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| - Andrew Kennedy %22Andy%22 Irvine (14 June 1942) is an Irish folk musician, singer-songwriter, and a founding member of popular bands Sweeney's Men, Planxty, Patrick Street, Mozaik, LAPD and Usher's Island. He is an accomplished player of the mandolin, mandola, bouzouki and harmonica, and occasionally plays the hurdy-gurdy.He has been influential in folk music for over five decades, during which he collected and recorded a large repertoire of songs and tunes he meticulously researched and assembled from books, folk-song collectors and old recordings rooted in the Irish, English, Scottish, Eastern European, Australian and American old-time and folk traditions. He often sets these traditional songs to new music, and also writes songs about his personal experiences or about the lives and struggles of his heroes: Michael Davitt, Mary Harris %22Mother%22 Jones, Douglas Mawson, Raoul Wallenberg, and many others. Imbued with a deep sense of social justice, Irvine often selects or writes songs that are presented from the victim's perspective, either as groups of people: the emigrants; the brutalized migrant workers; the exploited textile strikers or coalminers; or as single individuals: the destitute young man ostracized or murdered on the order of his sweetheart’s rich father; the down-on-his-luck farmer or the unemployed worker; the young man inveigled by the army's recruiting sergeant; the scapegoats; the woman seduced and betrayed by an unfaithful man or disowned by her father. Irvine also denounces worker deaths and industrial diseases, and laments the plight of hunted animals. His repertoire includes several very amusing songs but also sad ones of unrequited love; songs of lovers cruelly separated, or dramatically reunited; songs about men or women adopting a variety of disguises, about famous racehorses, about a fantastical fox preying on young maidens, and about the violent lives of outlaws.As a child actor, Irvine honed his performing talent from an early age and learned the classical guitar, a skill he later applied to playing the songs of Woody Guthrie, also adopting the latter’s other instruments: harmonica and mandolin. After extending Guthrie’s picking technique to the mandolin, he further developed his playing of this instrument—and, later, of the mandola and the bouzouki—into a richly harmonic, decorative style and embraced the modes and rhythms of Bulgarian folk music. Along with Johnny Moynihan and Dónal Lunny, Irvine is one of the pioneers who adapted the Greek bouzouki—with a new tuning—into an Irish instrument, and has contributed to advancing the design of his instruments in cooperation with English luthier Stefan Sobell. He also plays a hurdy-gurdy made for him in 1972 by Peter Abnett, another English luthier.Although touring almost constantly as a soloist, Irvine has also enjoyed great success in pursuing collaborations through many projects that have influenced contemporary folk music, with notable performers such as (in alphabetical order): Paul Brady,Kevin Burke,Nollaig Casey,Steve Cooney,Jackie Daly, John Doyle,Maria Dunn,Rick Epping, Ged Foley,Dick Gaughan,Frankie Gavin,Paddy Glackin,Marianne Green,Mick Hanly,Noel Hill,Dolores Keane,James Kelly,Tony Linnane,Dónal Lunny,Declan Masterson,Arty McGlynn,Michael McGoldrick, Matt Molloy,Bruce Molsky, Christy Moore, Johnny Moynihan, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Lillebjørn Nilsen,Gerry O'Beirne,Máirtín O'Connor, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill,Liam O'Flynn,Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin,Nikola Parov,Márta Sebestyén, Davy Spillane, Rens van der Zalm, andBill Whelan, among others.He continues to tour and perform extensively in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, North and South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – as an indefatigable, modern-day minstrel.
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