Herself and Myself

Thomas McCarthy is an Irish Traveller who, when he was a child, lived on a site beneath the Westway, the elevated motorway leading into London. He grew up in a rich oral culture, learning songs from relatives far and wide. At first, McCarthy sang solely within his community, until a prompt from an uncle sent him to Cecil Sharp House, where he sang ‘Round Top Wagon’. Soon he was performing at clubs and festivals and in 2010 he made his first album.

This, his second album, is dedicated to his late mother, Mary. She loved music of all sorts but, teaching Thomas, insisted he master the pronounced vibrato of Ireland's sean nós singing. At first this rich ornamentation can be disconcerting: an imposition on, rather than an expression of, a song's meaning. Among Travellers, however, it is an intrinsic aspect of artistry. McCarthy's repertoire is rich: night visiting songs, songs of emigration, some from the Gaelic, and some from the music hall. ‘Nell Flaherty's Drake’, with its wonderful catalogue of vivid curses, encapsulates the Travellers’ delight in language and delivery. ‘Moving Us on Again’ is McCarthy's own, his response to the eviction of Gypsies from Dale Farm in Britain and deportations of the Roma from France.