The Celtic Ray
Maple Leaf & Eagle Conference, Helsinki, May 2004
This paper
proposes to examine
representations of Celtic roots and Irish Diaspora identities in three
1980s
albums by Belfast born singer/songwriter, Van
Morrison.
Although Morrison originates in
Ulster, he has spent the bulk of his life in self-imposed exile in
North
America, England and Europe. His music is based on a mixture of North
American
forms (rhythm and blues/jazz and folk/country) and traditional Irish
folk
inspiration. His main fan base has always been located in the USA and
for many
years Morrison lived in homes in Woodstock, New York and in California. The 1980s saw him return more explicitly to
Irish roots, and a trilogy of albums from that period contain songs
whose
lyrics and tunes express Celtic longings, culminating in a full-length
album
collaboration with The Chieftains (Irish
Heartbeat, 1988), which
features 8 traditional Irish songs (one a Patrick
Kavanagh poem set to
a
traditional Irish air) and two self-penned Van Morrison songs, which
were
re-recordings of songs originally appearing on Beautiful Vision
(1982)
and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983).
This paper shows how these two songs
(Celtic
Ray and Irish
Heartbeat) thematize tensions
between
longing and belonging in a conflict typical for Irish Diaspora texts.
They
propose a revival of a utopian brotherhood of peoples once (and again
in the
future) living on the “Celtic Ray”. As the songs reappear in full
Celtic-style
arrangements on the 1988 album, they form a seamless part of a whole
suite of
songs on migration and exile, describing an arch in the singer’s
personal
development of identity, both as a journey from painful courtship to
joyous marriage
(embodied in the first and last songs, Star
of the County Down
and Marie’s
Wedding), and as a journey through loss and death (referenced
in
almost all
the songs in the middle sequence of the album: Irish
Heartbeat;
Ta
Mo
Chleamhnas Deanta; Raglan
Road; She
Moved through the Fair;
I'll
Tell Me Ma; Carrickfergus;
Celtic
Ray; My
Lagan Love).
The
paper concludes with a discussion of Morrison’s notions of Celtic
brotherhood as a hybrid between American New Age philosophies
(individualist)
and Irish identity positions (collectivist). The postulate here is that
this
hybrid creates the only viable recipe for life for Morrison whose
character
reflects a contradiction between an extremely shy and private persona,
and an
extroverted performer persona whose only existence is in the public
gaze. This
duality is further mirrored in Morrison’s
internal and external exile positions.
