Emerald Jewels: Celebrating Real Irish Culture

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ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY it can be a little difficult to remember that Ireland is more than shamrocks, Guinness, red-haired leprechauns and "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" tees.

A country with a turbulent history, Ireland has gone through as many changes as costumes in a "Riverdance" production, from Celtic migration to crippling famine, to a war that split the country in two to the rewards of joining the European Union's single currency, the Euro, in 1999.

Irish culture has always been a force of its own — this is the land of W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce for goodness' sake — and for centuries Irish writers, musicians and artists, inspired by their surroundings and circumstances, have produced some of the world's best-loved work.

If your view of the Emerald Isle is about as realistic as "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," it's time to brush up on your Irish history and culture with our handy guide to Ireland, pre-Euro — the Irish pound, or "punt" — and post-Euro.

BOOKS

» Punt:

♣ James Joyce, "Dubliners." Let's face it, you're never gonna get through Joyce's epic masterpiece "Ulysses," and anyone you know who says they have is probably lying. But don't miss out on his short story collection, "Dubliners" (1914), which features dramatic and intimate portraits of Dublin's middle-class in the early 1900s.

♣ Frank McCourt, "Angela's Ashes." One of the most depressing books you'll ever read, McCourt's Pulitzer-winning memoir of his poverty-stricken childhood in Limerick during the '40s and '50s is at once heartbreaking and humorous. McCourt tells of his family's abandonment by a drunken father and their subsequent fight for survival.

♣ Roddy Doyle, "The Barrytown Trilogy." A collection of three stories by Irish novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle. Focusing on the members of one Dublin family, the Rabbittes, this is an amazingly insightful and realistic portrayal of working-class Irish, right down to drinking habits and lingo.

» Euro:

♣ Claire Keegan, "Antarctica." Keegan's debut collection of 16 short stories set both here in the U.S. and Ireland made a big splash across the pond before making its way over here in 2002, and identified her as a young Irish writer to watch. The title story, about an Irish woman who travels to London to sleep with someone other than her husband, sets the tone for an atmospheric book about the cruelty of life.

♣ Anne Enright, "The Gathering." In Anne Enright's award-winning dark and sharp-witted novel, Veronica Hegarty, attending her brother Liam's wake in Dublin after his suicide, recalls her childhood as part of a sprawling, dysfunctional Irish family and the dark secret that she has kept about her brother.

♣ John Banville, "The Sea." Having returned to the seaside town he went to as a boy, Max Morden muses over past relationships, death, loss, and memory. Celebrated novelist and journalist John Banville is known for his black humor and his cutting prose; "The Sea" is one of his best novels.

MUSIC

» Punt:

♣ The Pogues, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" (1988). Fusing traditional Irish folk with punk, the Pogues, with their booze-soaked, incomprehensible frontman Shane MacGowan, were one of the best-known Irish bands in the '80s. Their politically tinged, poetic lyrics and wild lurching sound are on full show on "Grace With God," which includes their biggest hit, "A Fairytale of New York," featuring singer Kirsty MacColl.

♣ Sinead O'Connor, "The Lion and the Cobra" (1987). Outspoken and controversial Dublin-born singer/songwriter Sinead O'Connor paved the way for women in rock by asserting herself as a serious musician and not just a pretty sidekick. "The Lion and the Cobra," her first album, is deeply personal and shows an artist unafraid to tackle political subjects and to take on the Catholic Church, which she's never been a fan of (in 1992, she famoulsy tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live").

♣ U2, "War" (1983) It's impossible to talk about Irish music without mentioning the most successful Irish band ever. The sheer breadth of U2's work is staggering; from their early days as a post-punk outfit in Dublin, they have spent more than 20 years creating anthemic albums with political and religious messages, reinventing themselves along the way. Although it's not a patch on their 1987 album "The Joshua Tree," the ultra-political "War" gives a better feel for Ireland in the '80s.

» Euro:

♣ U2, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (2004). Since they are still going strong, check out U2's "Atomic Bomb," on which the band firmly returns to its rock 'n' roll roots after a few years of messing about with dance music and alt-rock (shudder).

♣ The Frames, "For the Birds" (2001). Fronted by Glen Hansard, whose music in the movie "Once" won an Academy Award last year, The Frames have been an influential force in Irish music since their start in the early '90s. The band worked with Steve Albini on "For the Birds," their fourth LP, and the resultant spit and polish gives the record an intimate and confident sound.

♣ Jape, "The Monkeys in the Zoo Have More Fun than Me" (2007). From their origins in electronica, the members of Jape have established themselves as having a lot more depth that most of the acoustic guitar singer/songwriter types out there. Their fantastic single, "Floating," from this, their second album, attracted a lot of airplay and the attention of the Raconteurs who subsequently covered the song in 2006.

♣ Fight Like Apes, "Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion" (2008). The kids love electro-punk band Fight Like Apes. And what's not to love? They're punchy, poppy and fun and sound a lot like Scottish bubblegum-pop outfit Bis (remember them from the late '90s?). Forget the folk — this is the new face of Irish music.

FILM

» Punt:

♣ Alan Parker's "The Commitments" (1991) is based on Roddy Doyle's novel about Jimmy Rabbitte, who cobbles together a group of young Dubliners to form a band whose mission is to bring soul to the city. Parker assembled a mostly-unknown cast in this hilarious flick about a man looking for a big break.

♣ Although Neil Jordan's "Michael Collins" (1996) takes a few fictional liberties, but the riveting but biased film may just be the movie best able to explain the conflicts in Ireland in the early 1900s and how it led to the birth of the Irish republic and the IRA.

» Euro:

♣ Although it focuses on music, John Carney's "Once" (2007) offers perhaps the best view of modern-day Dublin on film. Starring Oscar winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglovaas an Irish street musician and the pretty Czech immigrant he befriends, "Once" shows new Ireland, a country that, because of the breakdown of borders between EU states, has seen an influx of Eastern European immigrants.

♣ Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters" (2002) is a haunting primer on Ireland's great shame — the systematic sexual and physical abuse by the Catholic Church of their charges in orphanages, schools and homes throughout the country. Based on a true account, this is the story of three women fighting to survive their way though unimaginable brutality at one such institution, a Magdalene Asylum for fallen women, in the 1960s.

If all this poverty, brutality, and oppression has you turning to the Jameson's, you can always turn to Darby O'Gill and his leprechauns to lighten things up.

Written by Express contributor Ewa Beaujon