Walking down Grafton Street the other day I couldn’t help but overhear a woman with an unmistakable American accent querying her friend as to why every Irish person seemed gifted with a wonderful sense of music. They stood there mesmerized by a young lady belting out a Hozier tune for the benefit of the shoppers around.
With a smirk, I couldn’t help but think to myself, this woman simply hasn’t come across the entirety of our singing talents. We Irish are a mixed community of melodious nightingales and cawing crows. Today, I stand as a representative of the latter. My singing prowess you ask? There was a time when my own toddler stopped my spontaneous singing with a gentle hand to my mouth and a stern “No singing.”
In the world of nightingales, the struggle of the crows is greatly misunderstood. Presented with a birthday cake at the office gathers a silent lip-sync of the Birthday Song from us, for fear of sounding like a family of rodents stuck somewhere in the air vents. A spontaneous singing session at a wedding warrants a careful retreat to the bathrooms until the last guests leave and the breakfast preparations start.
This singing handicap was evident from my younger school days. In our first class, while being segregated for choir, I proudly assumed I had a heavenly voice to make the top singers. You can well understand the shock of being placed amongst the most off-key yowlers of the class. The discordant noises emanating from our group would have surely confused and delighted David Attenborough alike, if heard in the wild.
From there on, my voice was decreed as a hazard to public ears and this disgraceful singing talent stayed locked behind closed doors.
Nevertheless, some brave Irish souls proudly embrace their discordant statuses. Back in 1982, the Late Late Show organised a contest to crown Ireland’s worst singer. Holding auditions in the Montrose Hotel, the competition was documented in the RTÉ Archives available online.
The recorded video flaunts 10 eager participants cheerfully displaying their lack of melody, enough to bring a smile to anyone’s face, even the most hardhearted of vegetables.
The unidentified participants of a particular music show joyfully muddled through famous songs such as Bridge over Troubled Water, My Way, and The Rose of Mooncoin, all while being accompanied by Frank McNamara, the show’s pianist. Unfortunately, the archival footage doesn’t disclose who eventually took the prize and my attempts to find out from RTÉ were unfruitful, leaving us in anticipation unless the winner steps forward.
In contrast, there was no such uncertainty about a different singing – or rather, shrieking – tournament: The yearly EC Gull Screeching contest, a competition that aims to crown the top impersonator of gull sounds across Europe. The initiative is an endeavour to mend the reputation of seagulls and to highlight their less predatorial, more joyous summerly side.
In our local context, the gulls are infamous for snatching food right out of people’s hands, with other unpleasantries including their loud mating habits and their prolific defecating habits. Nevertheless, not all countries share this sentiment and representation at the tournament took place from Portugal, the Netherlands, and Sweden, without any Irish involvement. Claude Willaert, the CEO of Gullscreeching, stated that the goal is “to make gulls attractive again.”
One might question when were they ever attractive? Yet, maybe in Belgium they enjoyed some appeal. In response to the negative perception of gulls in Ireland, Claude holds the belief that the contest will revitalize people’s affection for the birds. A distinctly fond individual is the 9-year-old British boy, Cooper Wallace, who took home the junior title with an impressive array of gull sounds. His mother Lauren humorously mentioned to the BBC that Cooper’s interest in gulls initially began as a “nagging noise which we wished he would stop.”
Claude expressed his hope for an Irish participation in the future, recommending that we start imitating gull noises. In his words, he envisions “a green seagull flying to us next year.”
Perhaps this is the moment for those amongst us who hold musical abilities in less esteem. We might assemble a multitude of seagull mimics and display our unique talents in the heart of Grafton Street. Surely, the spectacle will baffle our American visitors, leaving them to believe we’ve taken a particular interest in avian behaviour.