Lord of the Dance My Story

Chapter One: Playing It by Ear I love the flute because it's the one instrument in the world where you can feel your own breath. When I play, I can feel my breath with my fingers. It's as if I'm speaking from my soul. Today, most people know me as a dancer and choreographer, the star and creator of the world-famous Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. Not everyone remembers that I'm also a musician, winner of two All-Ireland Flute Championships, and creator of two flute albums that include some of my own original melodies. My road to becoming a professional flautist had some rocky patches, however. The story begins, like so many other good things in my life, with my father. My father is a big, broad-shouldered man with a heart as huge as a lion's. He's from County Sligo in western Ireland, a miraculous area with an absolute wealth of musical tradition. He was always whistling the old Irish tunes -- he seemed to know every single one. He never had a formal lesson in his life but he had an ear for the music. At home, he'd play one old LP after another, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, Sligo music, flutes and fiddlers, Seamus Tansey, Kevin Henry, Matt Molloy -- the musicians who are still my heroes, even after all these years. I listened and learned and fell in love with the music. It was the flute that took my fancy. I loved the sound of it. Maybe, too, I wanted to make my dad proud. I knew how much he loved the music. And he knew how enthusiastic I was about learning to play -- but we didn't have the money to buy me an instrument. Somehow, though, my father got hold of an old wooden flute, the kind they must have used in the old country where everybody was too poor to buy proper instruments. To have a wooden flute to play! It was absolutely everything to me. I can't ever explain how happy my father's gift made me. My father didn't see the difference between that wooden flute and the shiny silver ones they used on the record albums -- and neither did I. But my father did know that the only way to learn to play properly was to be able to read music. "That's how you get to be good," he told me. And I wanted to make him proud. Since we didn't have money for lessons, I started working at it on my own. Every chance I got, I'd blow on that little wooden flute, sometimes for hours at a time. My poor mother, God bless her, trying to raise five kids on very little money, didn't share my enthusiasm for what must have been a dreadful noise. "Mickey," she'd snap at me, "will you stop blowing your brains out through that flute!" Maybe, I thought, I would sound better with some lessons. I knew there was a music shop called Q and F on Seventy-ninth Street in our southwest Chicago neighborhood where you could find teachers. I started saving all the nickels, dimes, and quarters I got for doing chores. It seemed to take the longest time but finally I'd saved up what seemed to me a huge amount of money -- almost nine dollars. Surely that would be enough. One Sunday afternoon I decided to go over there and find out what my nine dollars could buy. I took hold of my precious wooden flute and set off. We didn't exactly live in the best neighborhood back then, and my journey took me through some even worse ones. Past Damon Avenue. Over to Western. It was a blazing hot day, and I was getting really thirsty. How long had I been walking now -- an hour? Two hours? Every few minutes I had to cross another big busy street, and while I'd've died rather than admit it, I was scared. I remember one kind lady who stopped me to ask if I was all right. I must have been quite a sight -- aFlatley, Michael is the author of 'Lord of the Dance My Story', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743291798 and ISBN 0743291794.