger was—and oh! of course, the tirade of disgust when Bob Dylan shifted from solo acoustic guitar and harmonica to full-amp-blasting, Fender Stratocaster–screeching, drum-thumping rock band renditions of “Maggie’s Farm,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “How Many Roads.” How our indignation boiled over at such a betrayal!
Similar indignation greeted Christy Moore when he left Ireland’s most popular traditional folk group, Planxty, which combined singing with Irish dance music on Liam Og O’Floinn’s uilleann pipes backed by acoustic guitar and bazouki, to form Moving Hearts in 1981. People still remember the shock they had when they first heard this new hybrid folk-jazz-rock fusion featuring saxophones, solid guitar and bass, synthesizer keyboard, and other exotic electronics. And even though their first album was a top-all-the-charts hit in Ireland and many of their songs had strident antiestablishment messages so beloved by the younger liberal-minded generation, Christy decided it was all getting far too political and propaganda-doctrinaire. So he returned once again to his folk roots and solo career, and until recent illnesses limited his performances, he played on—fiery and focused as ever for almost twenty more years.
“When I sing on a stage to an audience, I go into a place which is very special,” he said recently. “I am locked into a white space that is seldom penetrated. Nothing is quite like it and I am thankful for the key to whatever it is.”
Christy had that knack—that key—for getting to the heart of the matter, a wide range of matters. You feel—in fact, if you’ve read his song-laced autobiography, One Voice—My Life in Song, you’ll know how his own hard experiences in life (many self-inflicted, this man was never a saint) have shaped his strident views. For example, Christy’s take on materialism: “There’s a great emptiness in those lives dedicated to the acquisition of wealth and power.”
On the church:
The concept of sin and sinning was daily thrust into my face; everlasting hell and limbo, purgatory, a mere end of the world away. But none of these poor sisters, brothers or fathers ever showed us the Love of God—all they drummed into us was fear and loathing and burning and suffering…When my vision of the Church crumbled into dust, I was left godless, and for many years I walked the dark, cold path of disbelief.
On political protest:
In 1977 I became involved with Revolutionary Struggle and a small group of very active and political people…I campaigned and did benefit gigs in many towns…It was my first time to become directly involved in a political campaign…It opened my eyes to the potential of people power and what can be done when we come together to effect change.
And finally comes a tribute to his younger brother—Barry Moore, aka Luka Bloom:
We worked together on a number of recordings both his and mine. Occasionally we still play together on stage and when it happens it’s always spontaneous and I always feel really good doing it.
“Well—I guess it’s a case of define ‘very successfully,’” said Luka Bloom with a deep chuckle. Unlike his brother’s burly bulldoglike appearance, Luka has a long, sensitive face, large open eyes, and just the hint of a perpetual grin around his mouth.
We’d met by pure happenstance in the kitchen of the center. I’d left it a bit late to sneak out to the bathroom before the opening act, and when I came back, a young female folksinger with a Judy Collins–style voice and maybe just a touch of Sheryl Crow had begun, and I was asked to slip in the back way through the kitchen when her song was complete and the applause started.
I nodded and smiled, remembering the days when Lynne and I sang together and there was nothing more off-putting in the middle of a song than when people started talking or moving around for drinks or bathroom trips. We liked our audiences serious and sensitive. And of course, here at the center, seriousness and sensitivity were the orders of the day. In everything.
So I crept quietly into the kitchen and went to stand by the door to the concert room, which was actually the meditation room with its spectacular cliff and ocean vistas we’d enjoyed so many times before. The applause seemed a long time coming. And then I heard this most discordant sound echoing out from the shadows of the kitchen back by the huge stove. I turned and saw someone apparently trying to tune a guitar.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “You playing tonight?”
A faint chuckle was followed by: “Well—I hope so. Otherwise I’ve come an awful long way for nothing…”
“Ah—so you’re with Luka Bloom?” Sometimes I can be a little slow on the uptake.
Another soft chuckle. “Well—not exactly.” More strange tuning sounds that made me wonder if this guy could even play a guitar. “I am Luka Bloom.”
“Oh…I, ah…er…Sorry. I didn’t recognize you. Probably because I don’t even know what you look like!”
“Oh, I’m nothing much special really in the looks department…”
“Well…,” I said, wondering if I was about to make another faux pas, “good to meet you. Big fan of your brother.”
“Yeah—so are most people over here…”
“Not that…I mean…actually, I’ve only heard a few…But by the look of the crowd in there, you’ve got a heck of a following too…”
Finally he stepped out of the shadows and I was able to see him, stop rambling on, and shake his hand. And after that, our conversation flowed a little less erratically. It was all about Christy at first, of course, and the soft-spoken Luka was remarkably open and honest.
“M’brother’s hard to quantify because well—he’s not…when you meet him he doesn’t really appear to be very…what you might call, charismatic. He’s very ordinary, y’see—very quiet and he really likes to present himself to people in that way…One-on-one he can be quite shy…But once he gets on the stage, he carries the show like a real trouper…although there are many shows he carried that he doesn’t ever remember at all. In fact, he often had to be hoisted onstage full of God knows what—booze, drugs—and then it was magic. He’d transform in a flash, becoming a different person—the real Christy—and hold his audience—galvanize them—for two, sometimes three hours solid, and then when he came off, he’d be just the way he was when he was carried on! He’s an amazing man. Truly amazing. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow himself to be confined. I remember once an interviewer said to him: ‘You seem to have so many different personas.’ And Christy was right back at him: ‘Well—I’d feel imprisoned, locked up, if I had to live with only one of them!’”
The kitchen door was suddenly flung back and someone (very serious and respectful) leaned in: “Ah…Mr. Bloom…the er, stage is yours whenever you’re ready…sir…”
Luka seemed particularly amused by the “sir” bit, nodded, and kept on fiddling with his guitar tuning. It all sounded very discordant to me.
“You doing some special kind of open tuning or what?” I asked.
“Well—I guess you could call it that. It’s something I’ve worked up over the years…”
He continued twiddling and then, having pronounced himself happy with what still sounded to me like some kind of Arabic quarter-tone disharmonic, shook my hand again, said, “Let’s talk some more after the show,” and walked out of the kitchen and down the aisle to the stage.
The applause was sudden, deafening, and long. This was obviously a well-informed audience packed into every corner and crevice of the meditation room. They were obviously proud to have such a highly respected celebrity-singer in their midst. He acknowledged his reception with a broad, happy smile and then, with little in the way of introduction, launched himself into a spectacular two-hour performance that encompassed just about every mood and subject one could imagine in contemporary folk songs, most of which he’d written himself.
The audience relished every moment and demanded encore after encore. And as if to celebrate the power of his performance, the sun slowly began to sink behind the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the room and gave us one of the most spectacularly colorful eventides Anne and I had witnessed so far on Beara. The audience was bathed in a soft scarlet glow, and Luka sang his final song silhouetted against a golden sheen of light that seemed to make his whole body vibrate with the intensity of a mystical aura. And even after he’d finally left the stage and vanished back into the kitchen, his presence and the resonating intensity of his songs remained with us. And there was none of that mad scampering for the exits that usually characterizes the end of a concert. Instead, people seemed to be reluctant to leave. Some were looking around dreamily, as if waking from an enticing half sleep; others reached out to talk to friends quietly in nearby seats. Everywhere were smiles and hugs and expressions of deep satisfaction. It was as if we’d all experienced a mass meditation together and we didn’t really want it to end.
I intended to join Luka back in the kitchen and congratulate him, but I too was having problems leaving my seat. Anne reached out and squeezed my hand and whispered—as she had done before and would do many times again on this amazing peninsula—“Magic! Absolute magic…”