Gig - Harmony Glen

I ask Vincent Pompe Van Meerdervoort, the singer, harmonica and bodhran player of Harmony Glen, why a Dutch band is touring England playing Irish music. “There’s no Dutch folk scene to speak of,” he says, “which is frustrating for those of us who want to play traditional music. We went to Ireland some years ago on a holiday, heard the music there, and loved it, so we started a band.” The original band, a threesome, aimed to play a laid-back version of the music as a backdrop at parties, but they injected so much pace and enthusiasm into the sound that they soon demanded the full attention of the crowds at their gigs. Now Harmony Glen is a five-piece complete with double bass, banjo, squeezebox, guitar, fiddle and bodhran.

“Irish music is a mixture of happy feeling with an undercurrent of sadness,” continues Vincent. “And there’s an uptempo party feeling to the instrumental music, as well as a sense of quality.” The litmus test for the band came last year when they played in the Feakle Music Festival in Co. Clare. “They loved it,” says Vincent. “They loved the way we made our own arrangements which went against the very conservative trend there.” The band even pen some of their own songs. “We don’t sing about Irish subjects, but more universal subjects, like love and death. We could sing Irish rebel songs and that sort of thing, but we don’t because we feel we have no right to.” Any Dutch songs? “The only Dutch thing about our music is our accents.” DL