Let the People Sing (album)

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Let The People Sing
Album cover to the Wolfe Tones Album Let The People Sing.jpg
Studio album by
Released1972
Genre Irish folk
Label Dolphin Records
The Wolfe Tones chronology
Rifles of the I.R.A.
(1970)
Let The People Sing
(1972)
'Till Ireland a Nation
(1974)

Let the People Sing is the fifth album by Irish folk and rebel band The Wolfe Tones. The album features a number of political songs including Come Out Ye Black and Tans and A Nation Once Again . James Connolly is about the execution by firing squad of the socialist revolutionary after the Easter Rising of 1916, whilst Long Kesh is a song which protests IRA imprisonment at Long Kesh prison. Sean South of Garryowen is rather controversial as it honours the legacy of Irish Republican soldier Seán South who was a prominent fascist and anti-Semitic conspiracist. [1]

Track listing

  1. The Snowy-Breasted Pearl
  2. Sean South of Garryowen
  3. Twice Daily
  4. James Connolly
  5. Don't Stop Me Now
  6. Taim in Arrears
  7. Come Out Ye Black and Tans
  8. On the One Road
  9. The Men Behind the Wire
  10. For Ireland, I'd Not Tell Her Name
  11. Paddy Lie Back
  12. First of May
  13. Long Kesh
  14. A Nation Once Again

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Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone was revolutionary exponent of a Irish independence and is an iconic figure in Irish republicanism. Convinced that, so long as his fellow Protestants feared to make common cause with the Catholic majority, the British Crown would continue to govern Ireland in the interest of England and of its client aristocracy, in 1791 he helped form the Society of United Irishmen. Although received in the company of a Catholic delegation by the King and his ministers in London, Tone, with other United Irish leaders, despaired of constitutional reform. Fuelled by the popular grievances of rents, tithes and taxes, and driven by martial-law repression, the society developed as an insurrectionary movement. When, in the early summer of 1798, it broke into open rebellion, Tone was in exile soliciting assistance from the French Republic. In October 1798, on his second attempt to land in Ireland with French troops and supplies, he was taken prisoner. Sentenced to be hanged, he died from a reportedly self-inflicted wound.

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The Wolfe Tones are an Irish rebel music band that incorporate Irish traditional music in their songs. Formed in 1963, they take their name from Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, with the double meaning of a wolf tone – a spurious sound that can affect instruments of the violin family.

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Come Out, Ye Black and Tans is an Irish rebel song referring to the Black and Tans, or "special reserve constables", recruited in Great Britain and sent to Ireland from 1920, to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. The song was written by Dominic Behan as a tribute to his Irish Republican Army (IRA) father Stephen, who had fought in the War of Independence, and is concerned with political divisions in working-class Dublin of the 1920s. The song uses the term "Black and Tans" in the pejorative sense against people living in Dublin, both Irish Catholic and Protestant, who were pro-British. The most notable recording was in 1972 by the Irish traditional music group, the Wolfe Tones, which re-charted in 2020.

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References

  1. Wiser, Danny (21 December 2020). "IRELAND: Let The People Sing - The Wolfe Tones". 200worldalbums.com. Retrieved 25 October 2023.