All-Female GIRSA Performs Traditional Irish Music

Sitting with some of the girls from GIRSA, including the hostesses Maeve and Bernadette Flanagan, was like sitting in any kitchen in Rockland County.  Tea brewing, coffee cakes offered and fiddle students running in and out.

Well, almost like any other kitchen. This one oozed Irish music.

Maeve and Bernadette’s mother Rose was an original member of the all-female band Cherish the Ladies http://www.cherishtheladies.com (a traditional Irish Band) before raising a family and she now teaches fiddle out of her home.  The Flanagan’s father, Mike, plays the fiddle, concertina, tin whistle and piano. Several of the GIRSA girls including Maeve and Bernadette started fiddle lessons with Rose at a very young age.

“These girls were my first students,” explained Rose.

“I think I was five,” Maeve Flanagan said. “We played little fiddles, but I got too friendly with all the girls and my Mom kicked me out of the group to take lessons with my Uncle Brian.”

GIRSA (Gaelic for "young girls") is a traditional Irish music band made up of eight women from Peral River. They technically formed in 2004 after the heavy persuasion of Pamela Geraghty’s mother, Pat.

“She kind of insisted that we get together,” Maeve Flanagan explained. “We were 12 and 13 at the time.”

Emily and Kristen McShane’s father named the group, but the early roots can be found in those lessons given by Rose Flanagan.

Not all of them took to the instruments right off.

“I really hated the fiddle,” admits Bernadette Flanagan. “I feel like I know how to play almost all our instruments, but piano and bodhran (Irish hand held frame drum) best.”

Each of these ladies is well spoken, easy going, charming, witty, smart, friendly, and young.  Friends that grew up in Pearl River and have known each other all their lives, all are either attending college, just recently graduated or  attending law school. They are trying to find jobs and figure what they want to be in the “adult” world--- and in their spare time they play music and lots of it.

“As a career, I would love to choose the scores for movies and commercials,” admits Maeve Flanagan, who is currently attending Pace Law School and interning at the Westchester County District Attorney’s office.

Bernadette Flanagan is currently a Communications major at Fordham and is thinking of switching to German in the hopes of possibly becoming an interpreter.

“I am not sure yet,” she admits.

Emily McShane is studying elementary and special education at Manhattan College and her sister Kristen will be senior at University of Scranton in the fall. Kristen is studying nursing.

Diedre Brennan just graduated from SUNY Binghamton. Pamela Geraghty and Blaithin Laughran attend SUNY Cortlandt and Margaret Dudasik attends Pace.

But what stands out like the elephant in the room is that these ladies have a passion not like that of most women their age.  Tradition has taken hold of them and they use instruments and raw talent to share this time-honored Irish musical heritage.  This is serious work for the GIRSA ladies and they show it with pride.

On July 4, 2009, the GIRSA girls performed Guy Clark’s Immigrant Eyes at Ellis Island for a music video.  The girls performed this song expressing gratitude for their roots through their own eyes.

Chorus
Sometimes when I look in my grandfather's Immigrant Eyes
I see that day reflected and I can't hold my feelings inside
I see starting with nothing and working hard all of his life
So don't take it for granted say grandfather's Immigrant Eyes

Sean Smith of the Boston Irish Reporter had this to say about GIRSA in 2009, “Girsa's repertoire is, to put it mildly, versatile. On the instrumental side of things, they can fire up tunes that fall into the 'classic' category – 'Eleanor Plunkett,' 'The Longford Tinker,' 'Paddy Ryan's Dream,' to name a few – and contemporary compositions such as John Whelan's "Ian's Return to Ireland" or Eileen Ivers's 'Afro-Jig.'

"Their songs encompass an even greater range: traditional ballads like 'I Courted a Wee Girl' and 'The Home I Left Behind,' standards from the 1970s/80s Irish folk revival such as 'Mary and the Soldier or 'I Live Not Where I Love,'  latter-day crowd favorites 'Immigrant Eyes' and 'Galway Girl,' and even a somewhat obscure Rod Stewart hit, "Rhythm of My Heart.

The GIRSA girls expect to be busy playing this summer, mostly at small festivals.

Locally, on June 24, the girls will be performing at Tommy Fox’s Public House in Bergen County. The rest of the summer GIRSA is off to Maine, Hartford, Woodbridge, NJ, Cleveland, Glastonbury, CT, Wisconsin, Missouri and East Durham and Albany, NY.

This fall, GIRSA hopes to play again in Pearl River. They recently played for an assembly at the St. Margaret School in Pearl River.

GIRSA now has a professional agent Pat Garrett (Real Good Music). Before that the “Moms” did all the work.

“It really got to be too much for them,” Maeve Flanagan explained.

When asked to describe their music, the GIRSA girls agree that it is traditional with a modern twist or straight traditional. Maeve Flanagan also composes her own tunes that the group will be debuting this summer at some of the festivals. “We do Van Morrison and Rod Stewart also,” adds Emily McShane.

When asked how proud she is of her girls, Rose Flanagan said with a glimmer in her eye, “I am proud of all of them.”

For more information about GIRSA, check out http://www.girsamusic.com. New CD "A Sweeter Place" available on their website.

Maeve Flanagan plays fiddle and whistle; her sister Bernadette plays piano, guitar, bodhram and stepdances; Kristen McShane fiddle, percussion; Margaret Dudasik fiddle, vocals, low whistle, and stepdancing; Deidre Brennan vocals, banjo and mandolin; Blaithin Loughran accordion, percussion; Pamela Geraghty accordion, guitar, vocals and percussion and Emily McShane vocals, piano, bodhran and guitar.