Design Kompany is all about visual storytelling–we do branding–but creative directors Akira Morita and Dipika Kohli learned a lot about how to put a story together after living in Ireland for three years.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, today I am just going to tell you a story. There are three things I will NOT forget about this little corner of Europe: the Dance of the Cherry Trees, the Jimmy Cake and this fun word “seanchai.”
Everybody should go out right now and buy a CD of John Spillane’s. My favorite is “Will We Be Brilliant Or What?”, which he kindly signed for me: “To Dipika, will we be brilliant or what?”
County Cork is a small enough place that if you show up to write reviews a couple of times, people figure out who you are. Still, when he got my name right, I was pretty impressed. And in case you’re wondering, my favorite song is The Dance of the Cherry Trees.
John told me that if I’m going to Seattle, I need to tell Martin Hayes that John said hello. So I went to the Tractor in Ballard and checked out a show. This was nothing like being at DeBarra’s in Clonakilty, of course, but I passed along the message after some older ladies in line before me told Martin Hayes about all their travels round Kilkenny.
“Hey,” I said when they were done. “John Spillane says hello.”
“Does he really?”
What I can’t get over is that he didn’t for a second doubt it.
Another great musical introduction in Ireland was completely unexpected. As are, of course, the best things. This was on a spontaneous trip to Dublin when we ducked into this crazy, underpublicized event that someone put together to showcase lesser-known Irish musical voices.
A ton of young folks got on stage and started playing a zillion instruments–clarinets and shiny things–all together all of a sudden in this whirr of magic stuff. Any fan of jazz would love their improvisation style. I promise they are really quite good. Keep an ear out sometime for the Jimmy Cake.
The Irish music scene seems to be small enough that people know one another quite well.
Us writer types keep up, too. A KTOO radio reporter tells me Lunasa plays Juneau this weekend.
Thank you kindly!
Sure thing! Let us know when you tour Stateside.