The Blindboy Podcast - Does Irish music have North African origins?

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

Exploring the striking similarities between North African Berber singing and Irish Sean nós singing. Discussing an 1859 archaeological journal that claimed the Irish language was understood in North Africa. Revisiting Bob Quinns boiling controversial work on the subject Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dog bless, you tinfoil Vincents. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Thank you for the wonderful feedback from last week's podcast. Which was about self-acceptance. Go back and listen to it if you haven't heard it. I enjoyed making it. It was cathartic. I enjoy any... I like doing the mental health podcast because

it's not just for you it's for me as well there's a catharsis in it I enter an introspective form of flow I suppose it's a bit like journaling it's a bit like journaling except in audio form

I've been enjoying the beautiful weather there's a bit of a heat wave which is nice a much needed heat wave, which is nice, a much needed heat wave. I'm trying to, I'm trying to write, I'm trying to write a new book at the moment. I'm trying to write a new collection of short stories. And it's very difficult. It's very difficult during the pandemic for two reasons number one mainly my brain isn't receiving the spontaneity of human conversation as a result of the pandemic if if you're someone

now who's been working and communicating with people might be different for you but for me I haven't in the past year I've probably had four unplanned conversations spontaneous unplanned conversations but which I mean bumping into someone and saying hello what's the crack and then having a conversation and then moving on I've probably had four of them in the past year and that might even be liberal and of those three or four spontaneous conversations they're not fully authentic because those conversations occurred through the lens of the pandemic so you're aware the anxiety of social distancing is there and if you meet someone you haven't spoken to in ages right now and you have a chat

you're probably going to chat about something that's somehow related to the pandemic so it's not fully authentic and spontaneous and I suppose I took it for granted but I really need that stuff in order to be creative I need the surprise

fun, I need the fun and spontaneity and surprise interaction of meeting another human being in order to feed my unconscious mind which then gets me thinking and then gets me creating art and also the general hum of unease that exists because of a pandemic just that general hum underneath of i'm coping i'm coping and coping so this this means that writing is really really difficult for me at the moment and i'm being i'm being nice to myself around it i'm not beating myself up i'm not beating myself up but i also do need to write a fucking book I absolutely do need to write a book and pretty soon I need to start meeting my daily target

of 500 words a day or else I'm going to be in trouble with deadlines so what I've been trying to do is I've set up a little table for myself outside my back door and I've been trying to write in the sun essentially because that's novel

there's a novelty to warmth and sunshine and being able to sit outside in Ireland and write so I'm trying to use the novelty of that to spur on some creativity normally what would I do if I want to write 500 words a day what would I normally do I'd go to a cafe I'd go to a cafe in the morning and I would sit down and order a cup of coffee with my laptop and I wouldn't leave the cafe until I've got 500 words or I would go on a little holiday a retreat whatever for two weeks and I'd write then but alas I can't do these. So I have to try and be creative with my methodology. And also, to be very, and I'd say this to you as well.

If you are a writer or you're doing something creative and the pandemic is impacting your creative output, self-compassion is very important. Self-compassion is very important. If I sit down and try to do my 500 words and I don't get the results I want or I don't even get the word count I definitely don't beat myself up over it I'm not hard on myself I say to myself there are a myriad of restrictions on me right now which is making this difficult and I'm trying my best and what I can't do is be overly critical of myself. To be unforgiving.

I have to have self-compassion around that issue. Because if I don't, then I'm creating an extra problem for myself. And that's where writer's block comes from. Over-criticality. Do you know what gave me a lovely boost this week though? And I know I'm always cautious. I'm always cautious when it comes to art. About relying upon external sources of praise.

Because it can be very dangerous. The creative process. But I learned that a student. In University of Limerick. She was in fourth year. Did her thesis. On Irish absurdism. In literature. And it focused around my book. Or my two books. My two books of short stories. did her thesis on Irish absurdism in literature

and it focused around my book or my two books my two books of short stories and that was a lovely boost and then I posted that on Instagram and then a few other people contacted me

and they'd done their theses on my books or their master stuff on my books and that was just a lot it was a nice feeling it was a nice feeling and I know I have to be so careful around that I have to be so careful around external validation not not that I don't appreciate it it's fantastic but allowing any praise positive

or negative in can be dangerous to the creative process but I it was nice because my last book in particular did get it got a bit of a hammering off the professional critics it did get a bit of a hammering and that did impact my self confidence when it came to writing again getting bad reviews did impact

my self confidence and I understand that's the game if you write something and you put it out people are fully entitled to criticise it and to tear it to shreds if that's what they feel and I understand that that's part of the game but I'm also a human being

I'm a human being so when I see negative reviews it's a lot of work it's a lot of emotional labour for me to not allow that affect my confidence if you get me I'd love to be I'd love to be someone who's impervious to it

like literally doesn't give a shit but I don't have that I have to work on it if I get a negative review when I read it then obviously the initial impact of that is it's going to be I receive it as hurtful because it takes me back to being in school and teachers telling me I'm not good enough and stuff like that so then I have to go through the emotional labor and the effort of not allowing that impact my creative space that's the professional thing to

do but that takes work that takes work for me to do it, I'd love to not be like that but that takes work and I know from experience if you don't want to be negatively impacted by a bad review then you can't allow yourself to be positively impacted by a good review it's a double sided

blade but what did make me feel good about seeing seeing people doing their theses on books that i've written you know someone someone enjoying the work that i'm doing to the point that they want to write their fucking thesis around it which is such an honor but what what what made me feel good was because of who's writing it these are students in their early twenties who were in college and these are the ones

who are writing theses about what I'm doing but the negative reviews that I'm getting from professional critics these are coming from older people people that are older than me and I'm no spring chicken so I'm just glad of that I'm glad that it's not the reverse way around I'd rather

my work be communicating and resonating with younger people than older people now I'm not being ageist there but the simple reason that I preferred that situation is the people who are writing literary theses now are going to be the critics and tastemakers in 15 years time or 10 years time and I absolutely adore my job, I love being a professional fucking writer or professional podcaster, this is what I get to do

as my job and it's a really fickle industry, incredibly fickle industry, so that gives me a little sense of hope that I might be lucky enough to still be writing books in 10 years time. And the thought of that just fills me with pure joy and hope. So this week I have a bit of a hot take for you. I don't think it's a fully formed hot take. It's, I have some hot take type queries

and people, people are always asking me to do the podcast to focus around Irish history, which I love doing because I adore Irish history. So you know about my process,

what I do is I like to go deep, as deep as possible into academic journals or really really old books I just love that with the fucking internet today that you can look

through newspapers from fucking 300 years ago or you can look through academic journals from 300 years ago and I love trawling through it and then have something jump out and it makes me go wow that's interesting

that's weird so I was doing my academic journal business and I found one published by the Ulster Archaeological Society and this was an academic paper from 1859

and the title of the academic paper is is the irish language spoken in africa so as soon as i saw that i immediately started jumping with joy just going holy fuck what's this what's this from 1859 what cunt wrote this? So it was a paper written by a fella called James Silk Buckingham who was an Englishman and he was operating around the 1800s and he was one of these

he was a journalist and author and a traveller and he was one of these English people who travelled around the British Empire so when this was written in 1859 that was the height of the fucking British Empire so you had these academics who would have gone to India

gone to Africa gone to wherever the Brits were colonising and wrote about it and J about it. And J.S. Buckingham, he appears to be what you'd call one of the good ones in that, yes, he's availing of and benefiting from canonisation. You know, he works within the British Empire and travels all around the British Empire. But he's also using his privilege as an English person

to call out things that he thinks are wrong. Like he was an advocate for social reform and he wanted the repeal of the corn laws in Ireland the corn laws were a huge contributing factor to the great famine not fully sure what they were off the top of my head, I think

it was a form of mercantilism where grain that was being imported, there was huge tariffs on it. The Corn Laws made, while all our food, there was a potato famine, right? So the potatoes weren't growing. The rest of our food was being exported.

And then anything that was being imported, the Brits were pushing the prices up. So if you were a poor Irish person, you starved to death. And that's what happened. And the Corn Laws were a massive part of this. So this fella, J.S. Buckingham, was going, this is wrong. This is wrong. Why are you doing this? So fair play to him for that. But he writes this fucking paper, this incredibly interesting paper, 1859, in the

Archaeological Journal. And it opens with, from time to time statements have appeared in different quarters, asserting distinctly the existence of the Irish language at the present day among certain tribes in the north of Africa. Though these statements bore marks of great improbability, I considered the subject sufficiently curious to induce me to preserve a note of them, with the view of endeavouring at some time to ascertain whether they had any true foundation. The first that attracted my attention was a short notice published in the Dublin Penny Journal in 1834

which was as follows. About the close of the last century a gentleman who was superintending the digging out of potatoes in the county of Antrim was surprised to see some sailors who had entered the field a gentleman who was superintending the digging out of potatoes in the county of Antrim, was surprised to see some sailors who had entered the field in conversation with his labourers who only spoke Irish. He went to them and learned that the sailors were from Tunisia and that the vessel to which they belonged had put into port from stress of weather.

The sailors and country people understood each other. The farmer speaking the language used in Tunisia and the latter speaking Irish. This anecdote was released by a person of credit and must interest the Irish scholar.

So this cunt, so he's writing about this story that he read in 1834 in the Dublin Penny Journal, which is based around the turn of the last century, so that's like the 1790s, of Tunisian sailors, so Tunisia is in the north of Africa. Tunisian sailors wandering into a field and being able to speak with labourers, Irish peasants

who only spoke Irish and for the two to be able to communicate effectively, so I'm like fuck me what's this about, what's going on here, and then he goes on and he shows a letter that he'd written to a fella in 1845 who was involved with

some Egyptian society right so the fella writes back to him and says, A few years ago in Dartchester in England, I received a visit from a native merchant of Morocco whose name was Saudi Ambach Benbai. He stated to me, in the presence of Mrs. Buckingham, that when he was on a visit to a gentleman near Kilkenny in Ireland, he went one day to the post office

of that town and hearing there for the first time some of the labouring people speaking Irish he was surprised to find that he could understand their conversation as the language had a strong resemblance to the dialect of the mountains of Mount Atlas in Africa, among whom he had travelled and traded in his youth and learned their language. He addressed the Irish labourers in this language and their surprise was as great as his own to find that they understood him. The dialogue was very short and on ordinary topics,

but he declared that there was no difficulty in understanding each other on either side. Then he finds another letter from a fella called Lieutenant Colonel Chesney who'd written an account called The Expedition to the Euphrates and Tigris. He said about the same trip, during a visit made to Ireland by Saudi Ambach Benbai, then envoy from Morocco, this individual overheard some people in the marketplace at Kilkenny making remarks on his person and dress in a dialect which was intelligible by him.

So it's all these separate reports of people claiming that Irish people can understand the dialects specifically of North Africa that has him writing this paper going, what the fuck is this about? So this is baffling the author of the paper. So he starts writing to more people who he thinks might come up with an answer. And he writes to some fella, Colonel Rodden, who might know about it. And Colonel Rodden looks into it and he says, I spoke to someone who said that he would not be at all astonished

to learn that the Irish language was still in existence in Northern Africa from the great numbers of the Irish who had been carried off as captives by the corsairs in the Middle Ages to Africa and had never been ransomed. Now that's an interesting theory there because one thing that not a lot of people know about in 1630 the entire population of Baltimore in Cork, right? So Baltimore is this village on the coast of Cork in the southwest of Ireland. In 1630, the entire population of Baltimore were kidnapped by Algerian pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa. So an entire town of Irish people were taken to fucking Africa and sold as slaves so and also

the fella in this article from 1859 he's kind of suggesting that it wasn't just that one sacking of Baltimore in 1630 he's saying that there was loads of these raids throughout the middle ages in ireland

from where irish people were taken and sent to africa for slavery so he's saying that like of course there's going to be some irish around north africa there was a bunch of irish taken there and they might have stayed there and lived there and that's why you're going to hear some irish in north africa or how you might have some North African sailors who can understand the Irish language. The Colonel Rawson fellow goes on to mention that there's a part of North Africa where the people have got these fine greyhounds which are very similar to Irish wolfhounds and one of the tribes who are engaged in fucking these greyhounds

this tribe is known as the Schlechts. And these people possess this breed of dog and they take great pleasure in the dog. Even though, he says, these are seen as unclean animals in the eyes of good Mohammedans. Mohammedans was the name in the 1800s for Islamic people. Such conduct is considered unlawful. Now this word, shlecht, or its proper vocal equivalent,

is said to mean people without pedigrees. So he reckons that this tribe in North Africa, these shlecht people that have these greyhounds that look like Irish wolfhounds, which isn't within the Islamic tradition of the area, so he says that these people this tribe called the schlechts that because that means people without pedigree he says such people in fact as might spring from the children of unransomed captive just the sort of people who according to mr curry's statement might retain the irish language if their ancestors

had been prisoners carried away from Ireland. So that's one theory that's put forward in this is that, okay, and this is 1859 that he's saying this, okay, so if there's all these reports of hearing the Irish language in North Africa or North Africans being able to understand Irish people when they make it here,

maybe that has to do with things like the sack of Baltimore or the tradition of fucking Corsair pirates from Algeria just taking Irish people when they come to the shores throughout the Middle Ages. But then he goes on to mention, and this one's really fucking interesting, there's a book called the Lower Gabala Aaron which is an Irish

illuminated manuscript from like the 400s so the 400s is 1500 years ago that's before the Brits before the fucking

before the Vikings this is the height of Christian Ireland 400 years after the birth of Christ this book is written in Ireland in a monastery called the Lower Gabala Éireann

which is supposed to be a semi-mythical history of the people of Ireland, it's not considered a historical document, it was written by monks and it's supposed to be a history of Ireland from 400 and the origins of the Irish people but it's also steeped in mythology and it also borrows from the bible but one thing that's

really interesting in the Lower Gabala Aaron is there's a race of people in it called the Milesians and the Milesians are said in this book to be the last people who settled Ireland and it says in a book from the 400 that these people came from North Africa. They went North Africa, Spain, then Ireland. Now this is one of those books, like I said, it's considered pseudo-historical. It's one of these books that takes from Irish mythology before Christianity and tries to adopt Irish myths into Christianity but there has to be something in there there has to be a folk memory in there like origin stories get fucked around but there has to be something in there and I find it really interesting that the

Malaysians come from North Africa now I'll tell you what is real and what is interesting because Irish people we consider ourselves to be a European people that like the way Britain was populated just everybody moved west from the centre of Europe until they finally got to Ireland and that's the traditional understanding of how people got to Ireland

because we're an island but so you've got the Lower Gabala Aaron written in 400 which is a mythical text talking about mythology but mentions this race of Miletians the last race of Irish people who come from North Africa

but up in and I've mentioned this on one of my earliest podcasts but it's relevant now there's a fort up in Armagh called Navan Fort. And it's 2,000 years old. And in this 2,000 year old fort, they found the skeleton of a monkey from fucking Morocco. What the fuck is a monkey from Morocco doing in Ireland 2,000 years ago? And they've done all the dating, they've proved it. Doing in Ireland. 2000 years ago. And they've. They've done all the dating.

They've proved it. This is fact. What in the love of fuck. Is a monkey from Morocco. Doing. Up in Armagh. 2000 years ago. And I just find that really fucking interesting.

When you view that in the context of. The Lower Gabala Aaron. Like put it this way. The Lower Gabala Aaron like put it this way the Lower Gabala Aaron is written in 400 a mythical text about the origin of the Irish and then 400 years before that there's a fucking monkey from Morocco in a fort in Navan

so he didn't just land from space someone had to go to Morocco or someone was from Morocco and brought the monkey with him to the north of Ireland and I would be shocked if that's an isolated incident so back to this archaeological document from 1859 about is Irish spoken in Africa so then it goes on to tell another story

which is even more bizarre. So this fella is in Dublin and they're in Dublin with a fella from Beirut, which is Lebanon, right? So this fella, I think, yeah, this fella's from Beirut and they're in Dublin. They have a copy of the Arabic Quran,

which he says that had belonged to the widow of the chief of the Wahhabis, and which happened at that moment to be lying on the library table. So the lad from Beirut is with his English friends in Dublin, and he says, would you like me to read this Quran for you? And then the lads go, go on, yeah. And he says, will I read it out for ye or will I actually read the Quran the way an imam would do in the mosque so the two lads say read it like the imam would read the Quran in the mosque so it says in the document we preferred the latter

mode of reading it whereupon he sent us all to the far end of the room and after some movements of his body backwards and forwards he commenced reading with a peculiar sort of cadence or chant raising and lowering his voice to the great amusement of the company. While he was so engaged Mr. E. Currie came up the stairs and entered the library and as soon as the reader stopped, Mr. Currie went on with the cadence, and to our unpracticed ears, proceeded fluently with the same story. However, on comparing notes, it turned out that Mr. Currie's cadence, or musical chant, was not an imitation of what he had heard, but the Irish cry, or dirge, sung by women in the south of Ireland when they come

near a house where there's a dead body this tune or cadence is identical with that now used in the east when solemnly reading the Quran now that's fucking interesting so what they're saying there is this Lebanese fella started reading the Quran the way that the Quran would be read by an Iman. So it's effectively sung. And then this Mr. Curry fella who's Irish basically finishes it off for him. Now he's not speaking Arabic. But what he's doing is he's singing a Darj which is an Irish traditional song from the south of Ireland. singing a dirge, which is an Irish traditional song from the south of Ireland.

And the way that the Irish is sung is near identical to how the Quran is read, to Arabic. Now that's really fucking interesting, and that's what I want to explore after the Ocarina Pause. Because this paper is a little bit batshit mad. It a little bit mad and I have some theories around it and it's really fucking interesting and there's stuff in there that is not believable but other stuff that's really plausible

but first let's have our little ocarina pause and my squeaky chairman. Invincible Evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th

when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com that was the ocarina pause that was a spanish clay whistle that played and it was so that you got a bit of a warning before a loud advert came in there for something

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that's a great help to an independent podcast so this paper that I found from 1859 is the Irish language spoken in Africa it's just a fucking

beautiful jewel that I found because it's from 1859 as well to read something from 1859 that's discussing things like this is really fascinating and I find it fascinating

because it's an English person and all the reports really are English people speaking to other English people so that's what makes me kind of English people so that's what makes me kind of sceptical that's what makes me kind of sceptical I can't not view this

without casting a colonial lens on it like this cunt who's writing this J.S. Buckingham you know like there's one portrait of him and the portrait of him is him he's a white English man

and the one portrait is him painted and he's dressed like an Arabic person so he's probably what you'd call what would have referred to themselves at the time as an orientalist and you know I mentioned earlier that like he's one of the good ones but one thing you have to understand about colonialism and English colonists is

not all of them were oppressive, murderous landlords. You did have people high up in the British Empire who would have considered themselves to be esthetes. These were people who travelled the British Empire and who were fascinated with the cultures that were being colonized and they were really well-meaning but even in their well-meaningness they're still kind of looking down on those cultures and I don't know am I willing to take the word of a lot of English people saying

those fucking Arabs down in Morocco sound the exact same as paddies don't they when you listen to them they sound the fucking exact same because the English people don't speak Arabic or Berber and they don't speak Gaelga either. So there's a possibility that all these English people going to America and Morocco and thinking that Paddy is talking to Abdul. It might just be the colonial English ear lumping all colonial peoples in as one. lumping all colonial peoples in as one. One of the issues with the colonists who have kind of a loving eye over the colonized people,

who have a sympathetic eye and an admiration for their culture, even though they may be well-meaning, one of the issues with them is they sometimes contend towards a trope that's known as the noble savage. Like, you have to remember, in 1859 when this was written, Irish people weren't really considered human to the English colonisers.

We weren't considered human, nor were... Like, I don't think Morocco and Algeria were English colonies. The Brits did colonise Africa, Nigeria for instance but I don't think they colonised North Africa, but in the 1800s they would have viewed all colonised peoples as less than human and deserving of being

colonised because that's how colonisation worked, it required the system of racism to say these people here are not capable of self-governance they're not fully human so we can take their shit basically that's how it worked but often a manifestation of that cognitive dissonance was this trope of the noble savage where you'd have well-meaning colonizers looking at the people and saying things like oh paddy he's beautiful in a way isn't he his music is so beautiful his art is so beautiful it's a shame he can't uh wipe his own

fucking arse they're a bit like pigs aren't they but in a beautiful way like that that's kind of the that's the noble savage it's having just enough sympathy for a colonized people to be able to admire their art and to admire their dance and their song just enough sympathy to do that and to even think that you might learn something from them just enough to have that but not enough to go oh fuck you're actually a human who's capable of self-governance if i didn't have my boot on your neck and i probably shouldn't be here do you get what i'm saying so that's why i'm skeptical of this 1859 paper i i do view some of it as a bunch of English people together basically unifying colonised people together you know what I mean

it's searching for these connections between Irish and North African and the song and music and culture but searching for these connections as a way to to make sense of the system of racism, to unite

colonised people together in this vision of savagery Paddy and Abdul are the same, here's proof like I'm really sceptical of that the specific report where the British landlord

is basically saying a bunch of Tunisian sailors washed up which probably happened there would have been Tunisian sailors but a British landlord saying I was on my land and I was looking down at all the paddies

who only speak Irish labouring and then a bunch of Tunisian sailors came up and they were able to talk to each other and it sounded the exact same to me, it all sounded the exact same to me, isn't that mad like I'm sceptical of that I'd love to not be, I'd love

to think that in the late 1700s fucking Tunisian sailors and people from Antrim could actually speak with each other but that's it just seems a bit unlikely but what I do find fascinating and I do think there is some

something worth investigating and giving credence to is the musical element when that fella was reading out the Quran in the library and singing it and then the Irishman comes in and is able to sing it a dirge from the south of Ireland

that sounds so similar that's what excites able to sing a dirge from the south of Ireland that sounds so similar. That's what excites me. And it makes me think of the work of, there's a fella called Bob Quinn. And Bob Quinn is, he's not a professional historian, he's a documentary maker. And Bob Quinn formulated a theory called the Atlantean Theory of Irish Origin. Bob Quinn formulated a theory called the Atlantean Theory of Irish Origin. And Bob Quinn made a series of documentaries called the Atlantean Theory in the late 70s. Trying to make the case that Irish people are essentially North African.

That the concept of us being a European people is wrong. And instead of thinking of the origin of Ireland being this movement west from Europe think of it as the people arriving in Ireland via the sea on boats from the north of Africa so if you think, think of the map of the world

you've got the north of Africa, fucking Algeria Morocco, Tunisia Bob Quinn's theory is that people on boats the north of Africa, fucking Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia. Bob Quinn's theory is that people on boats could actually quite easily hug the coast of Europe and then arrive at Ireland. And Bob Quinn states this is because there's a lot of very specific cultural

specifically artistic, cultural artistic similarities between Ireland and North Africa and these things are undeniably strange now Bob Quinn's Atlantean theory, especially when it came out, was fucking rubbished

by historians. He was really laughed at and wasn't given any respect at all. And he continued to write letters to newspapers talking about how no serious historian looked at his work and I think it was really fucking unfair. And I think a lot of

the resistance to Bob Quinn's theory of North African origin for Irish people, I think a lot of that resistance was racism, it's Irish people going, we don't want to think of ourselves as Arabs effectively or Barbers, we want to think of ourselves as Europeans

now genetic evidence since Bob Quinn's theory of Atlantean origin genetic evidence would suggest that that's not true, since Bob Quinn's theory of Atlantean origin, genetic evidence would suggest that that's not true. So Bob Quinn's theory that the Irish people as a whole came from North Africa is probably bullshit. Genetics would say that we came from the Iberian Peninsula of Spain, right? That's what geneticists would say. And that's what you've got to go with.

They've done the evidence there but I don't think Bob Quinn's theory needs to be thrown out completely there is still a fuckload of coincidences and similarities in culture between North

Africa and Ireland that need to be taken seriously I think because they're too coincidental and you have little things there as well like there's a fucking, the skull of a monkey from Morocco is in a fort in the north of Ireland

2000 years ago, so that right there, that's evidence of trade and communication between North Africa and Ireland and you have to ask yourself then how much was traded there? How much culturally was traded? One place where Bob Quinn says that he sees

the largest amount of cultural similarities between North Africa and Ireland is in the west coast of Ireland Connemara and the Aran Islands he identifies a number of things in art and music that are near identical in a way that's kind of strange and

if you don't draw connections between these two things you're a bit of a fucking idiot I think if you were to rubbish it immediately I'm going to play for you now an example of Barber singing from Morocco, right? And the Barber are, the Barber people,

they come from North Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, right? And it's the Barber people rather than the Arab people in this area that seem to have many cultural similarities with Ireland. So here's an example of a Barber woman singing a traditional Barber song. Now I'm going to play you a recording from 1943 from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland near Connemara and this is Shannós, this is traditional Irish singing, this is a very ancient form

of Irish singing listen to this and tell me it doesn't sound like that piece of North African music you just heard his heart. So that's Seán Óis singing from 1943, Connemara, the Aran Islands. I don't know the name of the singer. Singing in the Irish language. I don't know the name of the singer singing in the Irish language now why why the fuck does

traditional barber singing from Morocco sound identical to traditional singing from Ireland and Shannos is I think it might be 2000 years old I know it's older than the Book of Kells

this is a real long tradition of singing. And what connects the two of those? What makes... Like, okay, it's the female voice in both cases. What makes them so similar, from a musical point of view, is they both contain what's called melisma. Now, melisma is a way of singing where

you kind of hold a syllable and then fluidly move up and down between notes and often those notes don't kind of stick to the western scale there's notes in between now melisma is really common now if you listen to Beyonce or you listen to Whitney Houston and you're like you know what is the style of or Mariah Carey what is the style of singing that they do well what makes it sound that way is is melisma and melisma is very present in African music West African and North African music in particular. That's why Whitney Houston and Beyonce sing like that, because they're African American and their musical tradition can be traced back to West Africa.

But you also see it in North Africa and in the West Coast of Ireland. Well, in Irish singing, melisma is present in Irish singing pre-colonial Irish singing before the western scale was brought in, now I'd really like to know more about that I would love to know why that is and Bob Quinn

straight up asserts that there you go, there's your evidence for connection between North African people and Irish people. I don't think it's the full on Atlantean theory, but that's just one of the many similarities. a long standing historical trade or movement of people between North Africa and Ireland going back 2000 years

and then it's like what's that monkey skull doing up in fucking Antrim from Morocco and also taking it back to that 1859 academic document that I was reading where I'm not having I don't believe this business of North African people and Irish speakers being able to understand each other or sharing words but when they spoke about the Lebanese man reading the Quran in a way that he's singing it and and you can hear what what

like that sounds that lady singing there that barber lady who was singing like that's barber music but that sounds very similar to the islamic call to prayer it uses the same melisma in the singing so you can see now when those lads in 1859 your man was reading out the quran and then the irish man comes in and sings a song from south the south of ire A Darj. And it sounds to English ears. Like he's actually literally finishing off the Quran. But what that person is doing. Is he's singing a traditional Irish song. That's the same.

Melodic structure. As the Islamic song. And there has to be a connection there. Or is that just a coincidence? Now another coincidence. That Bob Quinn points out. And Bob Quinn is someone who. He sails. He's a sailor.

He has experience on boats. And there's a traditional type of boat. In Connemara. That uses what's known as a Latin sail. And Bob Quinn is like the only other place. That has these exact same boats is Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. So now you have a musical form that's identical between these two areas and also the boats are identical. Bob Quinn went and traveled to Berber country in North Africa

and one thing he found interesting was the names of the clans and tribes amongst the Berber country in North Africa. And one thing he found interesting was the names of the clans and tribes amongst the Berber people of North Africa. He says the best known have names that closely resemble the clan names of Macteer, Macdougall and Magill. Namely the famous Berber clans of the Macteer, the Matuga and the Magill to give them their Arabic spelling.

So he's saying that Berber clans Of the Matir, the Matuga and the McGill. To give them their Arabic spelling. So. He's saying that Barber clans. In the north of Africa. Their names. Which they're written in Arabic script. And they might look nothing. They mightn't make sense to us. But when you pronounce them.

They sound like Matir, McDougal and McGill. Now that could be the bit where fucking like you have to remember with Bob Quinn's work he's a hot take man alright this is why a lot of historians aren't fans of his work it's not massively

rigorous it's just someone who isn't a historian who's done this huge amount of original research and a lot of it's really fucking interesting, 80% of it might be harsh shit from someone who isn't qualified but there's 20% in there that's such

a bizarre coincidence it needs to be taken, it needs to be looked at seriously so that we can get an answer because it's utterly fucking fascinating, another thing that's really fascinating and I'd like to see more information around is there's a collect there's a stone circle a megalithic uh stone circle in morocco called the menhirs of mazara and it's very, very similar to Newgrange in Ireland. Newgrange is a megalithic circular stone tomb that's possibly 4,000 years old.

Now the thing is with Newgrange as we know it today, it's hard to know exactly what Newgrange once looked like because it was rebuilt I think in the 1700s. And I've heard people say that if you look at this big round tomb of stones in Morocco, that this might look like what Newgrange was supposed to look like. This set of... The other thing as well about Newgrange that's special is that Newgrange...

When the winter and summer solstice happens, light shines through a tunnel in New Grange. Well, this collection of stone circles in Morocco, it's also similarly plotted out in a way to measure solstices. Now, this is something that Bob Quinn presented in 1980 and people thought he was off his rocker. presented in 1980 and people thought he was off his rocker

but since 1980 serious archaeologists are looking at this site in North Africa and asking the question of why is it similar to Celtic sites that you're seeing in Ireland and in England

Bob Quinn is also interested in the fact that one of the greatest Irish mythological epic tales about Brendan the Navigator, Saint Brendan who got on a... Brendan was a real saint and he definitely had a boat and he definitely fucked off somewhere

and he may have reached America years and years ago but the tale of the voyage of Saint Brendan where he goes off all around the world and travels to these different islands and meets sea monsters and all this shit. That's a very important story in Irish mythology. And then it's reflected again in an Arabic story called Sinbad the Sailor. And that's a myth within Arabic countries, which is near identical to Brendan the Navigator

so Bob Quinn is asking the question what cultural exchange is happening there where there's a story in North Africa that's quite similar to Brendan the Navigator

who learned what from who so I find all this really absolutely fucking fascinating alright and I'm cautious of it because

I'm aware that it's a really really interesting story that's really interesting but at the same time it's disappointing like what I've buddies who are historians I've buddies who are academics

and when I bring up Bob Quinn's name, like, it's met with an eye roll. And it's met with, oh, really, blind boy, you're reading Bob Quinn? And I have to apologise for it, like, because, like, Bob Quinn, he is seen as a historian or as a documentary maker. Serious historians view him as someone who

is a fantasist he's a hot he's a complete and utter hot take he runs too much with the interesting story and what I say to them is like I'm aware of this when I read Bob Quinn

I know that he makes a lot of wild claims and sometimes he moves towards the most interesting version of the story. But you can't deny that there's a lot of really, there's a lot of coincidences. There's a lot of cultural, very specific cultural coincidences between the barbers of North Africa and the people of Ireland. And we don't really have a lot of serious literature

around it, investigating it even just to prove that it's wrong I want to know that about the music, I want to know why Shano singing sounds like a woman from fucking Morocco and then you find the same in Algeria

I want to know why that is. Or what that monkey skull was doing. 2000 years ago. Because. It's important because. You have to remember. So much of our history was fucking stolen from us. Taken away from us.

Through 800 years of colonization. And who we are and our identity and the language we speak we speak fucking English was kind of forced upon us and as an act of decolonisation to feel

okay to challenge narratives about our cultural history and identity ask the questions about North African influences look hard for fucking evidence of the possibility of

movement and trade and exchange between North Africa and Ireland and then what cultural elements were exchanged during the middle of that too. Because it's too fucking fascinating not to. And it would be really cool to learn something new about who we are. Post colonisation.

That would be really class. To find out like there was this whole other fucking history of exchange and trade. Before we were colonised. And this got forgotten in the trauma of all that. Like imagine having a style of fucking singing. That's more than a thousand years old. And not wanting to know where that came from. Rather than just assuming that it was birthed on this island.

And if it turns out to be a lot of harsh shit. And there isn't a cultural connection with North Africa, then that's good too because finding out that things is wrong also informs you. So to leave on the conclusion of that 1859 document

in the Journal of Archaeology by J.S. Buckingham, he says, the foregoing is all the information I have yet been able to collect on this subject it is no doubt quite possible that persons entirely ignorant of the

Irish and Arabic languages may have confounded the two from the similarity of pronunciation especially as they are both abound in guttural sounds not heard in our cultivated western tongues you big silly English eejit so that was the podcast I hope you enjoyed that

if anyone knows Bob Quinn I think he's a he might be in his 70s now I think he lives around Galway if anybody knows Bob Quinn I'd love to have him on the podcast to speak about his Atlantean theory

to speak about he did four years of travel in Morocco and Algeria making that documentary and finding the connection between Ireland and Africa

has been his lifelong work I'd love to have him on the podcast just to chat with him so if you know Bob Quinn put in a good word for me and tell him that I'd love to have a chat if he'd be up for it

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