Paddy O'Brien (musician and author)

Paddy O'Brien (13 September 1945 –) is an Irish accordion player and memoirist.

Quotes

 * The biggest and saddest impact of colonialism was the Irish language, but funnily enough, the way the Irish speak English has a load of phrases taken straight from the Irish language, some of them in ways we don’t realise. Colonialism was devastating and the effects are still going on, but in the true Irish spirit, in spite of people living in boháns and hovels, and people dying with the hunger, we’ve survived, and it’s only in the last thirty or forty years that we’ve begun to recover from the Famine, and Irish people got a bit of pride back into themselves. There’s a bit more about us now, than there was when we were always looking back.


 * A teller forgets they’re performing. You have to learn the trade, do it and make mistakes. You make mistakes and remember them, but you do good things and remember them. The very most basic thing of all, is when you have a story you enjoy so much telling, you remember it, and you hardly have to think about it.
 * A storytelling tradition that endures: 'Irish people have always been in love with words' Legendary seanchaí Eddie Lenihan, and Cork Yarnspinners’ Paddy O’Brien speak about their artform, its survival and its future (27 October, 2020)