The Wolfe Tones

Avon8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070524#Comment_121070524

Their popularity has very little to do with that though. The vast majority of the EP crowd was 20 somethings high on drink and/or drugs, mad for a communal singalong to tunes they've heard in every Irish bar abroad since they were a toddler, or chanted at football matches, or the local at 1am on a Saturday. They couldn't care less about the armed struggle

It's the same as the Irish womens team singing "ohh ahh up the ra" when celebrating. At no point is anyone thinking "I support the actions of the IRA". Its generally people on some sort of buzz messing with their friends, aided by nostalgia and catchy lyrics

Boggles

So ban young people singing songs?

I'm all for that, can we start with Ed Sheeran and 4,000 other clones of him that are never off the radio?

Nah I'm joking, I don't listen to the radio, it's never been easier in the history of music to listen to your own preferences.

If you don't like it turn it off.

rossie1977

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070766#Comment_121070766

Streets of New York is arguably one of the greatest songs ever produced in Ireland.

Hurrache

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070599#Comment_121070599

I would think a lot of it was driven by king idiot Joe Duffy ambushing a member of the band, spuing personal vitriol all over him, and the two click bait edgelords on Newstalk.

Had they said nothing in the name of getting listeners and clicks on their tweets etc, the crowd wouldn't have been as big.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071153#Comment_121071153

Pity it is sung by the same old sectarian bigots who - lets call a spade a spade - glorify the organisation who planted 16,000 bombs, many of which sliced in to women, children etc on streets closer to home. Singing uh ah UP the RA is no different that singing Up ah up Isis or Uh Ah up the 9/11 twin towers suicide bombers.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071119#Comment_121071119

Yes, that's about the sum of it. Anyone trying to read some big political statement into it is overanalysing things. I'd probably be singing along to the songs myself if I was there and I'm no IRA supporter.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069852#Comment_121069852

Well, I wouldn't be offended by it, but that's hardly the question as I'm fine with the Irish Republic.

But I'm less comfortable with things like the Billy Boys song lyrics:

Hullo, Hullo

We are the Billy Boys

Hullo, Hullo

You'll know us by our noise

We're up to our knees in fenian blood

Surrender or you'll die

For we are

The Brigton Derry Boys.

I'm not really thrilled with the idea of them being up to their knees in fenian blood and the threat of death. So the question is pretty clear about who might be offended by songs and the answer is not the people in the crowd singing along.

Should these songs be banned? I don't think so. But you need to acknowledge the people you're likely to offend by singing it and if you're happy to offend them, then go ahead.

Likewise, you'll need to acknowledge that the Orange Lads can sing their songs to you and you need to be equally fine with their threat of death to you. If we get to that point. Then there's no problem anymore.

Everlong1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070613#Comment_121070613

Way to spectacularly miss the point.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071034#Comment_121071034

What a silly thing to say. They are a skilled ensemble, good songwriters with a good singer. Lets see your stuff.

The lowest common denominator is un-coordinated ceilí bands jamming away mindlessly imo.

prunudo

Its a classic example of what happens when oldies telling young people (I know it was mixed ages) not to do something which they perceive to be fun. The establishment tut tut in disgust, people who never would have had the Wolfe Tones on the radar, take note.

There is something bigger afoot here in this country though, something is stirring and the next election will cause consternation amongst old guard. The lack of housing and an uncertain future for many young people is increasingly driving a wedge between the younger generations and what they see as older generations who have everything.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071218#Comment_121071218

This is a new one to add to the bingo card - ooh ahh up the 9/11 twin towers suicide bombers

Honestly the hand wringing and Pearl clutching in response to rebel songs is hilarious.

Wolfe Tones live rent free in many peoples' heads

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071071#Comment_121071071

They're pub songs, like mass market movies they are pieces of entertainment. Not documentaries, they're not meant to be complicated or make you think. They are historical in a way, but present a biased, black hat vs white hat, one-sided part of that history.

Real history is complicated, inconvenient and messy.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071133#Comment_121071133

You can't ban songs and nobody is proposing that. You can't ban people from singing "Up the Ra" no more than you can ban Loyalists from singing about Billy Wright or Gibraltar.

Such well known West Brits as Joe Brolly and Patrick Kielty are categorical that these Up The Ra chants should stop. They should stop for the simple reason that there are many families out there that are victims of the IRA, because it isn't nice to eulogise murderers, it's the act of a buffoon and an idiot. It's Alan Partridge shouting "moooooooooo".

As Patrick Kielty says, it's far easier to sing about the Ra and not have a United Ireland and than to stop singing about the Ra so that you might have a united Ireland or a genuinely shared society at some point in the future.

El_Duderino 09

Joe Brolly's considered a West Brit? I didn't know that. Wouldn't have thought it from listening to him.

They ban songs at soccer games I don't suppose I agree with doing that but maybe it's the only way to prevent imminent violence. I wouldn't be inclined to do it but I know they do it in some instances.

gormdubhgorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070930#Comment_121070930

I probably find the phrase 'nothing burger' more annoying than the Wolfe Tones 'Republican' credentials.

But Wolfe Tones predominately target the gombeen market in the ROI, however there is a collection of gombeen's who are -

1) Easily influenced (and it normalises the republican rhetoric for the younger generation - the Irish Women's soccer team for example)

2) People who like to have the air of Republicanism and pretend they are only having a laugh - the anti immigrant brigade

--

There are certain 'types' that attend Wolfe Tone concerts. If you close your eyes and imagine which type what would you come up with?

There was once a person with a Tyrone flag, who some Wolfe Tone concert goers mistook for a NI flag and they attacked the person with the flag. That is the level of people you are dealing with.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071421#Comment_121071421

Real history is complex. In real history, the Provos bombed and shot civilians dead for three decades. They were not the Disneyfied freedom fighters some people want to portray them as. The Provos killed more Catholics than any other single group in the Troubles.

"Up the Ra" is a celebration of those who murdered civilians for three decades.

There's this bizarre delusion on the part of those defending it that words mean nothing, or should mean nothing. But they do mean something.

To say that "Up the Ra" means nothing is to embrace the Putin/Trump worldview where nothing means anything and there is no truth.

It's also carte blanche for Loyalists to sing about murdering Catholics. They can simply pass it off as "banter".

lawrencesummers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070599#Comment_121070599

This is the problem with a lot of people.

The republican movement and republicans are the reason you have “my country”. If it wasnt for republicans we would live under british rule and have nothing like the prosperity and opportunity we have now as Irish people.

You cant be a proud Irish man without acknowledging that the people who founded this republic were nationalists and republicans and celebrating those people in song is not something anyone should be ashamed of. But there comes a point where that changed and for many the Omagh bombing was a step to far, for others it was earlier and for others it never went far enough.

Sure some of the actions during the “troubles” were unnecessary, over the top and plain barbaric but that accusation can be levelled at both sides in what was essentially a war.

So people have the right to celebrate their Irish history and Irish victory and those getting offended need to be able to understand that being a proud Irish man doesnt make you a person who supported everything the IRA did.

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070524#Comment_121070524

As long as people taunt each other with sectarian slogans and songs on both sides I can't see a united Ireland. Pro united Irelanders live in a dreamland if they think Unionists will roll over or go away.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071484#Comment_121071484

The IRA in 1921 stopped fighting a war which had been going for two years because they realised the people could take no more. They weren't nihilists who went on for three decades with a completely futile murder campaign like the Provos did.

The IRA in 1921 achieved their aim, which was an independent Irish state. The Provos achieved the square root of fook all.

Tork

Older journalists should know better than to give this story any airtime. Though we live in the age of clickbait so the rules are new. Thanks to the fuss that was kicked up over the ladies football team singing along to it, the song has turned into an anti-establishment anthem. If you're a young person in Ireland today, you've got plenty of reasons to give two fingers to the establishment. So when you've got middle-aged people who own their own homes and/or are on obscene wages (Joe Duffy) finger-wagging and moralising, of course you're going to want to piss them off. I'm not convinced many of those people singing the song particularly care about the 'Ra or what happened in the north.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071390#Comment_121071390

"living rent free in many peoples heads". Many people have bits of shrapnel ling in their bodies and life changing injuries thanks to the same IRA, who set off the vast vast majority of the 16,000 or so explosions / bombs during the troubles....some of which were set off to deliberately kill innocent people.

Chanting uh ah up the RA is an insult to the many thousands of victims and their families - can people not see that?

rob316

It's just music.

Like hip hop raps about dealing drugs, shooting people, been a gangster etc

Metal depicts death, hell, suicide, drugs, murder

It's art, no need to be offended by it.

Larbre34

Did they?

Its easy to dismiss the campaign of violence and racketeering, but compare the administration of the North of Ireland in 1970 and in 2000 and complete the equation with what occurred in between and its impossible to argue that Irish Republican violence had no effect in bringing parties to the table - particularly the British Government - and to hammer out agreed solutions which ended the treatment of Nationalists and Catholics as second class citizens, gerrymandered out of any real democratic rights.

The proof of that, is the back channel negotiation that went on between Downing Street and Sinn Féin IRA, which evolved into Hume-Adams and ultimately the Reynolds-Major initiative which arrived at the Downing Street Declaration. This was the playing field for the GFA and constitutional change.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071265#Comment_121071265

By which statement, you show you know little or nothing of Irish trad. Jamming away!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do you think this is Yankee Land?

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071461#Comment_121071461

Check your sarcasm meter. Joe Brolly comes from a Provo background, his father was a big player in the Provos.

I'm referring to the utterly juvenile attitude of those who defend the Up the Ra chants, who routinely brand anybody who objects to them as "West Brits".

Brolly comes from a Provo background and says the chants need to stop. Kielty's father was shot dead by Loyalists. These are people who lived the Troubles.

As long as this pathetic goading of "themmuns" continues, it will always be a major impediment to a shared society. But the truth is some people simply aren't interested in a shared society. Those whose write "KAT" and put effigies of a hanged Michelle O'Neill on bonfires aren't interested in a shared society. Neither are those who chant "Up the Ra".

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071451#Comment_121071451

So the songs shouldn't be banned they should be stopped?

That not the same thing?

It's Alan Partridge shouting "moooooooooo".

It's more like this to be fair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RTJ4vHoYUs

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071518#Comment_121071518

I think there's something in that. SF are unknown as they haven't been in power in modern times. They represent change and the establishment fear and oppose change because the change might remove them from their position. Joe Brolly talked about the dfderin coverage of the women's football team and the Leinster rugby team playing the song on the staduim speakers after a game. Leinster just apologised and said it was a playlist mistake. The women had to be hauled out, like trollopes in the stocks for everyone to throw their sh1t at them and take out their anger.

There was a class difference in how those issues were reported. Editors at Irish news outlets are more likely to follow one of those teams than the other and are lore likely to identify with the broad class associated with one of those sports than the other. It was keeping the soccer, working class and SF down while completely letting the rugby lads off the hook. It can't have been a coincidence.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071536#Comment_121071536

I'm using a phrase that expresses what I mean so I can be understood, that's all.

You haven't answered the point which is that the Wolfe Tones are good musically. Where is the evidence that the WT are terrible musically, that you are better, or that you should be listened to because you say you know a lot about Irish trad?

lawrencesummers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071503#Comment_121071503

Yea sure it was all sunshine and lollipops being a catholic in the north after that alright.

lawrencesummers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071525#Comment_121071525

Do you have similiar feelings when GSTQ is sung?

There were two sides.