Céilíndonesia: Celtic Roots with Banyan Leaves (English Version)
It was as if I were walking towards a living, breathing, toe-tapping myth whose existence for the majority of my nine months on Indonesia’s otherworldly Island of the Gods had amounted to nothing more than a few overheard beach bar rumblings and rumors—untrustworthy hopeful mirages of nostalgia in a distant land. As time passed, the whispers grew like a building breeze blowing in from Connacht’s coast synchronously with the fading ink on my one-way departure ticket from Dublin Airport.
Beckoned by the unmistakable pump-thwap, pump-thwap of a bodhrán—the musical personification of every Celtic heartbeat—I hurried my pace, rounding a corner that led down a tucked-away lane in the backstreets of Bali’s Badung Regency, until I finally reached what most would call ‘the entrance to Jivva’s Koffie,’ but what I could only describe as the teak threshold into a tropical Celtic Twilight Zone.
Several tables and Hindu statues peppered the lush, manicured lawns of the aesthetically, and all-ways, Balinese coffee house, where a few groups of locals gathered in the indoor-outdoor garden setting. However, in the establishment’s centre—an ever-growing ring of Indonesian musicians sat Céilí-session style, sporting two bodhráns, three or four fiddles, an arsenal of tin whistles, a banjo, a cajon, a cello, several guitars, and a ukulele (for a dash of local tropical flair). What followed was perhaps the closest I’ve come to an out-of-body experience – bar that one weekend in Connemara, but we won’t get into that here…
It was as if this ten-strong Indonesian session band, who I’d learned went by the name of Celtic Room, had just taken a set break at one of the Begley’s pubs in west Kerry, wandered through a portal into Bali, rosined up their bows, and seamlessly settled into the second half of their set with 'Drowsy Maggie.'
After a rendition of Steve Earle’s 'Galway Girl' broke up the largely instrumental set; a song that I, like many Galwegians, grew to idly hum through at best back home due to its tragic death-by-overplay—perhaps felt tenfold by your author as a former Galway City barman— I found myself grinning ear to ear. Breaking the fourth wall, I extended my pale, SPF-Connacht tan-resistant hand and introduced myself to the band with a story or two about the distant Salthill Prom they so passionately sang about—a seaside stroll so far very away, though in the moment, seemingly just a little bit closer. Surely, my ginger-bearded jaw—the only one to be spotted for miles—that had sat snugly on the floor hadn’t already given some connection away.
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