Not long ago, Baltimore musician Billy McComiskey was in Jackson, Miss., where he heard "Joe Cooley's Reel" played by a local Celtic folk band. Mr. McComiskey was flabbergasted that this tune, born in the Irish countryside, had journeyed so far.
And just last month, Mr. McComiskey, an Irish-American who won the all-Ireland championship for the button accordion in 1986, heard "Joe Cooley's Reel" again -- at a folk music festival in Anchorage.
"Joe Cooley was from County Galway and spent the last 25 years of his life in San Francisco," Mr. McComiskey says. "He played in pubs and dances and his home, but I couldn't help but [wonder] -- I had always loved his music -- if this guy ever thought his tunes would be played all over the country."
An unquenchable love for a beautiful, oppressed, resilient homeland has always spurred such artists as Bill McComiskey and the late Joe Cooley.
As one transplanted Irishman says: "It's in the blood. It's there and it has to come out."
But lately, in a frenzy of artistic expression, Irish musicians, filmmakers, actors and writers are outdoing themselves -- for a host of intriguing reasons, all reflective of the evolving identity of Ireland and its diaspora.
Irish music offers the most immediate evidence for this Gaelic renaissance. Consider U2, Sinead O'Connor, Eleanor McEvoy, Altan, the Cranberries, Oyster Band, Hothouse Flowers, Clannad, Mary Black, the Chieftains, the Pogues, Enya, Luka Bloom, the Waterboys, uilleann piper Davy Spillane and rock mainstay Van Morrison.
Consider, as well, the fleet of hard-driving "trad-rock" Irish-American bands, such as Black 47 and the Kips Bay Ceili Band. At live gigs, these guys incite gleeful mayhem with their raucous hybrid music, which melds traditional rhythms and instruments with rock and rap.
Irish literature, always a gift to the world, continues to examine Ireland's emotional landscape, which is as complex and mysterious as an ancient Celtic knot.
Look at novelist Roddy Doyle, whose acclaimed trio of books (including "The Commitments" and "The Snapper") paints an irresistible, profane portrait of a working-class Dublin family. Other contemporary writers, including Janet Noble, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, playwright Brian Friel and poets Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney, explore Irish history, the intractable Troubles and the daily toil of life.
