Pluck Of The Irish

Damien Dempsey’s music recounts Ireland’s traumatic history, but it resonates half a world away in Aotearoa.

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Irish singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey’s music is forged from strife but designed to heal. It found kindred spirits among his hosts on Waiheke Island’s Piritahi Marae during his 2014 tour to New Zealand.

Dempsey was given a pwhiri and sang some of his songs, including Colony (“Greed is the knife and the scars run deep/ How many races with much reason to weep”), and swapped stories with his hosts about their mutual histories. He gave the marae an album by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners (“my spiritual leaders”) and caught the last ferry back to Auckland having felt right at home 18,000km from Dublin.

“I’m trying to heal traumatised people with my music – and in Ireland, because of the colonisation and what the Catholic Church has done to people, there’s a lot of trauma.

“So, the music is there to give hope and strength. And when I went to Waiheke, the Mori guys I met taught me about their history and, more importantly, how they view their ancestors. All that got me to look more into my own ancestry. Now it makes me stronger to know they’re inside me, and all my problems seem smaller.