De Ziah and Date – the eternal tradition

THE De Ziah and Date duo will return to the Tweed with a double event in Murwillumbah on June 22, featuring a documentary screening and a live concert.

Their feature-length film Living the Tradition explores the origins of Irish airs, delving into the country’s musical heritage through stories, melodies, and traditions passed down through generations.

Following the screening, Ilse de Ziah (cello) and Ian Date (guitar) will perform live, blending Celtic, jazz, and world music influences with a classical sensibility.

Speaking from Sydney during a short tour, Ballina-based Date said the combined film and concert format had been exceptionally well received.

“The tradition we explore in the film isn’t the trad Irish music that people think,” he said.

“It’s over 300 years old and has its roots in an old Baroque tradition, and there’s more of that ancient music in Ireland than the trad Irish if you want to dig deep enough.

“We continue living the tradition with music that we’ve composed ourselves that is inspired by the same kind of things as those ancient compositions.”

One of the airs featured in the film is a lament called Song of the Books, which tells the story of a schoolteacher travelling to take up a post on an island off the coast of Ireland.

“He had a library of books in a boat, and he was travelling separately,” Date said.

“The boat sank, and he lost his entire library, and we’re talking pre-printing press, which was incredibly sad.”

De Ziah and Date also draw inspiration from more recent history and their surrounding landscape.

“During Covid, we lived in Ireland near a place called Clonmult, which was the scene of an ambush during the Irish War of Independence in 1921,” he said.

“There was a big shootout where 22 IRA volunteers and Black and Tans died; some got caught, and some were shot as they tried to run.

“One of the old fellas told us that night that some of the British had beers with some of the captured and pushed them off the stone bridge near where we lived.

“The President of Ireland couldn’t come to the 100th anniversary because of lockdowns, so I wrote a piece called The Ambush to commemorate it.”

Date said their work also draws on the beauty of the natural world.

“A piece we wrote was about the Sea Eagles being reintroduced back into Ireland after many years of not being there, and it was a joyful thing,” he said.

Tickets and event details are available at events.humanitix.com/de-ziah-and-date.