Submitted photo Members of the band Laughing Jack perform at a past concert.
Irish flutist Dmitri Alano remembers initially playing in Columbus some 30 years ago with a group called Hogeye Navvy at the Ethnic Expo international festival.
Yet, he’ll readily acknowledge that Celtic and Irish music have expanded broadly since those days, thanks in part to the global inspiration of Riverdance and related influences.
“After that has come a huge explosion of traditional Irish music,” Alano said. “And there has been a new generation finding a voice in this sound.”
Alano and his bandmates in the Indianapolis-based quartet Laughing Jack, named after the pirate flag, are among the more popular examples of the genre’s growth, and will demonstrate why at a concert at 7 p.m. Friday at Southside Elementary School, 1320 W. County Road 200S in Garden City. The local Granny Connection nonprofit is presenting the performance as a fundraiser to boost its work to support the first community based pediatric HIV program in Zambia, Africa.
The band — lead vocalist and Irish drum player Garry Farren, guitarist, mandolin and tenor banjo player Mario Joven, violinist and well-known Columbus resident Liz Bohall, and Alano — will present Celtic tunes from Ireland, Scotland and England and traditional Irish pub songs, plus more modern tunes “along with a little bit of pirate humor,” according to Alano.
Plus, Farren regularly squeezes in one of the quartet’s most popular numbers titled “Being a Pirate.”
“He sings that you can’t be a real pirate unless you’ve lost one of your body parts,” Alano said. “It’s a highly requested song.”
The group plays monthly at the Aristocrat Pub and Restaurant in Indianapolis whereupon diners “pound their mugs on the table” to the beat of that tune and similar ones.
The Indianapolis Irish Dancers also will perform to the foursome’s rendition of spirited Irish jigs and Irish reels, which Alano acknowledged can chase away almost any semblance of the blues.
“There’s not a time when we’re up there playing those jigs and reels, and just smiling,” he said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
Happiness also comes in seeing the genre still spread.
“With the addition of various social media such as Facebook, this music just continues to find a place in everybody’s heart, and they just seem to love it,” Alano said.
First-timers who catch the foursome seem to simultaneously catch a sense of nostalgia.
“They’ll often tell us afterward, ‘You know, my grandmother sang that song to me,’” Alano said.
However, getting listeners to pay attention in an age of an ever-expanding smorgasbord of sound can be tough.
“The biggest challenge probably involves finding a way to get our music, which is not exactly mainstream, out to new audiences,” he said. “Garry says all the time, ‘Once people hear us the first time, they’re going to want to hear us again.’”
About the concert
Who: Laughing Jack Celtic and Irish band, performing a benefit show for the Columbus-based Granny Connection.
When: 7 p.m. Friday.
Where: Southside Elementary School, 1320 W 200 S, Columbus.
Tickets: $15 and $25, available at grannyconnection.org or at the door.
