From Wisconsin to Belfast and Armagh: the beat of The Sullivan Squad’s drums and the Ojibwe language will feel familiar #imaginebelfast

Next week at Imagine! Festival there’s a chance to step outside the usual local context of the Irish language and Ulster Scots to look at an indigenous culture from northern Wisconsin.

Imagine this: not everything that looks like a bodhrán and sounds like a bodhrán and is played like a bodhrán is actually a bodhrán. The hand drums brought to life by The Sullivan Squad look incredibly familiar, yet the colourful patterns on the band members clothing suggest that the musicians’ roots aren’t Celtic.

By day, Dr Michael Sullivan is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) linguist from the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation. By night, Michael and his family (Niizhoo, Preston, Lennox and Lexie) are The Sullivan Squad, a musical group whose drumming, singing and dancing regularly lights up ceremonies, hand drum contests, events and celebrations across the United States.

This week the Sullivans are in Belfast and Armagh/Newry, sharing their music and stories in the latest stage of a cultural exchange programme.

Fergal O’Brien has helped organise the trip. He teaches bodhrán to grade eight and beyond at the Traditional Arts Partnership (TAP). He says that there are three theories about the possible origins of the bodhrán: from a farming sieve, from a tambourine, or from international frame drums. The Ojibwe hand drum uses an elk skin rather than goat, but the similarity is undeniably strong.

The visit and concerts are just the latest stage of a relationship that has been nurtured since 2021. But really, its roots stretch back more than 170 years when the Choctaw Nation donated $170 to help the Irish people devastated by the Famine in 1847. This was a huge sum at the time and their gesture and generosity has never been forgotten.

More recently, Finbar Magee – of My Belfast Love fame – composed a song called Ima which recounts the Choctaw story. Together with other creative and academic contributions, it became part of a rich cross-Atlantic online collaboration during Covid. Irish musicians have travelled west, and when Fergal visited the reservation, he spotted a photograph of Éamon de Valera wearing a traditional headdress in the history house (museum). During an overseas tour in 1919, de Valera visited the reservation and was made honorary chief of a Chippewa tribe.

Now it turns out that Michael has an Irish grandparent: though which part of Ireland hasn’t yet been unearthed. Michael’s own community see his first visit flying east as him going back to connect with his ancestors and have invested financially in the trip.

Michael will be talking and telling stories at lunchtime (1pm) in the Crescent Arts Centre on Wednesday 20. In the evening, the full Sullivan Squad will take to the stage with a performance sharing the round dance music and traditions of their homelands. And they’ll be appearing again in Lislea Community Centre in Newry on Friday 22.

The concerts will include traditional storytelling as well as music and a round dance (where the drummers stay in the centre and are surrounded by a ring of dancers). It’ll recreate the reservation experience which Fergal predicts will feel more than a bit familiar.

Michael Sullivan and The Sullivan Squad are no novelty act. They’re part of a consolidated effort that is keeping Ojibwe alive as a language. (It’s possible to be educated through the medium of Ojibwe from kindergarten to university.) While they’re here, the Sullivans will be going into schools and participating in linguistic seminars at Queen’s University. And if the timing works, they might even end up in a St Patrick’s Day parade!

Across the world, the health of indigenous languages varies enormously. Languages that thrive aren’t just spoken. They’re at the heart of fresh, contemporary cultural expression: songs, books, plays, poems, plays. They’re used in education, not just at a primary level, but throughout the education system. They are studied. The subtle changes over time are analysed. They are respected and celebrated.

While the beats might vary, there are parallels across the Atlantic in terms of instrumentation. There’s something very Celtic about some of the Sullivan Squad’s music. Or maybe that I should say there’s something of the Ojibwe about some music on this island! Another resonance is the intentional action being taken to protect and encourage a language under threat.

Tickets are still available for Michael’s lunchtime Ojibwe Stories talk and the Sullivan Squad’s evening concert on Wednesday 20. On the evening of Friday 22 they’ll be performing in Newry. The visit is possible due to funding from the Ho Chunk and Ojibwe tribes, the Ring of Gullion Landscape Partnership, Gael Linn, and Imagine! Belfast.