IRISH MUSICIANS

There may be another six months before Pattaya next celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, but there was an Irish flavour at the School for the Blind recently when three musicians arrived to perform for the students.

Failte, the Irish word for Welcome, is a three piece music group based here in Pattaya. Three musicians, five instruments and sixty very excited and grateful blind and visually impaired students.

Music is an important part of the school curriculum, and the students at the School for the Blind have a musical marching band, a rock band, a traditional Thai music orchestra and a group that plays the angalung.

Once the musicians started to play the students could not see what instruments were being playing, but they recognised the guitar straight away. There was also a mandolin, as well as an accordion and a penny whistle.

But there was one instrument they have never heard before, the spoons. It had to be explained that it really was two regular spoons, and they were very impressed by the sounds it made.

The musicians played music and sang songs and the children clapped, cheered and one young boy spent the morning dancing, nothing could stop him.

The band gets together each Sunday afternoon at Murphy’s Law bar on Soi LK Metro, just off Soi Buakhao. Four o’clock they start to play and they will transport you back to the Emerald Isle; all the money they collects goes to the Father Ray Foundation, organizers of the Pattaya St. Patrick’s Day Parade.