Danny O’Flaherty, the Irish Bard

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After the green beer is drunk and the green beads stored, the potatoes and cabbages cooked and eaten, and all vestiges of this year’s Americanized St. Patrick’s Day celebration turned to memory, anyone who can get to the Bayou Playhouse in Lockport can experience a few hours of the real Ireland and hear music that flowers from deep Irish roots.

Irish bard Danny O’Flaherty will appear at the playhouse March 28 – a full 10 days after the traditional St. Patrick’s celebration – at 8 p.m., with songs and stories from the soul of the Emerald Isle.

“I’ll be going with my heart,” said O’Flaherty, when asked about his planned repertoire. “There will for sure be some songs in Gaelic, some ballads, some contemporary tunes based on the history of Ireland going back in time.”


A native speaker of Gaelic from the Gaeltect region of Connemara on the west coast of Ireland, O’Flaherty paid close attention to the songs and stories of his elders, often told around a turf fire, instilling in him the desire to carry them on to larger audiences.

O’Flaherty is also available for Gaelic workshops, house concerts and universities, and full-length concerts.

“My lifelong goal remains a commitment to the Celtic people and Celtic culture. There is no greater achievement than to pass on the traditions of our common ancestors,” he has said of the mission he has pursued on American shores since emigrating from Ireland in the early 1970s.


O’Flaherty’s accomplishments – in addition to the penning of many songs – include performing for a crowd of a half-million on Solidarity Day in Washington, D.C., a performing tour of Israel with a command performance before its president, a performance at the National Cathedral for Pope John Paul II’s visit to the U.S., a performance at President Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural Ball, opening at the concert for the Pan Celtic Festival in Ireland, and headlining for the Tulsa Philharmonic and The National Theatre in Washington.

He and his brother Patrick established the now-defunct O’Flaherty’s Irish Channel Pub on Toulouse Street in New Orleans, which featured Irish musicians, singers and dancers.

He is founder of the Celtic Nations Heritage Foundation and Margaret Currach Club of New Orleans.


In addition to the long-standing link of New Orleans to the Irish, whose immigrant numbers to that port once bested the numbers of those who landed in New York, O’Flaherty is aware of other ties between his homeland and Louisiana generally, as well as the bayou country specifically.

He notes the tale of Galloping Hogan, the 17th Century Irish patriot who fought Cornwallis and then went on to serve as a general in the French army; Richard Danton Williams, the freedom-fighter and poet who settled in Thibodaux after being acquitted of charge of treason against the British crown is also a local link, as are the nameless workers who sacrificed their backs and in some cases their lives to build canals and other projects.

O’Flaherty’s program, fans say, is an entertaining blend of folk tunes and folklore that is rarely seen on local stages, a collection he takes pride in bringing to the Bayou Playhouse stage.


“Folk music is a world thing,” said O’Flaherty, who maintains that he is never at a loss for material. “There are happenings that happened for the past 800 years that haven’t been written about yet.” •

DANNY O’FLAHERTY IN CONCERT

WHEN: March 28 at 8 p.m.


WHERE: Bayou Playhouse, 101 Main St., Lockport

COST:$25

INFO: bayouplayhouse.com


On the heels of St. Patrick’s Day, Irish-American multi-instrumentalist, balladeer and songwriter Danny O’Flaherty visits the Bayou Playhouse. The March 28 show will include songs and stories from the soul of the Emerald Isle.

COURTESY