NY's young Irish musicians: the girls of Girsa

March 3, 5:03 PMNY Folk Arts ExaminerEileen Condon

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Young Irish women musicians, singers, and
dancers in Girsa.

Cherish the Ladies is one of the biggest success stories for women in Irish music and it started right here in New York City. The best-known all-female Irish traditional musicians’ ensemble in the United States, if not the world, Cherish came into existence when Irish musician and folklorist Mick Moloney, working with the Ethnic Folk Arts Center (now known as the Center for Traditional Music and Dance), phoned tin whistle–flute champion Joanie Madden in 1983 to invite her to participate in a concert series that was going to feature some of New York’s finest Irish women musicians. Joanie asked jokingly if Moloney was going to call the group “Cherish the Ladies” (the title of a well-known Irish jig), and Moloney agreed that name could work. It did—through the new group’s early sell-out concert series, an NEA-funded national tour, and two 1985 albums on the Shanachie label.

Some of the women in Cherish knew each other as school chums in the Bronx. Cherish the Ladies jumpstarted the careers of New York Irish fiddlers Eileen Ivers and Rose Flanagan, box player Patti Furlong, banjoist/guitarist Mary Coogan, and flute/tin whistle queen Joanie Madden (who continues to lead Cherish and tour with the present line-up of the band year round). On March 10th Cherish the Ladies will be honored by the City of New York as the recipient of the Irish Heritage Award.  Listen to samples from their recent release Woman of the House here. 

Even more good news for women in Irish music in New York:  Cherish has reproduced!  Or more precisely, the daughters and female students of some of the musicians in Cherish the Ladies have formed the New York Irish women’s band of the next generation: it’s called Girsa (pronounced “gershah”), which is Irish Gaelic for “girls.” On their website the girls graciously acknowledge the following teachers: Rose Flanagan, Patty Furlong, Margie Mulvihill, Annmarie Acosta, Eileen Goodman, Mary Coogan, and Frankie McCormack. More than twenty years after the first Cherish the Ladies LPs appeared, the Girsa girls (band members are indeed girls—still in their teens) will be releasing their very first CD at a release party on Friday, March 21st from 4 to 7 at Vertigo Restaurant, 91 Main Street, Nyack, New York. And on March 13th and 17th Girsa will appear Jim Brady’s Restaurant in New York’s financial district (75 Maiden Lane).  The shows start at 5 o'clock. 

I caught Girsa at a performance in Rhinebeck, New York a while back and they were brilliant. The ensemble includes strong ballad singers, superb fiddle, banjo, accordion, drum, guitar, and keyboards, plus “foot percussion” by champion stepdancers.  Something else I admired about Girsa was their wit—they are exceptionally well able to speak for themselves on stage and kept up a hilarious exchange of smart remarks with their hosts and audience throughout that afternoon performance.

Of course, they have had the very best teachers a generation before showing them how to think and dance and sing and play on their feet.