Irish empires

What's interesting about these groups is the way each has staked out its own turf. The Chieftains, with their distinctive instrumentation (harp, tiompán, uilleann pipes, bodhrán) and fondness for the great 18th-century composer Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin (Turlough O'Carolan), have always represented Ireland's classical side -- think of them as early-music aristocrats with a rowdy streak a mile wide. Altan (in photo on left), with their fiddles and guitars, stress simple, traditional dance tunes; put them down as Irish country. Clannad rely largely on synthesizers and the vocals of Máire Brennan; they represent Irish pop, particularly the new-age kind. All three groups have shown staying power. Altan are celebrating their 11th birthday; Clannad have been with us for 23 years, the Chieftains for 31.

Still, what can you do for an encore after 31 years? In the Chieftains' case it's hard to say, since this new CD isn't all that new. Film Cuts comprises their movie themes. The selections from Treasure Island, Tristan and Isolde, Barry Lyndon (the heartrending Seán Ó Riada air "Mná na h-Éireann," which first turned up on Chieftains 4), and The Grey Fox can be found on the group's 1991 RCA disc Reel Music: The Film Scores. To those have been added a theme from Rob Roy, one from Far and Away, a pair from Circle of Friends, and one from something called Ireland Moving -- some 15 minutes in all. There have been subtractions, too: the three tracks from Three Wishes for Jamie (an Irish TV-movie?), three from The Year of the French (the complete score of which is available on its own CD), and two additional ones from Tristan and Isolde. Since Film Cuts runs only 48 minutes, it's not clear why anything had to be removed. Perhaps RCA is hoping to sell both discs. Tacky.

Make no mistake: the stuff is gorgeous -- any movie would benefit from having music by these guys. But Film Cuts doesn't answer the question of where you go after 31 albums. Last year at the Wang Center the Chieftains were their usual irreverent, irrepressible selves, a visual as well as a musical delight; there's no reason to think tomorrow's concert will be any less so. Maybe after 31 years you don't need a new direction.

Altan deserve credit just for persevering. The group started out as the husband-and-wife team of flutist Frankie Kennedy (from Belfast) and singer/fiddler Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (like Clannad from the Gaelic-speaking area of Gaoth Dobhair, in Donegal) and grew from there. Frankie died of leukemia in 1994, but the band have carried on, with a greatest-hits First Ten Years release last spring and a regular schedule of touring. Their appearance at the Somerville Theatre last May was marked by hard swinging, fuller textures, and hilarious banter.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about their new disc. Blackwater is dominated by fiddle, as it should be, and by a strummed guitar that, track after track, moves in tired, predictable harmonic progressions -- Frankie's flute is badly missed. Even the Gaelic-language songs fall into a jog-trot 6/8. "Tá Mé 'Mo Shuí" ("I've been up since the moon rose last night") is the exception; this famous air gets a bluesy treatment, and Ní Mhaonaigh's breathy, country-nasal soprano holds up next to the fuller voices of Antoinette McKenna on the Sean Nua version and Máire Brennan on Magical Ring. But in "Blackwater" she keeps fading out on crucial lines -- half a dozen listens and I still don't know what the thoughtless young man said to his love after he arose and drew on his clothes. Given that Ní Mhaonaigh's own title track was the weakest number on Altan's 1994 release, Island Angel, it's ironic that her composition on this one, "A Tune for Frankie," is the best thing here: it breaks into real feeling.

Altan have always been better live than on disc. Ní Mhaonaigh's unaffected manner and intelligent good looks are contagious, and the band members all loosen up and have a good time -- so the audience does too. Whatever reservations I have about Blackwater are not likely to apply to their March 29 show at the Somerville.

No reservations at all apply to Lore. Clannad (in photo on right) spent their first 10 years performing dance tunes and Gaelic airs with imagination and an eclectic choice of instruments; for the next 10 they were a misty synthesizer band doing new-agey English-language numbers of their own composition. Lore fuses the two in a stunning CD that also makes an unlikely but convincing connection between Celts and Native Americans. And right out of the chute: the opener, "Croí Cróga," kicks off with a chorus characteristic of Scottish Gaelic waulking or work songs, but it also has what sounds like a Native American tom-tom rhythm (BUM-bum-bum-bum BUM-bum-bum-bum). "Croí Cróga" translates as "Brave Heart" -- and indeed the song is about William Wallace (though there's more of Scotland in its five minutes than there is in all of Mel Gibson's three-hour movie); but listen again and you could imagine "Brave Heart" as a Native American. The connection isn't far-fetched: both early Native American and early Celtic cultures lived close to nature and had shaman-priests; both were eventually driven from their lands by more "advanced" invaders.

Track two, "Seanchas," gives the album its name: it means "wisdom," or, with another nod to Native Americans, "lore" -- knowledge that's passed down from old to young. The song itself is a poppy, lighthearted ditty: "The shortest wisdom is the best wisdom/The story that's shortest is sweetest in the mouth." Then there's the natural single, "A Bridge (That Carries Us Over)" -- Máire doing her usual musing on friends and lovers, but with unusual ambiguity in the churchy chorus: "We all think well of a bridge that carries us over, carries us safe/The art of compromise/Has been our greatest strength." At the end words give out altogether: "Love is desire/So full of fire/Love is  . . . "

The rest of Lore very nearly matches these three splendid opening tracks. "Alasdair MacColla" is a traditional waulking song sung in Scottish Gaelic; Máire's solo isn't as jagged as Karen Matheson's in the Capercaillie version (on Sidewaulk), but the group get the swing of the rhythm right. "Tráthnóna Beag Aréir" ("Yesterday Afternoon"), the other traditional number, is a wistful charmer; "Dealramh go Deo" ("Shining Forever"), with its organ-like harmonies, has choirs of Irish angels keeping the Gaelic faith.

On the English side, "From Your Heart" takes up the theme of a young man learning wisdom ("Calling out secret lines from your heart/Wise beyond your years"); the chorus is a Gaelic lullaby (I think -- the echoey Clannad acoustic always makes these determinations hazardous), the rhythm Native American. "Trail of Tears" is the story of the Cherokees' forced relocation from Georgia to the reservations of Oklahoma, people who "found the path of wisdom/Along the Trail of Tears"; it comes with a Cherokee chorus. Máire's "Broken Pieces" and "Farewell Love" are more-conventional explorations with some bite: "Here I stand still the same/I dust the showcase change the name/Hard to know who plays the fool."

Atlantic's packaging is nothing short of a disgrace. The CD cover looks like a Norman Rockwell outtake; inside you'll find lots of band photos but lyrics for only one number, "Seanchas," and then only in Gaelic. If you're not fluent in the Irish tongue, you wouldn't have the least idea what "Croí Cróga" is about, or any way of knowing that it relates to the Oscar-nominated Braveheart -- talk about terrible marketing. If Atlantic thinks no one cares about the words to these songs, it should check out the various Clannad home pages on the Web, where fans are clamoring for the lyrics.

No matter: Clannad have risen to new heights -- and in the process they're retrieving Gaelic from the dustbin and making it a language for the 21st century. It's a good St. Patrick's Day to be Irish.