Whatever you’re expecting, Jiggy is not it. Who would expect trad Irish tunes to mix so well with world and a Stereo MCs-type dance sound?

For a start you can’t work out where they’re from; they sound Irish but they sing in French and some kind of Middle-European language at various points.

The line-up is Aoife Kelly, Éamonn de Barra, Éamonn Galldubh, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Koushik Chandra Shekar (mridangam, dholak, konnakol and kanjira joining the pipes and fiddles), Gary O’Brien, MC Muipéad, Ilyas Raphaël Khan, Parveen Sabrina Khan, Sruthi Ravali Manda and Iranian brothers Shahab Coohe and Shayan Coohe, which sounds pretty international.

A typical Jiggy tune starts off with fiddles and all the Irishness you like but then in come the exotic instruments and a dance beat; it’s all real instruments so it’s drums and bodhran not drum machine, which gives it life and certainly not Irishness pinned on a repetitive beat.

The music is a muchness so we’re not going to list tracks but it’s a lot of fun. A first play through you’ll think it’s naff, even a bland attempt to make money by sounding Irish, but then its charms start to unfold. It’s meant to be fun but there’s a lot of clever instrumentation. Worth a listen.

 

Support your local record shop! If you’ve not got one, support us (an independent newspaper) and buy this from here: