The best record you’ve never heard: Ye Vagabond recommend a revolutionary folk record from a master of protest music
There are certain artists you can just trust, and Ye Vagabonds are one of them.
It’s not just because the Irish folk duo, made up of brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn, have released four flawless albums since their stunning 2017 self-titled debut. The company they keep is another sign of their impeccable taste.
I first fell in love with the band when ‘Half Blind’ seemed to find me on a dark, quiet night at university, buried somewhere in a folk playlist. Since then, it has returned to me every winter, pulling me back into an obsession with the band.
Then I’ll get distracted, move onto something else, only to trip up on them again, and begin the infatuation over. It rekindled in November 2023 when they paired up with Boygenius, one of the names pledging their support and love to the duo’s playing and harmonies. Together, they covered ‘The Parting Glass’ in honour of Sinéad O’Connor, and it pushed me back into the band’s orbit.
Then the world pulled me out again, until January 2025, when YouTube’s algorithm delivered one of the most beautiful live performances I’ve ever seen, with Ólafur Arnalds, Niamh Regan, The Staves and a bunch of their friends and peers, including Ye Vagabonds, sung ‘We Didn’t Know We Were Ready’, a final song their friend Eoin French, or Talos, had recorded. As part of the album Arnalds collaborated on with Talos, Ye Vagabonds was also one of the contributors. Each time, finding them anew has been like coming home, but to a home that only gets bigger and more brilliant with more to dive into.
That’s how obsessions work. You discover something and go all in, whether it’s binging every film a director has ever made or losing hours down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about some random topic. You get locked in, then eventually re-emerge.
So it felt apt that, when asking Ye Vagabonds themselves for a recommendation, their choice came from a similar moment of obsession, with a plunge into the online world that led to a frantic search for information about a mysterious folk album and a master of protest song who was tortured and murdered by the very regime he was raising his singing voice against.
Ye Vagabonds on Canciones Folklóricas de América by Quilapayún and Víctor Jara
Ye Vagabonds: “When we were in our teens, we used to spend a lot of time searching for new music online. There was a blog called The Rising Storm where we discovered a lot of great stuff. We found Canciones Folklóricas de América on there, and it turned out the whole thing was up on YouTube.
“We became a little bit obsessed with it. From the lush, warm lullaby of ‘Hush a Bye’ and the dreamlike ‘Gira Gira Girasol’ to the theatrically giddy ‘Bailecito’, the whole album is beautiful, fun and totally transportive. We’re always interested in anything that has rich vocal harmonies and plucked stringed instruments. We thought these guys were like the Chilean equivalent to Planxty or something.
“Add to that the revolutionary poet-singer Victor Jara, and it was one rabbit hole to another for a while. Tragically, in 1973, Victor Jara was arrested, tortured and murdered by an army general during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. His murderer was finally charged and held to account in 2023, 50 years after Jara’s death. The violence of his death stands in stark contrast to his songs with their message of Peace and Love.
“One evening in Paris, Diarmuid got chatting to an older Chilean man in a cafe and when Diarmuid asked if he knew the music of Victor Jara, the old man started to cry because Victor Jara had been his music teacher. A real man of the people and a true artist”.
