It’s early 1993, Carol is pregnant with our second child and we’re in our Greenpoint apartment trying to figure out a name. Family names. Friend’s names. Names that sound good. Names with resonance from poets and singers and stories we’ve heard. She suggests a name that I don’t want. I throw out Seamus, she frowns, “I’m not giving birth to an old man.”
In the background, music plays, but I have trouble leaving music in the background. It’s Black 47, a favorite band we’d see at Paddy Riley’s on Second Avenue, a mix of garage rock, punk, hip hop and Irish tunes with lyrics that stare you down and challenge you mixing in humor and pathos. What more could you ask? There’s a pause between songs and then the banging martial drums, followed by the uilleann pipes, it grabs you by the lapels and demands, listen up boys. Larry Kirwan’s voice rises above the music:
Marchin’ down O’Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high
There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky
Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye
My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die
And we had the name for our son to be. How could we not. James (not Jimmy, my bride insisted). My mother’s maiden name, Conolly, given to her and her five sisters, would carry on. (The Connolly girls have all passed but live in the love they imprinted in their sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren and the lessons they taught us). James echoing James Joyce with all those jokes and beguiling tongue. But it is James Connolly. What can one man do? What can even a group of men do against the mightiest of empires? They can let justice and liberty make them impossible to defeat.
My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die
But to fight for the rights of the working man, the small farmer too
Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, don’t give up your dreams
Of a Republic for the workin’ class, economic liberty
And what greater wish could we have for our son than to live for others, care about what’s right and walk away from praise.
“James Connolly” is never background music. It mixes the public and the profoundly personal in a way that connects that past with our lives today. Be it Pearse and Connolly in Dublin, Rosa Parks and Dr. King in Alabama or Mandela and Tutu in South Africa, given the might of justice, one man can lift the world. Where is our James Connolly in this age of madness? Each of us can be Connolly, we can be Rosa Parks, saying we are tired and will take no more.
Black 47 has gone the way of so many bands, but we have their music and the memories of crowding into Paddy Riley’s and when Larry Kirwan leaned into the microphone and they roared through this song, we pumped our fists in the air and knew we were hearing truth.
Happy birthday to our son, James Connolly Elvis Cronin. We are so fortunate and love you so much.
#Songoftheday #spreadinghappiness #Black47 #LarryKirwan #JamesConnolly
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Kjy0byGkk3M?si=N4g4NUUYm1ufhtHT
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2MedBDg29yuHLPTxFrLxC8?si=ec76c6fba91b4d9c