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Duke Special hooks up with trad supergroup Ulaid for Belfast Suite

Duke Special and traditional musicians Ulaid have collaborated on a collection of old and new songs and tunes they've called The Belfast Suite
Duke Special and traditional musicians Ulaid have collaborated on a collection of old and new songs and tunes they've called The Belfast Suite Duke Special and traditional musicians Ulaid have collaborated on a collection of old and new songs and tunes they've called The Belfast Suite

AS I sat entranced in listening to a sumptuous newly composed song based on the much-loved ninth century Irish poem with connections to Belfast, Int én bec ro léic feit, I thought of a quote from an American writer and playwright, John Harrigan.

“Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower” seemed to fit the gathering at the Red Box studio where trad supergroup Ulaid and Duke Special held the seed of a collection of old and new songs and tunes they are calling The Belfast Suite.

The good news is the happiness will be shared when the band take the finished article on tour from next week onwards – although no date has been set aside for Belfast yet.

It was Tíona McSherry who first came up with the idea of a collobaration between the master traditional musicians of Ulaid (Dónal O’Connor, John McSherry and Seán Óg Graham) and Duke Special, the be-dreadlocked, be-mascara-ed collector of 1930s gramophones.

“I think we met in a pub and Tíona said 'I think you should do something with my brother John’, Duke – Peter Wilson, as he is known to the taxman – explains. “The guys thought that would be great but inside I was going 'Oh no!' but my reservation was for no other reason than these are amazing trad players and I didn't know what I could bring to that or how I could fit into that.

Tíóna believed the secret was in Duke’s voice and fiddler Dónal O’Connor agreed.

“I had always thought that Duke’s voice lent itself perfectly to our world of music,” says Dónal. “His tonality and his phrasing and his way of shaping a note is very suited to what we do.”

Donal says that one of the aims of the collaboration was to bring what Ulaid do into Peter's world of performance and delivery and vice versa.

“He's bringing all of that to pieces that would perhaps be more traditional/Irish and we're bringing elements of traditional/Irish to those that would be more in sympathy with what Peter does. It is to be seen whether it works – it's not for us to make that call, but we're enjoying it,” he says.

But will the two poles attract? Does Duke Special have any background in traditional music? He’ll admit to being a bit of a hoarder and recently, he says he found a project he'd done for his O-level music exam – which was on traditional music.

“I tried playing the uilleann pipes when I was at school and I asked for a bodhrán for the 12th birthday, so it was always something I was intrigued by, despite not growing up in a culture that had that around," he tells me.

“I always felt on the outside of it but have always been drawn to it and increasingly as I get older, I feel that songs, including my own, are stories and that really fits – I feel comfortable within folk music or being around that despite not growing up playing it."

The boys have been spending time in Dónal’s Red Box studios in Belfast's University Street rehearsing old and new material.

“I suppose the exciting thing about trying to fit into each other's world in seeing what happened when we had a blank page, and just writing about something together,” says Duke.

The spark that lit the creativity was the treasure trove known as The Francis J Bigger colleciton which is held in Belfast Central Library.

“It's a collection of these strange pieces, everything from the deeds of houses to poems and all kinds of curiosities. I've just been going through it and seeing words that have been jumping out and setting them to music,” he says.

The Belfast suite is a number of different songs and instrumental pieces which will be performed in one fell swoop.

“We started with a very wide scope – Belfast and the history of Belfast – but as we started to drill down into working together, we realised that we needed to get a bit more focused and so the Bigger collection became the focus, starting with Londubh Loch Lao .

"We’ve drawn on some compositions of ours that we had attributed to different parts of Belfast like Little Italy, and the Half Bap and we’ll be doing our own version of My Lagan Love.

“As well as that we came across material on the shipyards of Belfast and I don’t think that the shipyards have ever been celebrated by traditional music or traditional music celebrated in the shipyards of Belfast. But it was something that resonated with us and it lends itself to the dramatic display through the music so we are trying to invoke the shipyards while the ships are being built so you can take that idea to drive a musical idea along.” says Dónal.

:: For a list of Ulaid and Duke Special tour dates, go to http://url.ie/zo57