| A few weeks ago in West
Belfast, someone didn't so much as fall asleep at the switch
as they hit the 'repeat' button before leaving the building.
The result was that for 12 hours straight, those listening
to a limited licence, community radio station, which was
supposed to have shut down operations at midnight, got to
hear an endless repetition of 'Fenians,' a
controversial-enough song by New York hip-hopper
Shanchaí.
"it was due to some
technical glitch,: said Shanchaí, better know as
Chris Byrne, one of the members of Black '47. "Or maybe it
was some technical know-how."
The incident made the
front page of the Irish News, one of the two main
dailies in Belfast. It was considered a mix of hooliganism
and scandal, due to the song's fiercely-strong nationalist
sentiments. Not everyone was happy to hear a 12-hour chorus
of Byrne proclaiming himself to using [sic] an
"unrepentant Fenian bastard."
'Unrepentant' even now,
safely returned to his native New Yrok, Byrne says the song
is about reclaiming a word which has for years been used by
anti-nationalists as an insult.
"It'd be the equivalent
of how black hip-hoppers use the 'N-word," says Burne. "that
is, I use the word 'fenian' in the song in the same way
black hip-hoppers use the N-word -- I reclaim it as a term
of abuse and throw it right back at people, it changes the
whole scenario.
It's not a 'RA-Ra' song,"
says Byrne, meaning a pro-IRA Song. "It's just basically
taking an expression that's been used as an insult and
flipping it back."
The Irish News
printed lyrics to the song which was voted a crowd favorite
at the annual West Belfast festival. Needless to say it will
not be added anytime soon to mainstream playlists of Ireland
or Britain.
|
|
| The single as well as the
Seanchaí album, entitled There Will Be Another
Day, will get its relase in Ireland in October; it has
already sold well in the New York area on Byrne's own
independent label. Byrne says that from what he heard from
aspiring hip-hoppers in Dublin and Belfast, the time could
be ripe for Seanchaí's release.
"I was in Ireland in
April and I heard very little hip-hop, north or south,"
reports Byrne. "But in the last couple of months, maybe
thanks to Puff daddy, hip-hop is getting more of an audience
over there. In the psat, the hip-hop there was horrific:
rave stuff coming out of London. Now I see more and more
kids especially from certain areas in the cities, like the
neglected suburbs of Dublin, where hip-hop is taking root,
like it did in New Yrok years ago. I talked to New
York-based label artist such as urban Dublin songwriter
Damien Dempsey and the Seanchaí group's own Rachel
Fitzgerald, who is working on a solo album.
"This 'Celtic Tiger'
thing ain't helping everybody, and in the areas it's not
reaching over there, that's where the good stuff is gonna
come from. That's what hip-hop did in New York, and I think
we're gonna be seeing a lot of good stuff coming out of
parts of Dublin, soon."
For now, Byrne and his
Seanchaí cohorts can be found every Sunday evening at
a very unusual rap hootennany , a gig at Rocky Sullivan's
bar in Manhattan which, before it was discontinued earlier
this summer, this critic labled the best free rock and roll
show in New York.
"We're gonna feature a
different act each week," says Burne. "this week it's a
great singer from Belfast, Terry O'Neill. Down the road
we've got Greg Trouper and John O'Shea and other local acts,
really good stuff. I'm very adamant about these Sunday night
gigs remaining a throw-down. It's a party, and if you want
to get up and try some rhymes, so be it. That's supposed to
be the spirit of hip-hop. I want to keep it a
party."
|
|