The other day Jeff and I were checking out the new Comhaltas online archive of Irish music. A wonderful collection of traditional Irish music (good work Darragh Curran!).
I was confused when I found myself feeling sad listening to it. Not homesick, but a different strange kind of nostalgia. As if it were someone I’m supposed to know well, but have difficulty relating to. A lost opportunity of a good friend.
With an Irish father and an Italian/English mother , growing up in the suburbs of Dublin, I was never immersed in the traditional Irish culture of GAA, Irish music and folklore, although I’m sure my father tried. We were never a family of céilís, Sundays spent watching hurling, or evenings spent singing old Irish songs in the local pub over a pint of Guinness. With the majority of Summer vacations spent visiting my mother’s family in England and Italy, with roadtrips across mainland Europe, I suppose from a very young age we were being exposed to different cultures. At a time when traveling wasn’t as cheap, easy or as widespread as it is now in Ireland, we were given a special opportunity to see a bit of the world outside of the small island of Eire. And our home in the suburbs of Dublin wasn’t exactly the epicenter of traditional Irish culture.
I first became aware of this “difference” between me and so many of my peers when I started my training in the School of Physiotherapy in UCD. I was one of only a few Dubliners in the class. And probably the least “Irish” of them all. We had party nights where everyone showed up in their home teams’ colours (GAA). I felt like a foreigner. Irish traditional music, although beautiful, doesn’t hit those emotional cords within me that other music does. It’s not “mine”. In a way it’s from a different Ireland, one I don’t know very well. I remember at times in University, with my class mates from all over Ireland, wishing that I too had this connection with the old traditions of my country. The feeling that it was “in my bones”. But it wasn’t there.
As we listened to some of the music on the Comhaltas website, Jeff and I chatted about it. It seems a sad thing not to fully understand or relate to your own country’s traditional culture. For a moment I allowed myself to dwell in that ugly sentiment of self-pity. And yet I feel Irish in my own way, maybe because of the family and friends that will always bring me home there.
But yes, a part of me sometimes wonders where I belong. If not wholly “Irish”, am I Italian?
Assolutamente No.
Is this what happens to everyone born of an immigrant parent (or two). (Sorry Mum that word sounds crude, but now I’m an immigrant too…) A part of them remains confused as to where they belong? My siblings may well disagree completely with me of course. But perhaps that explains why we have now scattered in the wind?A taste for travel. Spread from Thailand/India, Italy/America, England, to Ireland and at times Russia?? And yet I feel like we are still a very close family despite the physical distance between us.
Maybe what I mean is I don’t feel wholly Irish, or Italian, but I do feel like a Smyth.
Can a large family become a nation of its own?
Tags: comhaltas, comhaltas archive, family, ireland, italian, Italy, smyths
