Capt. Francis O'Neill and the power of Irish music

[mvhplank]

The following, found on this site (http://www.wttw.com/chicagostories/francisoneill.html), seemed a good topic for this forum:

The Real Magic of Irish Music
by program producer Leonard Aronson

Why is Irish music so popular? That's one of the questions we set out to answer in our documentary on Chicago's turn-of-the-century Police Chief Francis O'Neill.

O'Neill left Ireland at the age of 16, circumnavigating the world as a seaman before arriving in Chicago just after the Great Fire in 1871.

One anecdote from his early life did not make it into the documentary, but is worth telling here because it helps answer the above question.

On one voyage O'Neill and his fellow crew members were shipwrecked and faced the prospect of starvation, marooned on Baker Island in the middle of the Pacific.

An accomplished musician, O'Neill showed a native crew member on the ship that rescued them how to play Irish tunes on the native's crude wooden flute and, in exchange, he received extra rations of food. When they arrived in San Francisco, O'Neill was one of the only members of his crew who didn't have to be hospitalized for malnutrition.

It was an early example of the power Irish music has to connect people, and, I think, is an essential part of its spirit and allure.

Popular music in America tends to be generational, connecting listeners in one generation, but dividing them from those in others. In Ireland, because the traditional music has been respected and virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, you'll often find, as one of Irish musician observed, "the tiny tot sitting down with the pensioner and the judge or lawyer playing with the common man of the street."

Simply put, it is music that somehow helps us cross the barriers of class, age and ethnicity and makes us feel that we are all in this together. Lord knows, there is not enough of that going on in the world today.

That, I believe, is the real magic of Irish Music, and the legacy of Francis O'Neill's life.

Len Aronson, a former newspaper reporter, has been producing documentaries for WTTW11 for the past 15 years, including the Emmy Award-winning "Vietnam: The Next Generation" and "Vietnam: A Chicagoan Goes Home." In total, Aronson has won eleven Emmy awards, two Cardinal's Communicator's Awards, two Peter Lisagor Awards, and a Peabody Award. He is Executive Producer of our "Chicago Matters" series, which this spring will focus on issues related to housing.

For ten years, he has wanted to produce a program about Chief Francis O'Neill. The advent of WTTW's "Chicago Stories" series finally provided a broadcast venue for this look at one of Chicago's most interesting "unsung heroes and untold stories."

[lollycross]

Yes, it was a very good topic!
3 cheers for him and his "big yellow book"!
Lolly