Jesus wept

Last Friday, as you’ll know, was Good Friday. Pubs in Belfast were only serving alcohol between 5 and 11 pm, as the good Lord intended on this holiest of days. While this limited the amount of booze served in my home city, it also opened the door for underground sibín and BYOB establishments, as I discovered last week.

The Conway Mill was hosting the 7th annual Basque Solidarity night in Belfast with Bizardunak as the headline act. The ten-man act sound Irish by all accounts and aside from the shaggy locks and skin that has definitely seen some sunshine, you’d be forgiven for thinking these lads were an Irish rebel band. If you’ve grown up around Irish traditional music at all, you would recognise some of the tunes and instrumentation. Even The Wild Rover showed its head at one point.

But accompanying the fiddle and the tin whistle are Euskara lyrics sung by an impassioned lead Basque folk singer, along with Shane McGowan-esque yelps and yeows.  When they’re not covering the Pogues or playing traditional Irish tunes however, the vocal inflections and harmonies have a much more European feel, and some of the tracks with rhythmic, strummed guitar are definitely rooted in Basque culture.

These two distinct sounds do stand apart from one another, but it’s the energy with which the music is performed that unifies the whole sound and which is integral to both musical cultures. It was certainly going down a treat with this Conway Mill crowd and provided a comforting blanket of sound to accompany a night of heavy drinking and dancing.

For more info on the Basque Solidarity campaign, go to www.dontextraditethebasques.org