News 5. 4. 2012

Dubliners last founder and banjo player Barney McKenna dies

It is understood McKenna collapsed at his Dublin home on Thursday (5th April) morning and was pronounced dead at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. His family released a statement on Thursday afternoon confirming his death.
McKenna had been in the band since 1962 and was among the latest lineup, which recently finished the 12-gig UK leg of their 50th anniversary tour, including dates in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Cardiff.
They also toured Switzerland in February after their two sold-out concerts at Dublin’s Christchurch Cathedral at the end of January. Other late members Ronnie Drew, Ciarán Bourke and Luke Kelly, who have died since the band famously formed in the snug of O’Donoghue’s pub on Merrion Row in 1962, were remembered during emotional scenes at the gigs.
Born in 1939 in Donnycarney in north Dublin, McKenna also played the mandolin and the melodeon. But he was renowned among fans for his storytelling as well as his musicianship.
Musician and broadcaster Kieran Hanrahan said top banjo players in both Ireland and the UK during the 1960s and 1970s all owed a debt to McKenna.
„Every single one of them would have pointed to an influence by Barney McKenna,“ he said. „He was the single most important figure in tenor banjo playing in Irish traditional music.“
Hanrahan said McKenna started interpreting traditional music on the banjo like old traditional fiddle players, flute players or pipers.
„He also had a technique of playing with his plectrum with his right hand which no one had seen before,“ he said.
„The beauty of all that and the beauty of Barney McKenna as a gentleman – to me, the most influential man – it did not matter who you were, 65 years or five, if you showed an interest in the banjo, he’d sit down with you and show you what he was doing.“
The Dubliners appeared on Top of the Pops in 1987 with Shane MacGowan and The Pogues for a version of the Irish Rover. They became synonymous with Irish music not only in the UK, but among the Irish diaspora in North America, Australia and across the world.

Václav Bernard