Richie Piggott – Cry of a People Gone: Irish Musicians in Chicago 1920 – 2020
Sat 18 Nov 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Despite living in Chicago for over 25 years, Richie Piggott and his siblings have never forgotten their Cork roots or the musical roots of their father and mother (Kerry’s Dooks and Dingle respectively) and their love for traditional Irish music continues to grow. While Richie himself doesn’t play, his brother is a member of trad supergroup De Dannan and helped immensely with the painstaking research for Cry of a People Gone.
The book is a written and photographic record of both the history of Chicago and the lives of the Irish immigrants who moved there, featuring testimonials of two different experiences – a family who emigrated during The Famine and the story of the Piggotts themselves. The book also charts the rise in Irish music against a historical timeline, including the Second World War, and profiles over 30 musicians, including the great Kevin Henry, Malachy Towey, Paddy and Johnny Cronin, Joe and Seamus Cooley, Kevin Keegan, Noel Rice, Jimmy Coyle and many others.
In this talk and presentation Piggott will discuss how ordinary people managed to do extraordinary things to bring Irish music to their adopted home and examine the threads that bind immigrants both together and to home.
