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Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!
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Musician: Aidan Mulholland
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Instruments: Fiddle / guitar
Music: Irish folk / Spanish / flamenco / world fusion
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HOW I CAME TO THIS MUSICÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýWHERE I PLAYÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýA FAVOURITE SONG |
  
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 ÌýÌýListen (5'39) to 'Dogs in the Street', performed by Aidan Mulholland and the Samsonelles with Aidan on guitar, Conor Ward on saxophone, Antoine Rivoire on bass, Vicente Zahartos Isidro on percussion and Una Mulholland on vocals and percussion.
ÌýÌýListen (1'04) to Aidan Mulholland talk about his music.
Where I Play:
I play with a Belfast-based band called The Samsonelles. We started off playing in 1990. I met Vicente Isadora, an impassioned percussionist from the Canary Islands who'd been teaching here at Queen's University. We teamed up with a brilliant uileann piper called Jack McKilduff and started combining our various musical worlds including Latin, Irish traditional, a bit of blues, some cajun, a little jazz - where ever the spirit takes us. Since then, Vicente and I have remained at the core of the band with a motley crew of musicians coming and going including a Zimbabwean singer who did a stint with us. With our current line-up, we're planning to record an entirely fresh range of material soon.
Some people think we're a Latin band because we've a few numbers that sound a bit like Manu Chao or Radio Tarifa. Others think we're cajun or blues because we'd play the odd cajun tune in our sets. Ultimately we're most interested in creating original material and each new gig opens up a new possibility for us. The main thing is that people want to dance to our music and go wild.
We play all around Belfast in The Menagerie and The Rotterdam, two notorious venues that host the wildest and weirdest of music. Occasionally we gig in the South of Ireland in Sligo, Dublin and Galway and sometimes in the U.K. Last year we were invited to play in Romania. That was an inspiring experience as I love Romanian fiddling any way.
I regularly teach traditional fiddle and I also fix violins and make bows in my spare time. Though we rely mainly on the music for an income, I do other things like renovating houses when I have to.
For sheer pleasure, I play traditional Irish music at a session in a wee pub called The John Hewitt here in Belfast. It's a fairly new venue but the sessions there are superb. It's something that I do solely for myself. I think it's really important to be doing some aspect of music that's not about money and making a living.
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