Martin's tour brings Brazil to the cafes

Martin Murphy in Woodbine Books.

A short tour of free concerts over a recent two weeks is Newbridge-based musician Martin Murphy's way of launching a new double CD of his own unique guitar sounds, writes Brian Byrne ... and getting his musical name out there after 15 years living and worKing in Berlin.

Martin, who returned to Ireland in 2020 in part to 'keep an eye' on his parents when Covid hit, has been giving the concerts in bookshops and cafes in Kildare, Dublin, Waterford and Kilkenny and finished up the tour in Limerick and Cork.

His work is all instrumental, mostly playing a variety of guitars from classical Spanish through steel string acoustics and occasionally electric. Currently he is particularly interested in the guitar music of Brazil. While living in Berlin, Martin played with a number of acoustic groups, making his living through music. "It was all sorts — folk, bossa nova, Jewish music and Irish. Now I'm trying to make a solo career."

Back in Ireland, for him and everyone else in his business, the pandemic brought the shutters down with a bang. And though things are opening up again now, music as a business is by no means back on full song. "A lot of people think it all started to happen again when the country opened up, but it's not that simple. I'm spending a lot of time sending emails to people who say they only respond to email communications, and then conveniently don't answer."

Martin composes his own music, and his new double album — 'Comet Nights' and 'Raduga' — in part reflects his current South American interest. "I've kind of fallen in love with the Brazilian music, and it fits in well with my classical guitar, which I hadn't been doing as much of until recently." One of the things that makes music from Brazil interesting, he says, is that 'there is no real hard line between popular and serious'. "Ask anyone on the street and they'll tell you they love the classical composers from their country, and people in the concert halls will equally tell you they also love the music of some pop artist. They're very much mixed, and they have genres that are in-between, which you need some training to do, but they are also very popular as parlour music and also dance-hall stuff. We have a touch of that as well in Ireland."

Martin's Summer Cafe Music Tour features his own work as well as that of Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos. He is thankful to the local businesses which have given him platforms to showcase it. "There's really nowhere to perform original music in Kildare, so it's always a victory when we can bring new music into the heart of our community," he wrote in a recent Facebook post. Often literally into that 'heart', as many of his concerts have been held in the open air. He hopes to build up from these to more serious gigs over the coming months.

This is Martin's second summer tour, and he's noticed that the tourists who listen and often then buy his CDs are already different. "This time last year, especially in the west, it was all Irish people, but this year the overseas tourists are back."

Martin's latest and previous works can be heard and bought on mmurphy.bandcamp.com.

NOTE: This article was first published in the Kildare Nationalist.

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