The companion was launched in Dublin on November 24th. The words of the speakers at this event are published  on  www.companion.ie. This free access site presently carries an A-Z list of all the book’s articles (c. 1800), list of all writers (c. 200), a major category breakdown of the articles, and a full names index of all people and bands mentioned in the text (c. 5000 names).

Www.companion.ie is designed to help readers to get the most out of the Companion. It should be valuable in teaching where it is necessary to draw related data from many different articles. It will progressively develop to include links from the listed topics to selected web references outside the Companion site.  Feedback is welcomed, as are links to other sites.

LAUNCH ADDRESSES - Royal Irish Academy, Dawson St., Dublin, November 24^th, 2011.

Fintan Vallely, editor

There are many notable publications on Irish traditional music, among them works of monumental initiative and deservedly enduring status. Only a handful however attempt to present an overall picture, a difficult task in what is now a vast field.

The traditional music scene has changed radically since the 1960s, and now by the second decade of the 21st century it is seen to have become an established part of Irish culture. The commercial life of traditional music has evolved and consolidated as well, bringing with it significant music tourism.

The complementary energetic debate on traditionalism in Irish music and its expanding profile within the academic system has created too a wealth of new approaches to playing and study. In particular there is a growth of academic research interests, with many major studies now underway.

The Companion draws together the oldness and newness, the aesthetics and analysis, and the practice and study of the diverse interests and ideas of this music field in relevant and accessible ways. Fintan Vallely, himself an accomplished musician and music writer, has harnessed the expertise of more than 200 specialists from various aspects of traditional music, who in more than half a million words of comment present a remarkably comprehensive image of the field. The Companion presents A-Z descriptions of instruments and their playing styles, repertoires, the history of traditions, and analysis of the impact of the media and the modern history of traditional music making.

Among the specialists who have contributed to the Companion are many major performers such as Martin Hayes, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, Gerry O’Connor, Liz Doherty, Niall Keegan, June Ní Chormaic, Mick Moloney, Niall Vallely and Jesse Smith. Predominant too are the most eminent researchers and writers including Terry Moylan, Martin Dowling, Caoimhín Mac Aoidh, Colette Moloney, Harry Bradshaw, Nicholas Carolan, Anne Buckley, Ríonach Uí Ógain and Pat Mitchell.

Biographical entries cover significant musicians, commentators and composers. Central themes within traditional music are given extended entries such as the coverage of song and dance, oral tradition, innovation and the social politics of Irish music. The structure of the book is tightened, with close positioning of the disparate areas of large subjects like ‘ornamentation’, ‘dance’ and ‘song’. A significant addition to the original edition is the inclusion of many more biographies, and commentary on music, teaching and performance in all 32 counties of Ireland, as well as in Britain, Scotland, the USA and all major European countries where Irish Traditional music is played.

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2nd Edition, is available to purchase on line from Cork University Press

A website dedicated to its content is now running - see www.companion.ie

A study in text, photographs and graphic design of the fiddler Ben Lennon of Kiltyclogher, Co. Leitrim.

Ben Lennon’s life is documented here in words by writer Fintan Vallely and he is presented within his music society in a hundred and more striking photographs by international award-winner Nutan Jacques Pirapez. These elements are integrated by a vigorous, complementary design by Martin Gaffney as the visual story of a personal journey in music by a commentator who has a bird’s eye view that is a panorama of the technological and artistic transformation from the old Ireland to the new, from traditional music redundancy to its artistic supremacy.

The text is based on interviews done by Fintan Vallely in June, 2010, as well as on other conversations with Ben and on his own personal biographical notes; photographs represent conviviality, community, vitality and joy and cover a wide span of years with emphasis on the contemporary. The book is tenderly endorsed by Séamus Connolly, Ciaran Carson provides a poetic Prologue and Fr. Séamus Quinn a touching epilogue, and it includes comment by Maurice, Brian and David Lennon, by Gabriel McArdle, Desi Wilkinson, John Carty and Andy Dickson.

Summary

The Tailor’s Twist was conceived by Nutan Jacques Piraprez and the concept developed with Martin Gaffney and Fintan Vallely working as Friends of Ben Lennon – FOBL. It includes both contemporary images of Ben and material from Nutan’s photographic archive assembled over several decades. Additional informative imagery has been assembled by Martin Gaffney from archival and other resources and from Ben Lennon’s and the Lennon family’s memorabilia. Other images courtesy of Derek Speirs (Report), Fintan Vallely and others as credited.

Song texts quoted by Gabriel McArdle and tune transcriptions by Gerry (fiddle) O’Connor and Fintan Vallely. Niamh Parsons did the interview transcriptions, Áine Hensey helped with captions, and numerous others provided support and additional information.

The project was made possible by research and development funding generously provided by the Deis Traditional music support initiative of An Comhairle Ealaíon – The Arts Council of Ireland.

Supplementary funding for travel and research was given also by The Coleman Traditional Irish Music Centre, now CCÉ’s Regional Resource Centre for counties Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Leitrim and Fermanagh.

The Tailor’s Twist has had the unstinting cooperation of Ben Lennon himself, and is inspired by all his friends throughout Ireland who have been hugely appreciative in their thousands of hours of music-making and late-night holding court with him over the decades.

Visit fobl.ie for further information.

A satiric/comic song selection of modern Ireland, ed. Fintan Vallely

Publishers’ information

A collection of comic and satirical lyrics that comment on some of the inconsistencies and absurdities that mark Irish society’s transition from the past to the future. The style is long-established and reaches back to the Gaelic bard’s role in early-millennium social structures on this island. Each tale carries a moral, but humour is the vehicle that dispenses it with an ease that renders it both visible and invisible: the observer has the space to 23 their own choices.

This kind of song/verse is long-established in Ireland. Satiric song is a mildly-admonishing device of Irish literature, comic observation and ridicule are part of everyday conversation. These songs comment on perfectly obvious everyday things, they say things that are as rigorously accurate as the news bulletins and newspapers that they were culled from,.. The twist is in the approach, the addition of the fantastic and the surreal. Drama is invoked to drive home the message. But just as important as the songs is the accompanying text. The introductory essays stand on their own as a complementary area of observation and render their associated lyrics all the richer, making this book not just a mere songbook, but a solid comic test that is in a continuum with Breandán O hEithir’s Begrudger’s Guide to Irish Politics, Myles na Gopaleen. Sex, National politics, Drink, Fast Food, Traditional music, Religion, Recreation, Agriculture, the Weather – all are analysed herein through he medium of the direct slag, the obtuse dig, the dry remark.

Sing Up! Song Contents

THE ARAB ORANGE LODGE  – Crawford Howard’s fantasy concerning the consequences of exporting the L.O.L. to Damascus.

THE BALDY SONG – On the plight and restorative antics of men who can’t handle baldness.

BANG BANG’S DAY – Blow by blow saga of the exciting scenes surrounding Evelyn Glenholmes’s release from court in the late 80s Dublin.

BEAUTY SPOT GLANLEA – Patsy Cronin’s imaginary journey around the world, based on reading newspapers and atlases.

THE BALLAD OF BINDER TWINE – Micheál Marrinan’s verbal extrusions on what to do with the EC Twine mountain.

THE BALLAD OF RANGY RIBS – Dungiven bard Brian McGuinness’s exhaustive dissertation on the colourful life of an unkempt, unbiddable, unwanted bullock.

THE BALLAD OF THE TEETH – Tale of how he lost them to the desires of a jackdaw, and then got them back

THE BODHRÁN SONG – Tim Lyon’s tale of the fate of a German tourist who went trying to make his own bodhrán.

THE BUFFALO FARM IN ACHILTIEBUIE – Andy Mitchell’s nightmare about Scottish Highlands development after overhearing a pub discussion on EC grant-aid for bison farming.

CHARLES THE NAVIGATOR – Charlie Haughey’s conquest of the Mizzen head by yacht.

THE CITY OF MULLINGAR – A 19th century hedgeschool master style eulogy on that most gorgeous of Irish cities.

CONFESSIONS OF A BODHRÁN PLAYER – Observations on the contradictions and absurdities with which the vegetarian bodhrán player must grapple.

THE DAFFODIL MAN FROM KILTYBANE – Jim McAllister’s effusions on an innocent who happened to suggest something so effete as flowers to a Crossmaglen publican.

THE DENTIST FROM FIVEMILETOWN – Hugh Collin’s tale of oral torture in the rare ould times.

THE DONERAILE LITANY – Patrick O’Kelly’s curse on the miserable hoors of Doneraile who robbed the watch he had got from a British monarch.

DRUMSNOT, BEAUTY SPOT*** – Briain O’Rourke’s satire on the beauty spot industry.

DUNNE(S) STOR(I)ES BEATS THEM ALL – On Ben Dunne being caught with no pants, off his head and on cocaine in Miami.

THE E(?)C SONG – Tim Lyons’ denunciation of the evils of the EC and its effect on the drinking public.

THE ERRANT APPRENTICE – Bill Watkins’ internal-rhyme tale of how a soldier lad had his eye wiped by the publican’s daughter.

THE FAST-FOOD SONG – Tim Lyons’ excoriation of fast food burgers and trashy eating.

THE FENIAN RECORD PLAYER – Crawford Howard’s updating of The Ould Orange Flute into the age of electro-mechanical technology.

THE FOODAHOLIC – Crawford Howard at it again, on compulsive eating and its result.

THE FREE STATE ADJUDICATOR – Joe Mulhearn’s satire on public humiliation dealt out to the Ulster song tradition by a Fleadh apparatchik.

THE GUBU SONG – Mickey McConnell’s brilliant parody on politicians’ gobbledygook.

THE GENESIS SONG – How sex was invented, and the background to clerical celibacy.

THE GLASGOW COURTSHIP – Adam MacNaughton’s parody on the grand hedge-schoolmaster song evocations of the early 19th century.

THE GOAT’S REPLY – Fred McCormick’s words in the mouth of the sibling of Brian O’Rourke’s goat: this one has no notion of being humiliated.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU, MR. GORSKY! – Weird sex intrigue behind the scenes of the first flight to the Moon.

THE GRISLY MURDER OF JOE FRAWLEY – Tim Lyon’s tale of drink, love, revenge, grisly murder and prison in a fantasy gombeen land.

HEY RONNIE REAGAN! – John Maguire brilliantly becomes all of Ireland’s marginalia and tells the big man to get stuffed.

HO CHARLIUM – The course of the 1990 Presidential election seen as a horse race at the Phoenix Park.

INVITATION TO A FUNERAL – The Finnegan’s wake theme – the corpse doesn’t turn up, but the crack is good, and rows and fights reduce the party to patheticism.

THE IRISH JUBILEE – A post-famine food-hallucination of over-eating set in Irish America.

The JOHNNIES SONG – How the Gardai set about shutting down the dreaded Well Woman She-been.

LEITRIM IS A VERY FUNNY PLACE – How the natives of Ballinamore dared to refuse to talk to RTÉ in the heat of crisis.

LITANY OF A BIG EGO – And how RTÉ broadcasters used feel obliged to be important and exclusive in the days when their employer was important because it was exclusive.

THE MAN FROM DEL MONTE – Scorching cynicism from the sadistic quill of master-bard Deaglán Talúin.

THE MICE AT IT AGAIN – Sean Corcoran’s collected woes about the proliferation of mice in the days before Dak and poison.

MICK SULLIVAN’S CLOCK – The Clock packs it in, goes on tour and is beaten to death.

THE MILTOWN COCKROACH – Con Fada Ó Drisceoil’s fate at the fangs and venoms of beasts of the night in a tent.

THE MISSING MISSUS MYSTERY – How Mrs. Runcie never appeared on the TV when the Bishop went to Rome for the early stages of an Anglo-Roman cease-fire agreement.

THE MOVING STATUES MOVEMENT – The only economic growth of the 1980s – when even the statues got sick of the rain.

THE NAMES OF TUNES SONG – Michael Scanlon parades a significant repertoire as seamless medley to the tune of The Swallow’s Tail.

NELL FLAHERTY’S DRAKE – Spectacular curses over the theft of a prized bird.

THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED OWENY’S – Finbar Boyle’s satire on the Gardaí for daring to close down a famed topers’ emporium in Dundalk.

THE NIGHT-CLUBBING SONG – Mícheál Marrinan’s jaunt to the big smoke to taste a bit of the high-life and late-drinking fashionable in 80s Dublin.

ON THOSE WHO STOLE OUR CAT, A CURSE – wished venomously by Michael Hartnett in the spirit of Doneraile, Carey and Nell Flaherty.

OOR HAMLET – Adam McNaughtan tells the story as it has never been told, set to music.

THE ORDNANCE SURVEY MAN – Deaglán Talúin’s Herculean assessment of the mundane life of a mere civil servant who is fond of a bit of music.

PADDY’S LAMENT – The fight-back against the ‘Paddy’ syndrome in industrial England.

PADDY’S PANACEA – Sophisticated, late 19th century ramble extolling the efficacy of the pure drop.

PANAMANIA – George (senior) Bush’s desperate stab at fame after Mikhail Gorbachev had stolen the limelight.

THE PAPISH GOAT – How a Fenian hoofer was kidnapped and irreversibly transubstantiated into percussion.

THE PEELER AND THE GOAT – Darby Ryan’s 1830s scathing satire on the Peelerhood who had wronged him.

THE POOL SONG – Con Fada Ó Drisceoil denounces the shapeless louts and loussies who spend their lives hooped over green tables playing with their balls.

THE QUILTY TURTLE – Ciarán Ó Drisceoil’s fantasy about a beast which somehow got from the Caribbean to Clare and into a row.

RESURRECTION ROMP – How it really happened – intrigue, Jesus, Peter, drink, money and the music scene.

RIGGED OUT – Famine years souls-for-clothes trade-off tale.

ROUND THE MICKEY DAM – The Derry emigrant navvy in 19th century Glasgow extols the merits of a good breakfast.

THE RONALD REGAN BAR – Why Ronnie came to visit Ballyporeen.

ROUND THE MICKEY DAM – Fightin’ Irish again: in defence of victimisation, Paddy takes the initiative.

SAFFRON AND WINE – Miltown Malbay’s tough team which couldn’t be matched by the matchmakers.

THE SEALINK SONG – Discourse on the somewhat absurdity of the Ferryboat evacuation Mayday messages.

THE SHADES OF ASHGROVE – Darby Ryan in exceptional Anglo- Hibernic (satirical?) verbosity in praise of his local stream.

SKIN THE GOAT’S CURSE ON CAREY – The famous Dublin cabman reeks verbal revenge on the first supergrass.

SOLID STALLION SPANKER – Eoghan Ruadh O’Súilleabháin’s alliterative ad for the sale of his horse.

THE STUDIO SONG (P XXX) – Paranoia strikes broadcasters once there’s a change in the weather.

SWEET BALTRAY – Bitterly-derisive tale of a wedding feast for a couple who do not enjoy the scribe’s affections.

THE TRANSIT VAN – Sean Mone on the life and times of a border smuggler who took his inspiration from Margaret Thatcher.

THE TRIP TO FEAKLE – Deaglán Talúin’s surreal account of an innocent music trip to Co. Clare by naive natives of Coolea.

YOUR PLACE OR MINE? – Briain O’Rourke’s campaign-tale of the short-lived Gold rush in Co. Mayo.

BOOTLEGGING BOGLE – Sheila Miller lashes out at the folk-pop song pirates of folk club Scotland.

THE WATERFORD BOYS – The rat trade, the landlord and a smart customer.

THE WEATHER SONG – Classic moan by Tim Lyons about the worst summer in decades

WEE WHITE TURBAN – Mulhearn’s seething parody on The Broad Black Brimmer.

WHEN I GROW UP – Briain O’Rourke’s other life as a kid madly wanting nothing more from life than to be beaten.

WHEN THE ESB CAME TO COOLEA – How the ‘electric’ came to Coolea, West Cork.

WILLIE MAC BRIDE: THE REVENGE – Crawford Howard’s revenge on the pub-lounge lizard’s most popular request.

Song notes to the songs in the book which appear on the Schitheredee album Big Guns and Hairy Drums by Tim Lyons and Fintan Vallely

1/ The Bodhrán Song.

With the international fashion of Folk musics the bodhrán has multiplied in geometric progression as a symbol of instant access to music-making. It has reached nonsense proportions in the Irish Fleadh Cheoil and English Folk Festival scene where a melody instrument may well start off the music, but the percussion swells in and eventually becomes an end in itself. Ever aware of this scenario all round him the whole summer long, Tim tells the original yarn about the bodhrán in song in which he vilifies the ‘typical’ tourist as German (it used be American) but lets the goat get away. Sensibly enough he robbed The Cuckoo’s Nest to lay his tonic eggs in – to eliminate the possibility of any German ever learning the song.

2/ Song of The Teeth.

Martin O’Malley from Miltown Malbay in West Glare is an outstanding patron and enjoyer of traditional music and Song. A farmer. the only thing which interferes with his hay making is the cursed Willy Clancy Summer school in the first week of July. On the one sunny day of 1985 while at the hay he set his teeth on the wall for a rest after dinner, and a jackdaw robbed them. Two years later a neighbour (called Crowe) found them, So Martin coined the immortal words: “Robbed by a jackdaw, brought back by a Crow”, and the song gushed forth.

3/ The Fast-food Song.

To a traditional air, this is about the Fast Food industry which is fattening the Western Hemisphere and will eventually kill it off, a result of Tim being half poisoned by a half-thawed, botulism-ridden alleged burger he foolishly once bought on the side of the street at the Willy Clancy Week one year.

4/ Dunne’s story beats them all.

“DUNNES’ STORES BETTER VALUE BEATS THEM ALL” used be the famous slogan of Ireland’s most competitive cut-price supermarket which specialises in selling the fastest-moving items at the lowest prices. Its millionaire proprietor, young Ben Dunne, while on an alleged golfing trip to Miami O.D.’d on cocaine and was arrested after going off his rocker in the company of a woman from an escort agency. Later on he appeased the Catholic hierarchy by joining in the Irish supermarket blockade against selling condoms.

5/ Jake the Sniffer.

The police will stoop to any level to wipe out drugs, even corrupt innocent dogs by getting them hooked so that they will do anything to get a sniff. Tim was taken by the tale of this beast, one Jake, who was once kidnapped for interrogation by the drug barons.

6/ Charles the Navigator

One morning in 1985 the yacht of Charles J. Haughey crash-landed on the Mizen Head off Co. Cork as he was rushing home to eventual accountability for his expensive lifestyle. The Mizzen’s lighthouse keeper counselled the survivors by torch light, and the Party faithful flocked to Baltimore to witness their boss being winched ashore and dried out on the pier – all timed perfectly to get the Sunday one O’clock news. The ‘taypot’ is the one Charles gave away to Maggie Maggie Maggie (leaving a lonely gap in a set in the National Museum) and the `sickening crunch’ is his own description of the docking.

7/ The Weather

Tim wrote this opus in desperation at the bad summer of 1985 which caused a National gloom both that year and the one Slier. The bad Weather must be held accountable too for Gay Byrne depressing the half of the country about the joys of working in America and Australia thereby creating an emigration crisis among people foolish enough to take him seriously The exodus makes the famine years look like a bomb- scare, and he didn’t go himself in the end, now trying to convince us to become millionaires).

8/ The Sun-worshipper Song.

There is a pool of water in the North pole ice a mile across. There is a hole in the ozone layer which if it doesn’t incinerate us all will drown us in melted icebergs. Steps were taken some years ago to limit the substances which were causing all this, while at the same time the price of cars has been kept down to make sure that none of it will work. The song explores the contradictions involved with those who fetishise the colour of the body.

9/ Resurrection Romp

The apostles, as everybody knows, were heavily into Irish music and they liked a couple of drinks of a weekend – especially with a Bank Holiday coming up. Christy Moore told Fintan this story in joke form one Good Friday in Maisie Friel’s of Miltown Malbay as all were breaking the law for pleasure. Fintan wrote it as a commission for RTÉ’s ‘Sunday show’ at Easter, 1990. Producer Noel CoughIan wasn’t pleased, nor was presenter Andy O’Mahoney: their show was a “family” one, so it was censored out.

10/ The E?EC Song

The 1969 EEC elections were celebrated by people all over Ireland killing each other to get to blazes out and find a good job in Brussels. Tim doesn’t agree with all this rot and sets out in detail the cashed hopes. false promises. ruined economy. automated pubs and other awfulness that have been the result of Ireland’s joining up in ’71.

11/ The Well Woman Song

Prior to `83 contraception was illegal in Ireland. This led to unwanted pregnancies, large families, single mothers – and to abortion in England. A group of impeccably moral citizens in 1983 initiated ‘The Referendum” to prevent women making such decisions, and then the law eased so one could get condoms – but only from a doctor (if you planned busy sex-life it would be cheaper to emigrate). Since the Well Woman clinic respected the woman’s right to choose, and, furthermore, was liberally interpreting the law by giving out condoms free, in return for a small voluntary donation, ‘The Referendum” crowd put pressure on the Gardaí to prosecute. A lad was sent to the clinic to purchase a condom which became `Exhibit A’, and long after the things had been made legal the clinic was fined £50 for their dastardly crime.

12/ The Price of the Pig.

A tale of hard times when the innocent lad in a strange town is beguiled by the charms of a smart woman and ends up penniless. A gem of a traditional piece to the air of the jig Tatter jack Walsh.

13/ Mwilly Mmride

Australian Eric Bogle’s wonderful 1970s Green Fields of France details the pointlessness of World War 1 slaughter, addressing an unknown soldier, Willie MacBride. The Fureys topped the charts with it, lodging it in everybody’s sentiment file, everywhere that English is spoken. Anyone suspected of being able to sing is constantly terrorised by unknown civilians with requests to “do Willie MacBride”. Finally Crawford Howard from Belfast obliged, in parody. This is Fintan’s adaptation of Crawford’s rather brilliant, original idea.

14/ Confessions of a Bodhrán Player

This addresses the New-agey type of player of the modern Irish skin drum who mistakenly believes that this the oldest thing around, and, conveniently, also perceives it as easy to play as stamping your foot. Neither is true, and so bodhrán players continue to take the brunt of the jokes inside Traditional music.

15/ The Grisly Murder of Joe Frawley

The grocer-cum-publican is common enough in rural anywhere. Joe Frawley had such an emporium, and was a politician too. Ever since Irish women took to the pub after the epidemic of addiction to Dallas where every sentence used a drink as punctuation, music came to be provided as entertainment, sometimes the native stuff, more likely a cocktail of Country and pop. Often, to save expense, local Trad musicians would be recruited, and called a ‘session’. Substances other than alcohol would be consumed too, and Tim’s parody on the classic ‘murder’ ballad romantically unfolds. The ‘holy hour’ was the now-obsolete dinner-hour during which Dublin pubs were closed to give unionised bar-staff a break.

16/ The Moving Statues Movement

In 1985, in twenty-six places around Ireland, previously content and immobile statues of stone, plaster and reinforced concrete began to move – wink, weep, bleed, sigh, talk and even light up. The thing caught on like good scandal and became the only growth industry of the 1980s. Nell McCafferty pondered the curious fact that the statues only moved in the 26 Counties (Fintan’s theory is that the ones in the Six Cos. were afraid to move). It was all brought on by all the talk and referenda on divorce and contraception; the air is that of the 1960s Civil Rights anthem.

These sixteen songs appear in print in Sing Up!, published in July, 2008

by Fintan Vallely
November, 2008

The book looks at the present-day booming Traditional Irish music scene and notes that while there is enthusiastic participation of Northern Ireland Catholics therein, Protestants have largely absented themselves. In fact not only are Protestants in general indifferent to the explosion of this music’s Irish ‘new-culture’ life in the expanding EC, but many Loyalists, at the cutting edge of Britishness in NI, have perceived the music as being actively hostile to Union with Britain, implicitly Republican.

This, the author demonstrates, is in spite of the history of ‘Traditional’ Irish music which is no more than the one-time available popular music of all on the island of Ireland, and though by origin dominantly and distinctively Irish, has significant Scottish and English pedigree. This genealogy is traced through myth and modern history, and the National-identity moulding of the Victorian era.

The process of acceleration of Catholic interest in the music, of Protestant rejection of it, is also looked at in its occupation of the same temporal niche as the rise of Civil Rights politics and ‘the troubles’ after 1966. While Traditional music and National politics undoubtedly synergistically developed, nevertheless both Protestant and Catholic players agree that the music is not of itself or its occasions of practice, political. It is concluded that rejection of the music is part of boundary-marking for Unionists.

Contrary to many contemporary opinions, the author does not invest any particular society-healing power in this music, instead holding that the music simply is music, an artform, and can only reflects what goes on in the outside political, world. Irish music is now, objectively a new sub-genre, with few particular local-community roots, independent of actual ‘Nationality’. With a wide international community of consumption and participation it nowadays shares with other musics the ability to fulfil everything in its communities’ artistic expressive or interpretative potential, from the casual and educative to the totally professional and virtuosic. Thus, it is argued, it should be available to Protestants not only as a component in their birthright, but without prejudice as a potential vehicle of artistic expression and entertainment.

Tuned Out is available direct from the publisher, Cork University Press.

New title - Learn to Play The Irish Flute by Fintan Vallely, (the new edition of ‘Timber – The Flute Tutor’), Autumn 2011

The wooden concert flute has been enjoying a new lease of life since the 1960s. This is particularly so in traditional Irish music which itself has extended out of its own national revival to become a free-standing international music genre played and listened to all over Europe and the US, even in Japan. Part of the flute’s popularity is due to bands like The Chieftains, Bothy Band, Boys of the Lough, De Danann and Altan, more recently Dervish and Danú, for each of which the instrument has been an anchoring sound. Also using flutes made of wood, Baroque music has undergone revival too. And not to be ignored are the humble ‘fife’ and the band flute, the small versions of wooden flute which are hugely popular still for marching music not only in Ireland, but in East-coast USA and the instrument’s land of origin, Switzerland.

Despite the popularity, there was little easily-available information for the open-hole flute. In 1986 Timber – the Flute Tutor filled the gap as a tutor, went into a new edition a year later, and has had many reprints in the following decades. This is the comprehensive guide to playing the wooden, six-hole, ‘simple system’ transverse flute. It takes the reader through all aspects of holding, blowing, fingering, ornamentation and breath control, all via a light yet informative text. Historical illustrations and comment set the instrument in its music perspective, and photographs complement the written instruction throughout. A magazine-type layout neatly boxes the various aspects of playing into achievable modules, and refreshingly lifts many of the burdens which are encountered in first-time playing. The book is aimed at both absolute beginners and also whose who have already been playing for some time. It can be used for learning to play any kind of flute – long or short – and is ideal too for those learning the tin whistle or flageolet – the popular junior relative in the flute family. The book is suited too to those wishing to learn the tin whistle itself with a view to later moving on to the flute. Instruction is given via the medium of Irish Traditional music where the wooden flute enjoys its greatest popularity and has produced its most outstanding exponents.

The repertoire of tunes is a valuable collection of music in itself. It includes tunes which are local to Irish, Scottish and English music – air, march, jig, reel, hornpipe, strathspey and highland – as well as the borrowed and nativised waltz, mazurka and polka. These give the beginner plenty of choice in learning, and for those already playing they provide an new, interesting and comprehensive repertoire which tests every aspect of competence. Various appendices throughout the book provide an otherwise-unavailable compilation of information which is valuable to both beginners and advanced flute players: sources of further music, information on flute makers, suppliers and repairers, a discography of flute recordings, and web resources and backup.

Timber – the Flute Tutor -Instruction CD WHN 005

The instruction on this album and in the book Timber is designed for the wooden concert flute, but applies also to tin whistle which uses the same fingering and shares many ornamentation features also with the flute. The book can also be usefully used by players on Boehm (fully keyed, metal) flutes also; while the fingering is of course different, ornamentation methods apply.

This album is only of use with the book. It covers all major melodic details in the book Timber (second edition, full colour cover, 1988 – 2008). It also applies to the first edition of Timber (yellow and red cover, 1986 – 88), but with slightly different page references.

This album is broken into seventy seven tracks to facilitate the learner accessing individual items instantly. However, in the text, there are considerably fewer ‘tape’ or listening logos. Therefore it is useful to go first through one’s copy of Timber and highlight the spots to which the full range of tracks applies.

Observations on the political implications of popular revival and education in Irish Traditional music in modern Ireland.

A discussion pamphlet which is the text of the Seán O’Riada Memorial Lecture No. 14 as given by Fintan Vallely to the Traditional Music Archive and the Irish Traditional Music Society of  University College, Cork, 2004.

The writing addresses revival, representation, inferiority complexes, State intervention, radio, politics, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the rise of the Independent Trad music sector, bourgeois values in education, methods of revival, music meaning, O’Riada, suspicion of state education. It argues that it is time for the one-time outsiders and the new middle class constituency of Traditional music to put its faith in State education and Arts structures: we are all Irish with the same destiny.

38 pages.

A book by Fintan Vallely, Nutan, Charlie Pigott

Text of interviews by Piggott & Vallely, color and B/W photographs by Nutan

The book is a document on the lives and music of 30 major performers and movers of the revival period of Irish Traditional music. It is a series of 2,000 word, specifically-researched interviews and biographies/ethnographies which set these players in the contexts of their times, lives and performing. It is a balance between the written and the visual, a presentation which uses warm, quirky and personality-laden pictures taken by award-winning photographer Jacques Piraprez Nutan. In sympathy with the typical slow fuse of his work, the moods and themes of his mostly colour images are developed into personalities, community and nation by biography, interview, objective comment and poetry/song quotation. The voices are of musicians and singers, they who have shaped the revival of Traditional music since the nineteen fifties; there is a sprinkle there of today’s generation of talented, articulate and often highly-educated players. The overview is from the inside, but also looks back over the shoulder at the musician and music-lover placed – anachronistically – in an information-age society, among Pop music market forces and technology, yet performing unaccompanied song from before the age of steam, eighteenth-century social dance, acoustic melody-making on music that may be older than the pianoforte or as young as the microchip. Nostalgia, Nationalism, Romanticism, virtuosity and communitas here meet art and quiet confidence in cultural meaning.

Content

Theme: detailed prose-style interviews with 30 musicians, singers, dancers etc., mostly Irish born, a wide age spread, based in Ireland, England and US, professional and non-professionals:
Brendan Begley, Mary Bergin, Vincent Broderick, Joe  Burke and Anne Conroy, Vincent Campbell, Paddy Canny, Liz Carroll Joe Cooley, Seamus Devenney, Lucy Farr, Len Graham and Padraigín Ní Uallacháin, Gary Hastings, Martin Hayes, Peter Horan Tommy Keane, and Jacqui McCarthy, Paddy Keenan, Ben Lennon, Tony MacMahon, Neilidh Mulligan, Anne Mulqueen, Treasa and Róisín Ní Cheannabháin, Maighread Ní Dhómhnaill, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Johnny O’Leary, Peadar O’Loughlin, Sarah Anne O’Neill, Micho Russell, Sharon Shannon, Roger Sherlock, Brian and Eithne Vallely

Topic – Education and Traditional Music

The second conference in the Crosbhealach an Cheoil (Crossroads of music). Held at the Magee campus of University of Ulster, 25-27 April, 2003; hosted by the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages, organised by Fintan Vallely, Lecturer and researcher in Irish music 2001-03 (full data also in The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2011).

The conference

This was the first of its kind in this part of Europe. It concerned itself with the assessment and provision of Traditional music education at all levels from the practical to the academic, throughout the island of Ireland and abroad. While the concern and focus was on Irish Traditional music, the nature of investigation was comparative, an interchange of ideas and methodologies, taking in various other European Folk / Traditional musics covered as well – Norway, Scotland, Isle of Mann, Northern England, Newfoundland, Mid West USA and Brittany. Papers addressed group and one-to-one instrumental teaching of children in organised classes, summer schools and seasonal workshops, the specialised and well-established music schools, teaching from tutor books, CD ROMs, CD, videos and the internet.

In its discussion and presentations the conference set out to, and did, cover:

1. the variety of teaching contexts: past to present, learning from neighbours, parents, peers, organisations, summer schools, aurality/orality, travelling musicians, the written note, recordings, video, digital technology and the Internet – negatives and positives.
2. Goals of teaching in music: artistic and creative purpose, aesthetics, fleadh cheoil standards, competitions, adjudication, the professional as role model, contradictions, closed versus open mind, examinations, grades.
3. Teaching for the future: methodology that has been successful, pedagogy, failures, satisfaction, why do we teach music, problems in teaching singing, training the teachers.

Scope of debate

The option of specialising in Traditional music at second-level featured across many discussions, so too its study in university and teacher training programmes, in post graduate research, and its utilisation as a performance option in school music (GCSE in Northern Ireland and Britain, and Junior and Leaving Certificates in the South of Ireland). Particularly significant was awareness of the increasing demand for the music in colleges – in its inclusion as part of several undergraduate B. Mus. Programmes (NUI Dublin and Maynooth, University of Ulster, University College Cork), and also the full specialisation in degree courses presently offered By the Institutes of Technology in Dublin, Dundalk and Waterford, and at the University of Limerick

Music performance

A feature of the conference was a concert performance by young musicians and singers from local (Northern) counties who are the visible beneficiaries of several strands of the instrumental and singing teaching programmes which exist today. All were high quality players, many of them award winners. Local Traditional singer and BBC presenter Brian Mullen hosted this event which was open to the public s well as conference delegates. Such concentrated and structured exposure to the result of practical music education strategies / practices was a hugely-informative ‘first’ for many of the delegates. The Verbal Arts Centre was chosen for this, a superb acoustic venue, the use of which took the conference out of the university into local cultural life, as well as introducing conference delegates to the architectural and historical features of the host city.

In addition, on each of the conference’s three nights, a dedicated, club-style venue offered conference delegates the facility of casual performance of and listening to music and song, in the environment of further debate and discussion. Some thirty of the delegates played music and sang at these nights, making live music making a key feature of the experience of the conference.

The organisers

The conference was organised by an independent committee which involved several of the organisers of the earlier 1996 ‘Crossroads’ conference (which addressed ‘Tradition and Change). Most of them are Traditional players, all are concerned with a variety of levels of teaching Traditional music. The members are:

Dr. Colette Moloney, (Treasurer), lecturer in music, Department of Applied Arts, Waterford Institute of Technology; Dr. Liz Doherty, (Chair), professional musician, lecturer, musician & researcher, Buncrana, formerly lecturer in Traditional music at University college Cork; Fintan Vallely (Secretary), Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster; Dr. Therese Smith, lecturer, Music Department, University College, Dublin; Eithne Vallely, Armagh Pipers’ Club/ St. Patrick’s Teacher Training College, Dublin; Dr. Desmond Wilkinson, lecturer, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, professional musician & researcher; Paul McGettrick, Humanities Dept., Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Statistics – presentation and numbers involved

Spoken:

36 papers and presentations were offered, some in parallel sessions in two venues within the college. 10 invited speakers were among these, in addition to the 2 keynote speakers. These and the 24 others were chosen to provide the maximum representation of the experience of teaching Traditional musics today. Keynote addresses were by Dr. Philip Bohlman (University of Chicago, author of The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World), and Dr. Caomhín Mac Aoidh (Donegal, fiddle-music teaching pioneer, author of Between the Jigs and the Reels). Debate was arranged in 12 thematically-focused sessions, involving 34 papers from Irish and international speakers.

15 of the papers were from the South of Ireland, 6 were from the USA, 5 from Northern Ireland, 4 from Scotland, 2 from Norway, and 1 each from Canada, England, Isle of Mann and France. 150 delegates were present on the opening night, and the level of participation at any moment on the debating days was between 90 and 100. Delegates came from Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, USA, Sweden, Israel, France and Canada. They represented academic interests (university and teacher training, post graduate research), Traditional music (instrumental teaching, grades, competition, presentation and performance), and school music teaching.

Investment in future Academic discourse

Eight bursaries for Crosbhealach an Cheoil were offered to students of Traditional musics in Ireland, Britain and Scotland. The object of these was to encourage further study of Traditional musics by introducing students to the intensity and depth of debate at an academic conference covering a field normally experienced only at the level of music making. The bursaries were made possible by a component of funding – that of The British Academy and Critical Voices (Ireland). The recipients were: Brian Keenan, School of Music, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Claire Gullan, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow University; Ben Hudson, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England; Nicola Morrison, Lews Castle College, Isle of Benbecula, W. Scotland; Cinzia Curtis – Isle of Man, studying at Irish World Music Centre (IWMC) University of Limerick; Teresa Kavanagh, Northern Rhythms Programme, Falcarragh, Co. Donegal; Dominic Mac Giolla Bhríde, Dublin Institute of Technology School of Music; Edel McLoughlin, University College Cork.

Music

The evening concert at the Verbal Arts Centre featured 22 young musicians and singers from Armagh, Belfast, Tyrone and Fermanagh, all of them taught music in modern contexts. They were presented in a manner which presented for comparative evaluation three major transmission methods: dedicated teaching in organised classes, local influence and peer learning, and the challenge of professional role models. .

Poster presentations

A display of ‘poster’ style presentations offered visible summations of activity by private, public and summer schools, colleges, etc. involved in the music. However (the only disappointing element of the weekend) this did not draw the expected, and promised, level of possible participation.

Publication of papers

All speakers agreed to contribute to the publication of papers; commitment for this has been secured from a publisher (Journal of Music in Ireland), and it is expected to be done on web in late 2010.

Organisation

This conference organisation was critically facilitated by the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at University of Ulster which hosted the bulk of the event’s services. It was facilitated also by personnel participation from the Department of Music at University College Dublin, the Department of Applied Arts at Waterford Institute of Technology, and the Department of Humanities at Dundalk Institute of Technology. It benefited greatly from the unwaged contribution of the independent committee members – Liz Doherty, Eithne Vallely and Desi Wilkinson.

Funding

The event was financed (in order of scale) by Awards For All – Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The British Academy, The Irish Music Rights Organisation, Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Critical Voices (Arts Council of Ireland). Substantial on-site facilities and organisational work was provided by the Magee campus of University of Ulster, and promotional work, poster and design were contributed by Irish Music magazine. The conference logo The Blue Kimono was provided by artist Brian Bourke, artist JB Vallely contributed a valuable print for the funds-raising ballot to which instrument maker Malachy Kearns of Galway donated a specially designed bodhrán; the reception and night time facilities were courtesy of Sandino’s Café Bar.

Information provision

From November 2002 an extensive website – www.cros2003.com – provided the initial call for papers, and also ongoing full and updated information on the development of the conference. This continues, now with summary and follow-up information.

In addition, promotion and interviews in the major presses, specialist magazines, and on specialist radio programming both on the island and, via internet, globally, provided a wider awareness of the event. Specialised discussion sites carried regular information too.

A pre-conference printed brochure distributed at music events in the spring provided full basic information and programme details also.

Finally, titles and summaries of all papers presented, background information and biographies of speakers, were provided on a printed conference programme distributed to all delegates. This document (c. 20,000 words, a complete conference preview and index, including all paper resumes, conference rationale and speaker biographies) is being made available outside of the conference and promoted on the website.

Future developments and contact

The conference organisers remain contactable for assessment, publication of proceedings, provision of programme and future initiatives via email and other addresses – info@cros2003.com

THE SPEAKERS AND THEIR PAPERS

• Anderson, Alistair. Bringing Traditional To The University: Traditional Music Degree Teaching In Newcastle On Tyne, aspirations of students and development at grass roots level. ENGLAND
• Bennett, Margaret, Dr.. Understanding the Heart and Soul – More Than Just Notes. Methods of teaching the cultural context of traditional music and song in two Scottish colleges. SCOTLAND
• Bohlman, Philip, Dr.. Top-Down, Inside-Out, In-Between . . . Global Directions to the Crossroads. The history of this “paradox of traditional music” and at its revival and redeployment through globalization. My concern, then, is with the notion of the traditional in the past and the present. USA
• Burgess, Barry, Dr.. Back to the Future – Traditional Music in a 21st Century Curriculum. This paper argues that as traditional music exists as a music of the past and of the present then it can be a music for the future provided that young people find it relevant to them and can let it develop in the direction they want. This has major implications for Learning, especially the learning environment and learning characteristics, and for Teaching. IRELAND
• Claudy, Frank, MD. The Challenge Of Meaningful Group teaching At Irish Festivals And Summer Schools. Lessons from Adult Learning Theory and the Psychosocial Literature. USA
• Corcoran Seán. Canons, Curricula And Power In Irish Music: If it is deemed necessary to teach Irish music then a crucial question is who decides what should be taught – who decides the contents of the curriculum and the modes of performance? IRELAND
• Coyne, Michael, Na Piobairí Uilleann. Teaching The Uilleann Pipes: The Efficacy Of Specialist Teaching In The Climate Of Revival – examines the effectiveness of specialist Uilleann pipe teaching . How relevant are such classes to the modern day student? How has cheap access to new multimedia teaching methods (CDs, video and internet teaching) affected the way students react and to specialist classes? IRELAND
• Cranitch, Matt, Dr.. Learning And Teaching ‘Outside The Tradition’. This illustrated presentation considers some of the problems and difficulties which arise in teaching and learning the fiddle, when either the teacher or pupil comes from ‘outside the tradition’. IRELAND
• Crépillon, Pierre. Teaching The Teachers: Teaching Traditional Music In The Academy. BRITTANY
• Curtis, Cinzia. A Case Study In Traditional Music Teaching On The Isle Of Mann. The teaching methods of Mike Boulton, his effect on Manx traditional music and the lessons we can learn in Ireland. ISLE OF MAN
• Dillane, Aibhlín . Ethnomusicology Theory And Practice – what is has to offer to the study of Irish music in terms of performance practice, discourse, and historiographical issues, resulting in the creation of a local/regional ethnomusicology. IRELAND
• Dowling, Martin, Dr.. Arts Council Approaches to Traditional Music Education. The paper places the Arts Council’s approach to traditional music education in the context of its own strategy and programmes and with reference to its clients in Northern Ireland. IRELAND
• Harbison, Janet. Ancient, Diverse and Still Evolving: the Irish Harp Today. Irish harping today presents many challenges: including its definition, transmission, testing and qualification. This paper examines the result of 12 centuries of evolution and suggests a solution for transmission respecting its diverse repertoires and styles. IRELAND
• MacAoidh, Caomhín, Dr.. The Blood Red Tear and The Hidden Note. Stereotypes have a tremendous capacity for being consistently erroneous. The concept of Education is not exempt from popular gross misconception. We typically see classical education as a process whereby a teacher, the learned one, is prompting, pouring or even pounding information into a pupil, the recipient of wisdom. In this case education is a one way event from the teacher to the pupil. IRELAND
• MacLucas, Anne Dhú. Reading Margaret Bennett’s paper in her absence. Understanding the Heart and Soul – More Than Just Notes. Methods of teaching the cultural context of traditional music and song in two Scottish colleges. SCOTLAND
• MacMathúna, Séamus, with Ni Chonaráin, Siobhán. Teaching Irish Traditional Music – The Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann Experience. The contribution of CCÉ in the development and nurturing of Irish Traditional music both in Ireland and abroad. IRELAND
• Marshalsay, KAREN. A hotbed of Learning : Handing On Tradition By Electronic Dissemination. This paper examines the use of a purpose-built, digitised networked sound resource containing both valuable field recordings and items specifically recorded for it, in the teaching of performance Scottish music students at the RSAMD. SCOTLAND
• McCann, Anthony, Dr.. Questioning Educational Strategies – The Challenges Of Radical Pedagogy In Discussions Of Irish Traditional Culture. This paper draws upon insights from the field of radical pedagogy to interrogate the relationship between formal education and traditional value systems in Ireland. IRELAND
• McCarthy, Marie, Dr.. The Confluence Of School Music And Traditional Music Making In Ireland: Historical Perspectives Inform Contemporary Practices. IRELAND
• McGettrick, Paul. Third-level Education in Irish Traditional Music. Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities. IRELAND
• Mercier, Mel. Irish Traditional Music And The University. This paper explores the potential for a re-invigorated encounter with Irish Traditional Music within the University, through an exploration of cross-disciplinary shifts in the search for understanding. IRELAND
• Miller, Jo, Dr.. Issues in Teaching Traditional Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama SCOTLAND
• Moloney, Colette, Dr.. Grades as inspiration to learning and as a method of assessment. IRELAND
• Moulden, John Moulden. The Irish Traditional Song Pack. This paper describes the construction and explains the reasoning behind “The Traditional Song Education Pack” which was devised in response to the difficulties inherent in using traditional songs in schools and particularly in the (divided) Northern Irish context. IRELAND
• Munnelly, Tom. When Learning Went Round In Song: Some Observations From The Field. IRELAND
• Newton, Bob, Dr.. What’s In A Name? Teaching Musical Traditions Of The Celtic World. This paper deals with questions and challenges of overall organization and classroom responses to a course that covers (and is called) The Musical Traditions of the Celtic World. USA
• Ni Chonaráin, Siobhán, with MacMathúna, Séamus. Teaching Irish Traditional Music – The Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann Experience IRELAND
• Nyvold, Frode, Dr.. Folklore And Music As Integrated Artistic Expression – Preserving Contexts For Folk In The Academy. NORWAY
• O’Brien Moran, Jimmy. Session Tonight – All Are Welcome (Must Have Grade 5 Or Over). This paper questions the value of new examination methods, specialised primary degrees, academic appropriation and the institutionalisation of traditional music. Ireland
• Ó Gráda Conall. Internet Teaching Of Irish Traditional Music. IRELAND
• Ó Róchain, Muiris: Appealing To The National And International – Summer Schools As Popular Method. IRELAND
• Reeves, Stan, Dr.. Re-Building Community With Music. The role of Traditional Music in Adult Education/Community Development in Edinburgh’s Adult Learning Project. The notion of community and its expression in traditional music is central to the revival. Here we outline successful teaching projects in Edinburgh which have brought music, back into the heart of the Community. SCOTLAND
• Slominski, Tess, Dr.. Role Model, Group And Organisation. This paper explores the place of role models, existing and newly-created group identities and organizations, and governmental/local support in one musical community, and offers suggestions for creating or strengthening contexts for traditional music, especially abroad. USA
• Sommers Smith, Sally K., Dr. When Do We Get to The Clancy Brothers?”: Teaching Irish Traditional Music in an American Liberal Arts College. American students show enthusiasm for learning Irish traditional music in a semester-long 4-credit course at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, a course based on Irish models. USA
• Stubseid, Gunnar. Fiddling education: problems and successes of the Folk in the academy. Norway
• Taylor, Barry. From Flag Floor To Concert Platform: Passing On The Tradition. The paper will discuss the changes in learning/teaching methods prompted by the social and economic changes that occurred in Ireland during the second half of the twentieth century. IRELAND
• Trew, Johanne Devlin, Dr.. Rules Of Engagement: Traditional Music And Music Education In Newfoundland. In Newfoundland, there have never been schools or formalised standards for the study of traditional music nor has it been encouraged in the institutional setting. The opportunity now exists to develop music education initiatives in the community. CANADA
• Vallely, Eithne. Gleus a’ phíob, ‘s gleus an fhidheall. Caismeachd, ‘s ruidhle, ‘s puirt chridheil. This paper will focus on the development over 37 years of traditional music education for children in Armagh Pipers Club. Ireland

Speaker Biographies

Alistair Anderson plays English Concertina & Northumbrian Pipes. He has been at the forefront of traditional music in Britain for 30 years. Internationally acknowledged as a master of the English Concertina, he has appeared on TV, radio and the concert platforms across the world and has recorded and performed also with Popular artistes from Kate Bush to The Lindsay String Quartet, Richard Thompson to John Williams and from the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra to Nigel Kennedy. Bath International Music Festival commissioned Anderson and jazz trombonist Annie Whitehead to work together exploring the jazz/folk interface. The resulting work – Airplay – was performed twice at the festival and will tour as part of the Arts Council Contemporary Music Network early in 2003. Although working with others allows increased scope for his composing and arranging skills, Anderson is still best known as a soloist in traditional music from Northumberland, Scotland and Ireland and with his own music, which has grown out of his love of these traditions. Alongside his performance and composing schedule Anderson is involved in organising events to raise the profile of traditional music. He founded and is currently artistic director of Folkworks, an innovative organisation that has helped to change the face of folk music in the north of England, with large numbers of young people now discovering traditional music, song and dance. Folkworks is a founding partner in the new Music Centre Gateshead and, together with the Music Department of Newcastle University, has developed England’s first degree course in Folk and Traditional Music launched in Sept 2001. Anderson was presented with the Tyne Tees Television/ Northern Electric “Ambassador for the Arts” award in recognition of his work both as a performer throughout the world and in encouraging younger musicians to take up their local traditions.

Margaret Bennett comes from a long family tradition of singers and pipers on the Isle of Skye — Gaelic on her mother’s side and Lowland Scots on her father’s. She has sung at folk festivals and concerts worldwide and, as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Scottish Folklore, she features in several films, TV documentaries and on radio. She holds an MA in Folklore and a PhD in Ethnology and currently holds an Honorary Research Fellowship at the University of Glasgow’s School of Scottish and Celtic Studies. She lectures part time at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and as a prize-winning author has published several books and articles. A folksinger of great sensitivity and versatility, she is a major figure of the modern Scottish Revival.

Philip V. Bohlman is Distinguished Service Professor of Music and Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he took his PhD in 1984. His research and teaching cut across a number of disciplines and subject areas, but several of these unify his writing about and approaches to traditional music. His work on folk music first began in the late 1970s, with studies on the Irish-American traditional singer, Charles Bannen. Throughout his career traditional music has provided a counterpoint between studies of American folk music, especially ethnic and religious folk music, the folk music of German-speaking Europe and Jewish folk music. Among his major publications on traditional music are: The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World (Indiana University Press 1988); Central European Folk Music: An Annotated Bibliography of Sources in German (Garland 1996); The Folk Songs of Ashkenaz (with Otto Holzapfel, A-R Editions 2001); and “Jüdische Volksmusik” – Eine mitteleuropäische Geistesgeschichte (Böhlau Verlag, in press). His most recent books include: World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2002), and The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History (ABC-Clio, in press). He has held guest professorships at Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Freiburg in Breisgau (Germany), and the University of Vienna. Currently, he also serves as Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. A pianist and occasional button-box player, Phil Bohlman is also the Artistic Director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, a Jewish cabaret troupe, whose first CD, Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, appeared in 2002.

Barry Burgess is a Lecturer in Music Education at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, course co-ordinator for Initial Teacher Education, and course director of the PGCE in Music Education. A teacher at second level for 22 years, he has been in university education since 1990, firstly in the music department at Jordanstown where he developed a module on Irish traditional music for the BMus degree course and latterly in the School of Education at Coleraine. He was a member of the ministerial working group set up by the Department of Education to write the Proposals for Music in the Northern Ireland Curriculum and has held external examinerships in Belfast, Limerick and Dublin. He has had a long term commitment to Irish music in the educational curriculum in Northern Ireland since the he was a research fellow at Magee College in 1975 producing materials for primary school called Bua an Cheoil. He contributed to the 1996 Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference with a paper: ‘Irish Music in Education ?- a Northern Ireland Perspective’ and also to the Journal of Music in Ireland, July/August 2001.

Nicholas Carolan comes from Drogheda, Co. Louth. He is co-founder and director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, and general editor of its publications. A former teacher, he is well known as researcher and presenter of the RTÉ radio series The Irish Phonograph (1983–86) and television series Come West Along the Road (1995–2003). Archivist, researcher and collector, writer and frequent lecturer on Irish traditional music, from 1977 to 1992 he was secretary of the Folk Music Society of Ireland, and from 1985 has lectured on Irish traditional music in Trinity College Dublin. Among his published work is an edition of the first collection of Irish music A Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes of 1724 (1986), A Short Discography of Irish Folk Music (1987), A Harvest Saved: Francis O’Neill and Irish Music in Chicago (1997), and the article on Irish traditional music in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1999 edition).

Cinzia Curtis began learning the whistle on the Isle of Man from Mike Boulton while in Junior School at the age of eleven. This led to an increasing interest in Manx Music, Dance and Language. While at Secondary school she taught traditional Dancing and Music to a wide span of ages, and performed on a regular basis as a musician, céilí caller and dancer both on the Isle of Mann and at inter-Celtic festivals abroad. In 1995 the school group in which she played, Paitchyn Vannin, took part in the National Festival of Music for Youth, performing at both the Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall, London, and later recording an album, ‘Fragments’, funded by the Manx Heritage Fund. As part of her BMus studies at Cardiff University, she edited and researched a music manuscript collection from the Isle of Mann, The Caine/Callister Flute Book, under the instruction of Dr. Fenella Crowe Bazin. This paper is part of her thesis on Creating Tradition being undertaken at the Irish World Music Centre, University of Limerick.

Frank Claudy, a flute and tin whistle player from Washington, D.C., is a family physician whose work has prominently included musicians’ performance-related problems. He also holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration, and his present position as vice president of medical affairs at a large U.S. hospital affords him many opportunities to test theories of group behavior and adult learning. He is on the teaching staff at the annual Catskills Irish Week in East Durham, New York.

Sean Corcoran is an internationally-renowned Traditional singer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is known for his extensive fieldwork in Irish music over many years, and presently collects for the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin. Known for his performance with the highly acclaimed group Cran, he also lectures in Ethnomusicology and Irish Music at Maynooth College, National University of Ireland.

Matt Cranitch is renowned as a fiddle player and teacher, both in Ireland and abroad. He performs extensively, and also presents lectures and master-classes. A graduate in electrical engineering and in music from University College Cork, he lectures at Cork Institute of Technology. He is author of The Irish Fiddle Book, and has contributed to other books on Irish traditional music. His most recent recording, Along Blackwater’s Banks with Sliabh Notes, was released in March 2002. He has a special interest in the music of Sliabh Luachra, and is currently researching a PhD on Pádraig O’Keeffe, at the Irish World Music Centre, University of Limerick. In recognition of this he currently holds a ‘Government of Ireland Senior Research Scholarship’ from The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He was a contributor to the 1996 Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference.

Pierre Crépillon is a teacher of traditional music (bombarde, flute and clarinet) within the French system of music-teacher training at the Conservatoire de Rennes in Brittany. He is a founder members of Dastum, the Breton equivalent of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

Mick Coyne comes from a well known traditional music family associated with the Liverpool céilí band, with which his father Eamonn, from Co Roscommon, played fiddle, Mick began playing on tin whistle when twelve, moving on flute and pipes, and by sixteen was a regular in the band. His first set of pipes and piping lessons came from Co Clare piper Tommy McCarthy, and on moving to Dublin his friendship with the great ‘tight’ uilleann piper Andy Conroy laid the foundation for the style of piping Mick exhibits today. He has played at most of the major international festivals, and in 1990 he won the Oireachtas Uilleann Pipes competition. A teacher for a solo-piping class at the Willie Clancy summer school annually, he has taught throughout Europe and in Canada set up a traditional music program for Courtney College of Music in Vancouver. He grades piping scholarships granted by Na Piobairí Uilleann, and gives piping tuition at Limerick University’s music department. Administrator of the weekly Ennis Uilleann Pipers club, his solo CD is “Both sides of the Coyne”.

Aibhlín Dillane is currently acting course director for the MA programme in Ethnomusicology at the University of Limerick, and next year takes up appointment as lecturer in traditional music at University College Cork. A graduate of UCC and the IWMC, she is currently completing a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology with the University of Chicago where she received a Fulbright scholarship and the University of Chicago Century Fellowship to pursue studies. Her dissertation focuses on Irish Music in Chicago from the perspective of American ethnicity and the performance of place in the city. She has written on Irish music topics in the US, and is a contributor to the Companion to Irish Traditional Music. A traditional Irish flute and piano player, she played extensively in the Chicago-based band ‘Anish’, which released its first album in November, 2001. A former employee of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, she has undertaken undergraduate ‘World’ music surveys and adult education classes in Irish music at the University of Chicago. She is a member of The Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

Martin Dowling is a traditional fiddle player and historian. He holds a PhD in Irish history from the University of Wisconsin, and a Teaching Diploma in Traditional music from the London College of Music. He has performed, taught, and lectured on traditional music in Ireland and America. Since 1998 he has been an Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland with responsibility for Traditional music.

Janet Harbison was born in Dublin 1955 into generations of musicians and teachers. She began piano at the age of three in Dublin College of Music, and arising out of family connections with the Kerry Gaeltacht, and her attending boarding school in Waterford Gaeltacht, she developed an early love of traditional music, singing, dancing, playing tin whistle and guitar. She took up Irish harp in 1967, and in 1980 became the first harper to tour internationally with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. With a BA in Music & Psychology, she moved to Cork in 1981 to study with Mícheál O Súilleabháin at UCC and teach harp at Cork School of Music. In 1984 she moved to Belfast to take up a Junior Research Fellowship award with the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University, and in 1986 was appointed Curator of Music at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. In 1983 she initiated summer schools for harp, established The Harp Association in ’86, going on to organise the World Harp Festival, the Belfast Harp Orchestra and the charity, the Harp Foundation (Ireland) Ltd in Belfast in 1992 and in 1994. Having established harp schools throughout Ulster, in 2002 she moved to her paternal grandmother’s home in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick where she is now setting up a music school.

Caomhín Mac Aoidh is a founder member of Cairdeas na bhFhidléirí and continues with it as an active Committee member. He is directly involved in the coordination of both the Donegal Fiddlers Summer School in Glencolmcille and the Annual Fiddlers’ Gathering in Glenties as well as numerous teaching workshops throughout the year. As a fiddle player he has both performed and taught extensively. His writings on both the Donegal fiddle tradition are numerous and include the book Between the Jigs and the Reels, several papers on educational themes, as well as three tutors on Donegal fiddle playing.

Anne Dhú MacLucas is professor of music, specializing in ethnomusicology, at the University of Oregon, where she was previously dean for ten years. She is currently a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in residence at the School of Scottish Studies of the University of Edinburgh, where she has been researching the impact of the academy on oral traditions in Scotland.

Séamus Mac Mathúna is a musician and singer. He has been Timire Ceoil of CCÉ since 1969, and has been involved at all levels of that organisation since the late 1950s. A highly respected flute player, he has a particular appreciation of the music of his native West Clare, the South-Sligo style of flute-playing, and of the tunes and styles of Sliabh Luachra. In recent years he has been more prominent in traditional singing and amhráin ar an sean nós, with a detailed understanding of both traditions. The scope of his position in CCÉ, combined with his personal appreciation, input, and commitment to Irish music and singing, establish him as a significant contributor to the growth and development of Irish musical heritage.

Karen Marshalsay is a Traditional harper involved in both performing and composing in Scotland, and also an experienced tutor in many contexts such as fèisean, schools, workshops, local authority projects and the Sabhal Mór Ostaig. Education initiative on Skye. Involved also with the RSAMD’s BA (Scottish Music) degree in Glasgow, she is currently working on that institution’s HOTBED project.

Paul McGettrick is a lecturer in Music Technology at Dundalk Institute of Technology. He has designed and taught degree courses and modules in Irish Traditional Music at Dublin City University, Dublin Instituter of Technology, and Dundalk IT. A flute player, he is Associate Editor of ‘Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600-1855′.

Anthony McCann is an academic and performer. He is a research specialist in music and copyright, the social dynamics of tradition, and the politics of enclosure. (Website: http://www.beyondthecommons.com)

Marie McCarthy is Associate Professor and Chair of Music Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches courses on general music, music learning theory, music cultures in the classroom, and research methods in music education. She has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship and an Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Council for Research in Music Education. She is active as a clinician and lecturer, has presented her work in all five continents, and has contributed to music education reform movements in Ireland, Lithuania, and Taiwan. Her research studies to date have focused on the sociocultural and sociohistorical foundations of music education, in particular the comparative study of music transmission, the relationship between music education processes in formal settings and those in the culture at large, and the impact of music education on the development of identity at individual and collective levels. Her major publications appear in the Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education, Irish Musical Studies, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Journal of Research in Music Education, and the International Journal of Music Education. She serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals in music education, including the British Journal of Music Education, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Journal of Research in Music Education, and the International Journal of Education and the Arts. Her major contribution to Irish music is her book, Passing It On: The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture, (Cork University Press, 1999). She is Section Editor of and contributor to the New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Mel Mercier has been a Lecturer in Music at University College Cork since 1992, where he teaches a range of academic and performance courses in Irish Traditional Music, Indian, African, and Javanese musics. He is a regular performer of Irish Traditional Music, composes music for theatre, and is currently researching North American, two-handed, bones-playing.

Jo Miller grew up in Galloway, and trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), Glasgow University and The School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh; her postgraduate research focused on the musical life of her home area’s rural community. A singer and fiddler, she has taught traditional music widely, both in the community and in formal education. She created the BA (Scottish Music) degree at RSAMD in 1996, now concentrating on the development of community and pedagogical issues, and has developed resources and run in-service courses on traditional music for schools. She was on the Steering Committee for the Scottish Arts Council’s report Traditional Music in Scotland and contributed to the newly published What’s Going On? A national audit of youth music in Scotland.

Colette Moloney comes from Charleville, Co Cork. She is a musician in both classical and traditional idioms and a music scholar specialising in the Irish harp. A graduate in music of University College Cork, she gained her Ph.D. from the University of Limerick in 1995 on the subject of the Bunting music manuscripts. A former director of the Ennis school of music Maoin Cheoil an Chláir, she now lectures in music in the Waterford Institute of Technology. Her major publication is the 735-page book ‘The Irish music manuscripts of Edward Bunting (1773-1843): an introduction and catalogue (Dublin: Irish Traditional Music Archive, 2001).

John Moulden lives at Portrush, Co. Derry. A former Teacher in Controlled Schools who retired ten years ago from the principalship of an Integrated School, he is life-time singer and student of Traditional song who has published and lectured widely for more than thirty-five years. His main concerns are to make songs available to those who value them and to make accessible, to singers and others, rigorously researched information about the song tradition and about songs. Renowned for his work on the Sam Henry song collection, his most recent project has been contributing to The Traditional Music song Pack for Schools.

Tom Munnelly is a song collector, archivist and singer. Born in Dublin, this prolific and dedicated field worker has made traditional song his life and has uniquely imprinted its society. With an intense interest in song and folklore he emerged from no academic background to produce by 1998 a prodigious volume of research, analysis and presentation. Beginning in 1964 he recorded traditional song in the field, from 1969 to 1971 he was research assistant to D.K. Wilgus, Professor of Anglo/American Folksong, UCLA, noting, cataloguing and describing narrative song materials (English and macaronic) in the Main ms Collection of the Irish Folklore Commission, covering some 1,750 manuscripts page by page. In 1970, with Breandán Breathnach, Prof. Seóirse Bodley and Dr Hugh Shields, he founded the Folk Music Society of Ireland (Cumann Cheoil Tíre Éireann) and still serves on its committee. In 1971 he became the first song collector for the new National Traditional Music Collecting Scheme then initiated by the Department of Education under Breandán Breathnach. In 1975 this merged with the Department of Irish Folklore at UCD, so leading him to lecturing on traditional song. In 1976, at the request of the Smithsonian Institute, he selected the twenty-five traditional performers to represent Ireland in the American Bicentennial celebrations, and was the country’s spokesperson and lecturer there. In 1978 he moved to Co. Clare, and from then until 1991 was chairman of the Willie Clancy Summer School. In 1981 he was appointed to the Arts Council’s Irish Traditional Music Archive Advisory Committee. In 1982 he founded An Cumann le Béaloideas agus Ceol Tíre an Chláir (The Folklore and Folkmusic Society of Clare), organising its lectures over nine years. Between 1983 and 1985 he was the Arts Council nominee to the board of Mid-West Arts, and in the same year, with Dr Hugh Shields of TCD and Nicholas Carolan organised the fifteenth International Ballad Conference of the Kommisssion fur Volksdichtung (Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore). From 1985 to 1988 he was a member of the Arts Council of Ireland and from 1988 to 1993 was chairman of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (re-elected to its board 1995 and 1998). In 1990 he was chairman/founder of the Ennistymon Festival of Traditional Singing remaining a key figure in it until 2002, and also in 1990 was chairman/founder of Scoil Leacht uí Chonchúir (Lahinch Folklore School). Between 1990 and 1994 he also indexed all oral poetry (lyric and narrative, English and macaronic) in the first 2,000 vols. of the Main Manuscript Collection of the Department of Irish Folklore, generating some 18,000 cards in a self-developed system of cataloguing. Since 1971 he has recorded some 1,500 tapes of folksong (mainly) and folklore, the largest and most comprehensive collection of traditional song ever compiled in Ireland by any one individual. This is transcribed, indexed and catalogued using Irish, British, American and European systems of identification. He has lectured to practically every folkmusic and folklore body in Ireland, has talked in all Irish universities, and continues to give papers abroad every year.

Siobhán Ni Chonaráin is a teacher and flute player from Co. Limerick. She has contributed to most of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s educational activities in a voluntary capacity for almost twenty years and is continually active in the teaching and playing Irish traditional music nationally and internationally.

Bob Newton teaches and lectures on the musical traditions of the Celtic world to traditional and non-traditional students and general audiences. His PhD research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was based on two years of work with local musicians and bards in Mali, West Africa, where he studied contemporary performances of their epic. He has explored and performed traditional music of several Celtic nations over the past twenty-five years, and teaches Celtic music in four different structures: online, regular university courses, youth weeklong summer camps, and adult night classes.

Frode Nyvold has worked as assistant professor at the Department of Folk Culture, Telemark University College, Rauland, Norway, since 1986. Educated as a social anthropologist at University of Oslo, besides working with Norwegian traditional music he has also done fieldwork in France and Hungary. A singer since the 1960s, he has performed widely in Norway and abroad, and focuses on music, identity and communication as the main theoretical themes in his fieldwork and written work. He teaches singing and melodeon at the Department of Folk Culture at Telemark, where cultural politics and cultural history are his main theoretical themes. He is also coordinator of the Nordic network of third level folk music educations – Nordtrad.

Nollaig Ó Fiongháile is a musician, researcher and lecturer, and works as Music Officer with the Arts Council of Ireland. With a BMus degree from the National University of Ireland, Cork, she is also holds and MA in Ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has managed and participated in projects at local, national and European levels. She has managed third level educational programs in traditional music, lecturing with the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in the Heritage Studies Department, and was Submission Coordinator with the GMIT for the development of a National Diploma in Applied Music. She is currently active in developing national and European projects in traditional music, has worked as a Council of Europe Consultant, and is a founder member of, and member on the executive of, both the Traditional Music and Dance Development Network and the European Network of Traditional Music and Dance.

Conall Ó Gráda was born in County Cork into a family background Irish Traditional music and culture. He began to play at an early age, and under the expert tutelage of Mícheál Ó Riabhaigh won several All Ireland titles on both tin whistle and concert flute. In 1991 his solo album “The Top of Coom” received significant popular and critical acclaim. Following fifteen years in the electronics industry, with fellow musicians Eoin Ó Riabhaigh and Kevin Glackin he founded Scoiltrad, the world’s first interactive, internet-based music school. He teaches performance on flute at University College Cork, and has guested as tutor in other universities.

Jimmy O’Brien Moran was born in Waterford, taking up uilleann pipes at seventeen, learning first from Tommy Kearney, later from Pat Mitchell at the Willie Clancy Summer School. He taught at the latter after 1977 for several years, then learned saxophone in 1979 when he joined the band Scullion with which he played for a year, touring and recording an album. He has played and taught in various parts of the world, including North America, New Zealand and Europe. He first recorded in 1978 on an album of young pipers entitled “The Piper’s Rock”, then in 1996 produced a CD of solo piping ‘Sean Reid’s Favourite’. He studied music in WIT (then WRTC), completing a BA in 1992, going on to lecture there for a number of years. Now researching for a Ph. D. at UL, he has lectured at summer schools and tionóil at home and abroad, and is an occasional contributor to the bulletin of Na Piobairí Uilleann and the journal of the Sean Reid Society.

Muiris Ó Róchain was born in Dingle, Co. Kerry. His family are from the Gaeltacht, and he was reared bilingually; in younger years he was involved with music, song and local traditions such as the wren. He collected folklore for UCD from the last of the Gaelic storytellers while teaching in Cahersiveen and Waterville, and was involved in setting up Ballinskelligs Local Development Co-op in 1968. He taught in Dublin from 1967 where he was an associate of Breandán Breathnach, John Kelly, and other major figures in traditional music revival. Married to Úna Guerin of Miltown Malbay in 1970, he moved there to teach at Spanish Point. A contributor to CCÉ’s Treoir magazine and involved in Dal gCais magazine from its inception, he played a leading part in the making of three short films – My Own Place (RTÉ, 1980, prod. Tony MacMahon), Cur agus Cúiteamh (RTÉ, 1990, prod. Cathal Goan), Up Sráid Eoin – The Story of the Dingle Wren (RTÉ, 1991, prod. Ríonach Uí Ógáin). The original proposer of the Willie Clancy Summer School, he drew up its first programme in 1973 with Séamus MacMathúna of CCÉ and has been its director since.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is a pianist and composer, Professor of Music at the University of Limerick. Well known for his integration of traditional and classical musics while lecturer in the Music Department of University College, Cork between 1975 and 1993, a talented composer and performer, he has eight albums of music and has produced a further five recordings with Donegal, Shetland, Irish America, Cape Breton Island and England-Irish musicians on the Nimbus and Real World labels. He established the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick in 1994, scripted and presented the 1995 television series River of Sound. His doctorate on the music of Tommy Potts is from Queen’s University, Belfast where he studied under John Blacking. His publications cover Irish traditional music studies, and he was assistant editor to the late Aloys Fleischmann’s Sources of Irish Traditional Music, published in 1999. He has been chair of the board of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and of Clare Music Education Centre (Maoin Cheoil an Chláir); he is a member of the board of directors of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. A frequent performer of his own work with the Irish Chamber Orchestra he has made several recordings with them, including Becoming features a film score for the 1925 silent film Irish Destiny.

Stan Reeves plays button box in a dance band. He has worked for 30 years in Community Development and has integrated the methods of Paulo Freire into the teaching practice of the Adult Learning Project and the Scots Music Group. He founded the Scots Music Group, the Youth Gatherin, and the Scots Fiddle Festival, alongside volunteers from the community. He is the author of “If can’t dance it’s not my revolution” in Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Adult Education and the Arts (1995).

Slominski, Tess; fiddle player, teacher, and freelance writer. She founded the Blue Ridge Irish Music School in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1999.

Sally K. Sommers Smith is a traditional Irish fiddle player who has been influenced by Laurel Martin, Séamus Connolly, Kevin Burke, Tommy Peoples and (in the Cape Breton tradition) John Campbell. She works as a cellular biologist at the College of General Studies at Boston University, and has done sabbatical work in traditional music under Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin at the IWMC, University of Limerick. She has contributed essays on traditional music to Eire-Ireland, New Hibernia Review, and The Recorder, and was a contributor to The Companion to Irish Traditional Music. Last year she published on the interpretation of Irish music in the context of revival of the Irish language, and she is a regular reviewer of traditional recordings for Irish Music magazine. She participated in the first Crossroads Conference in 1996, (on the influence of the individual voice in traditional Irish fiddling), and in 2002 formulated a 4-credit course in Irish traditional music for undergraduate students at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts.

Stubseid, Gunnar. Fiddling education: problems and successes of the Folk in the academy. Norway.

Barry Taylor plays the fiddle and concertina, and since 1976 has been researching fiddle music with an emphasis on the processes involved in passing on technique, style and repertoire. He is presently conducting research into the development of the céilí band, and into the musical traditions of south-west Clare. His published works include: The Irish Ceilidh Band – A Break with Tradition?, Dal gCais Vol. 7.; The Fiddler from Kilfarboy: A Profile of J. P. Shannon, Dal gCais Vol. 8.; The Tulla Ceilidh Band, Dal gCais Vol. 9.; Traditional Fiddle Playing in West Clare: Junior Crehan and Michael Downes (unpublished dissertation for the degree of Bachelor of Arts: University of Leeds, 1977) [for an abridged version, see A Contrast in Styles; Dal gCais Vol. 4].; The Willie Clancy Summer School: A Lifeline for the Tradition (unpublished dissertation for the degree of Master of Arts: Bath Spa University College, 1998; due to be published as A Touchstone for the Tradition – The Willie Clancy Summer School (Brandon, July 2003 [with Tony C. Kearns]). Barry Taylor has also presented a number of key lectures: The Céilí Band – An Influence for Good or Bad? (1983, Clare Folkmusic and Folklore Society); Junior Crehan and the Musical Traditions of West Clare (1993, Breandán Breathnach Memorial Lecture); The Musical Tradition of East Clare and the Tulla Céilí Band (1996, Breathnach Memorial Lecture); P. Joe Hayes and The Musical Tradition of East Clare (1997, Feakle Festival Opening Lecture); The Laichtín Naofa Céilí Band (2001, Old Kilfarboy Society, Miltown Malbay); Professionally, he has worked in education in the European Union, Eastern and Central Europe, specialising in curriculum development and in the setting up and delivery of open/distance learning programmes.

Johanne Trew was born in Montreal, Quebec of Irish parents and was educated in Canada and in Ireland. Her PhD in ethnomusicology was completed at the University of Limerick, her dissertation titled ‘Music, place and community: culture and Irish heritage in the Ottawa Valley (Canada)’. She is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow cross-appointed to the School of Music and Dept of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Also active in the organisation of concerts, conferences and workshops, her research there concerns traditional music and culture of Newfoundland, with particular emphasis on the Irish and French communities; her other research interests include the Irish in Canada; French-Canadian culture and civilization; relations of place, culture and music; cultural policy in Ireland and Canada.

Eithne vallley is a fiddle player and teacher originally from Lifford, Co. Donegal. She is a founder member of the Armagh Pipers’ Club, and deeply involved with its publication of many tutor books and teachers’ aids in song, tin whistle, fiddle and uilleann pipes. She has taught thousands of young peple over some 35 years, was a joint orgainser of the Bunting Summer School at Benburb in the 1980s, and with piper and painter Brian Vallely organises of the William Kennedy pipeing festival held annually at Armagh

Crosbhealach an Cheoil / The Crossroads Conferences

The first of two conferences, this one held in 1996 in Dublin (second in 2003 in Derry). Information on the published 1996 proceedings below. Full data also in The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2011.

1. Introduction

Traditional Irish music entered the twentieth century bolstered by the Gaelic Revival and the cultural momentum of the Irish independence movement. The gramophone and radio gave it new life in the 1920s and 1930s, fashioning for it a universal style. But it was in serious decline by World War 2, undermined by modern, popular musics and new consumer values and inferiority complexes. The dance function of the music was becoming redundant too by the 1960s as showbands and discos took over.

Paradoxically however, LPs, tape, then CDs became midwives to a successful revival of traditional music, but by the 1990s their potential (allied with artistic questing, favourable political and economic conditions and exposure to other musics) created yet new challenges – synthesisers, video, multiple track recording, digital sound, commodification and PR marketing. The impact of these has nurtured the development of a sophisticated professionalism – manifested internationally most dramatically by Riverdance – and has created an unsettling crisis for the nineteenth-century ideologies of ‘revival’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘tradition’. The Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference in 1996 responded to this by garnering the debate so generated. It drew on the new academia of the Traditional music scene, on its oral-tradition intelligentsia and, in particular, its players.

Many of the issues raised in the course of its few days have been dealt with in other ways and in many publications over the three years since, but the topics addressed in the selection of papers presented here remain vitally challenging to all who are interested in Irish music and culture. Some of the essays presented here retain their original form, others have been amended and extended – as is normal practice to compensate for conversion to transmission by print. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin’s actual paper delivered was, regrettably, unavailable, but has been replaced, at his request, by a study focused on his referenced key player, Tommy Potts. While not the normal practice for a publication of this kind, the editors include it here since not only was he one of the two keynote speakers, but this ‘proceedings’ document would be incomplete if it did not represent his view. And while (like the non-inclusion of some others of the delivered papers) this may deprive the reader of something of the dynamic and historical record of the conference, nevertheless it is our belief that the presentation here of such a specialised case study and associated graphic material complements his argument in the opening session. In any case, it valuably emphasises the observation made on the night by several commentators – that Tommy Potts was summoned by critics and advocates of change alike as simultaneously icon of both ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’.

Publication of these proceedings would not have been possible without the generous support of Milwaukee Irish Fest Foundation, An Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council of Ireland, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the School of Irish Studies Foundation. To these, to Brian Bourke for devising and contributing the conference logo, and above all to the speakers who have permitted their words to appear herein, are extended most sincere thanks.

-Fintan Vallely, Hammy Hamilton, Eithne Vallely, Liz Doherty. June, 1999

2. Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – Conference Organisers

Cormac Breatnach, born in Co. Dublin, is a flute and whistle player, formerly a member of the mould-breaking group Meristem in the late eighties, and then with the jazz-fusion Deiseal. He has played and recorded with in Donal Lunny’s exploratory ensembles, features on an album with Meristem, is lead instrumentalist on Deiseal’s albums, features on both Riverdance and River of Sound albums, and has played for drama, television and film (Moondance, War of the Buttons, Secret of Roan Inish). He has done Irish translation work for IMRO, the Irish Music Rights Organisation, and has a solo album Musical Journey (1999).

Liz Doherty is from Buncrana, Co. Donegal. A fiddle player, she lectures in Irish Traditional music at University College Cork. An Honours music graduate of that college, her PhD dissertation from there dealt with Cape Breton Traditional fiddle music. She has played fiddle and recorded with the innovative Cork-based band Nomos, is currently a member of the group Bumblebees, and has a solo recording due for release in August, 1999. She is editor of the complete Capt. Francis O’Neill collection of Irish dance music, due for publication by Ossian in 1999.

Colin Hamilton, born in Belfast, and living now in Coolea, Co. Cork, is a flute player and maker, singer, researcher and writer who has pioneered the development of the wooden flute as presently used in Traditional music. An Ethnomusicology MA graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, he studied under John Blacking. He has a solo album of flute music, and produced in 1990 The Irish Flute Player’s Handbook, an exhaustive treatise on the flute in Irish music. His UCC PhD thesis (1996) is Commercial recordings of Traditional Irish music, he was a visiting Fulbright scholar at UCLA in 1995, has given numerous conference papers, and his book A Social History of Traditional Music in Ireland is due for publication in 2000.

Eithne Vallely is a fiddle player and teacher, born in Lifford, Co. Donegal, now living in Armagh. She is an BA graduate of University College Dublin in Celtic Studies, H. Dip. Ed (UCD), and has a Dip. Ed. (Queens, Belfast). Formerly a teacher of Music and Irish in St. Louis’ Convent, Monaghan, she was teacher of Irish in St. Patrick’s CBS in Armagh from 1975-89. From 1989-94 she taught music and was head of Creative Arts in St. Patrick’s College, Armagh. She is a founder member of the teaching-based Armagh Pipers’ Club, has taught instruments with it weekly since 1969, is the author of its fiddle tutor and singing-instruction books, and is joint author of its best-selling tin-whistle tutors.

Fintan Vallely is from Co. Armagh and has lived in Dublin since 1968. A writer and musician, he has recorded two flute albums (1985, 1992) and one of satirical song (1988). He is author of the Traditional flute tutor Timber (1986), major contributor to The Blooming Meadows (Townhouse, 1998), editor of Cork University Press’s Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999). He holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from Queen’s University, Belfast (1993), was The Irish Times‘ Traditional music corr. from 1994-98, writes for music and other journals and has a weekly column with The Sunday Tribune. He lectures in Traditional Irish and International Folk Musics at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.

3. Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – The conference

Participation was invited from ‘within the music, song and dance community in Ireland and abroad, and from academics and specialists in other music fields.’ Responses and opinions from the floor were anticipated. The final list of topics presented covered: 1. Parallel traditions, 2. The song and instrumental traditions, 3. Culture and change, 4. Education-tradition-organisations, 5. Case studies and revival images, 6. Media, tradition and the industry, 7. Tradition and the notion of innovation.

Considering the debate generated by an RTÉ tv Late Late Show screening of a ‘special’ on Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin’s River of Sound TV series ? particularly by the opinion of Tony MacMahon that its theme music didn’t sound particularly Irish ? it was decided to invite he and Ó Súilleabháin to present forty-minute keynote addresses on the opening night, to be chaired by singer/writer/publisher Robin Morton. Tony Mac Mahon is an well-known accordion player, an authority on Traditional music and was then a senior producer with RTE television; Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is a pianist and composer, and is Professor of Music at the University of Limerick.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin’s theme was ‘Crossroads or Twin Track?’ It raised a series of questions, it looked at change within traditional music and its community, cited the bodhrán and the music of Tommy Potts as case studies of this. It identified a process of change as having begun with the Revival in the 1950s, remarked on Potts’ consideration of some of his playing as ‘experimental’. Ó Súilleabháin held that traditional music could not recreate the music of the past masters because of their different era and mind-set, and he postulated the term ‘trad-pop’ as explication of traditional music’s commercial popularity today.

Tony MacMahon noted a superficiality in new-found interest in commercial traditional music. He illustrated in a lengthy audio excerpt from River of Sound what he felt was the remoteness of (in particular Ó Súilleabháin’s) modern interpretation of the music. He introduced the term ‘aural carpet’ as questioning of the quantity of traditional music currently used and received un-artistically in Ireland, saw commercial music’s modern interpretation as ‘scrubbed clean’ of historic voice to appeal to ignorant audiences, holding that technically brilliant younger musicians today often lacked basic feeling. He defended the uncredited components of traditional music artistry. His view was that traditional music was being mined for ideas by commercial music, and expressed concern that future generations would lose ‘the way’ in the economic, popular tumult.

Thirty-nine other speakers ? almost all musicians and singers ? addressed the gathering, Cathal Goan (Teilifís na Gaeilge) chaired the final open session, and Tom Munnelly gave the closing address. Impromptu sessions of music followed debate; organised music for set dancing also featured, an exhibition of photography by Nutan accompanied the event, and over the weekend more than three hundred people took part.

4. Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – Summaries of papers given

* Most of these can be consulted on audio tape at the Irish Traditional Music Archive

• Ahern, Pat: ‘Fiche Bliain ag Fás. A Personal Account of 20 Years of Tradition and Change’, remarking on the explosion in the number of young people taking up traditional music ? many of them urban-based with no previous links with the tradition.
• Bazin, Fennella: ‘Lessons from One Hundred Years Ago.’ Examined two seminal collections of Manx music which were published 100 years ago, this in light of the developments which have taken place in the last twenty-five years.
• Bennett, Margaret: ‘From Kennedy Fraser to the Jimmy Shandrix’ Experience in Five Generations’. One of five generations of a music-making family, she looked at the process of transmission within it.
• Boyes, Georgina: ‘Unnatural Selection: Choice and Privileging in English Cultural Tradition’. Examined the ways in which specific types of singer and dancer, styles of performance etc. have been selected as suitable for display and transmission by organisations within the English Folk Revival.
• Breathnach, Deasún: ‘The influence of baroque music on O’Carolan, the traces of influences of French, southern English and Scottish music on the Irish.’
• Burgess, Barry: ‘Irish Music in Education ? a Northern Ireland Perspective’. Viewed the issues which have influenced and restrained development of Irish traditional music in Northern Ireland education, including the two cultural identities, the Ní curriculum, media, broadcasting, etc.
• Carolan, Nicholas: ‘Irish Music to 1600: Traditions and Innovations’. Considered the evidence of innovation from before the sixteenth century using historical, literary and archaeological sources, and drawing on the music of analogous technologies and cultures.
• Corcoran, Seán: ‘Whatever happened to Horse-whatsit? Innovation and post-Colonialism in Irish Music’. Argued that the clamour for innovation is part of a post-colonial mind-set with parallels in other areas of Irish life, that it is the avant-garde of any period which always appears most dated in retrospect.
• Cranitch, Matt: ‘My mind will never be aisy’ is the name of a slip jig published in O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland, 1907. It has evolved to become a well-known slide in the present Sliabh Luachra repertoire and may also have had some influence on another slide. This example of metamorphosis illustrates the role played by Pádraig O’Keeffe (1887-1963) in the development of the Sliabh Luachra style of music. Though established at the ‘tradition’ end of the spectrum, he was also, in the truest sense of the word, an innovator in his music notation systems, repertoire and in versions of tunes.
• Curran, Catherine: ‘Changing Audiences for Traditional Music 1956?96′. Examined the changes taking place in Irish traditional music through the medium of the audience and their changing perceptions of Irish culture within Ireland and abroad.
• Dowling, Martin: ‘Communities, Place and the Traditions of Irish Dance Music Today’. Considered the present breakdown of regional isolation and of stable locality-based communities, the relationship between performer and music-community.
• Gaffney, Martin: ‘DO judge a book by its cover’. An audio-video presentation examining the evolution of cover-style in Irish music records from the céilí band era through to the 1990s.
• Gershen, Paulette: ‘Tradition, Innovation and Identity. Ethnomusicological Reflections’. Innovation, authenticity and modernisation explored from some of the theoretical perspectives current in American ethnomusicology.
• Hall, Reg: ‘Heydays are Short Lived ? Change in Music-making Practice in Rural Ireland 1850-1950′. Explored the social organisation of rural music-making in term of household, kinship and neighbours, community and trade; the shift from pre-famine, public space to private space in the late nineteenth century, back to public space in the 1930s.
• Hammond, William: ‘Traditional Music ? Whose Copyright?’ Looked at the relationship between traditional music, copyright and music rights in general, how this affects the musician on the ground.
• Hamilton, Colin: ‘Innovation, Conservatism, and the Aesthetics of Irish Traditional Music’ looked at the long standing attitude that the tradition needs protection from change, and must be ‘preserved’.
• Hannan, Robbie: ‘Tradition and Innovation in Uilleann Piping’. Questioned the belief that the uilleann piping tradition is rigid and unchanging, suggesting that the top pipers balance their commitment to tradition with their dynamism and innovation.
• Harbison, Janet: ‘Harpists, Harpers and Harpies’. The dilemma of the place and identity of the harp in Irish music-making.
• Hensey, Áine: ‘Michael Coleman’s brother was a better fiddle player’. Looked at the real and perceived influences of the media, using this and other examples to examine how the media can both distort and enhance.
• Hughes, Harry and Muiris Ó Róchain: ‘The Willie Clancy Summer School’. Dealt with the history of Ireland’s oldest and most popular summer school, which attracts more than 500 pupils from all over the world for its music classes alone.
• Moloney, Mick: ‘Acculturation, Assimilation and Revitalisation. Irish Music in Urban America 1960?96′. Looked at the dynamics of continuity and change in Irish music in America from 1960 onwards in the context of massive population displacement and social upheaval.
• Larson-Skye, Cathy: ‘Building Bridges ? Challenges in Playing, Performing, and Teaching Irish Traditional Music in the American South’. Examined the problems of teaching and playing Irish music away form the supportive Irish community and evaluated some possible solutions.
• Mac Aoidh, Caoimhín: ‘The Critical Role of Education in the Development of Traditional Music’. Argued that the foundation for progress in the development of traditional music lies in the provision of an educational infrastructure.
• Mac Góráin, Riobárd: ‘Media, Tradition and the Industry’. Gael-Linn and its operations world-wide since the 1950s, its successes and strengths.
• McLaughlin, Dermot: ‘Why Pay the Piper?’ Looked at the structure and financial relations between the state and traditional music and the support structures which are available in the public sector.
• Moulden, John: ‘Sing us a Folksong, Mouldy’. A personal perspective of the vocabulary of traditional music and song, considering some of the attitudes revealed in conversations.
• Munnelly, Tom: ‘Black Pudding and Bottles of Smoke’. Argued that the events such as the Crossroads Conference itself are part of a cyclical response ? in the long run their effects on the music are minimal.
• Ó Cinnéide, Barra: ‘The Riverdance Phenomenon’. Compared and contrasted the ‘artistic freedom’ experienced by the music since the establishment of CCÉ and the recent ‘liberation’ of dancing through Riverdance.
• O’Donovan, Joe: ‘Evolution and Innovation in 400 Years of Irish Dancing’. Outlined the history of Irish dancing, indicating the major influences resulting in change, and looked towards the future of Irish dance.
• O’Keeffe, Máire: ‘Tradition and Change in the Irish Button Accordion’. An overview of the way in which a new instrument is adopted into an already established musical tradition.
• Ó Laoire, Lillis: ‘Dearnad sa Bhrochán -Tradition and Change in Music in a Donegal Community’, the music and song of Tory Island, showing that change generated within this community was seen essentially as a force for improvement.
• Preston, Paschal: ‘When Old Technologies Were New: The adoption, diffusion and impacts of recorded music in Ireland’. Focused the period 1890?1940.
• Schiller, Rina: ‘Gender and Traditional Irish Music’. Investigated gender aspects of contemporary Irish traditional music performance, looking at concepts of female performance in comparison to those associated with Western art music.
• Smyth, Therese: ‘The challenge of bringing oral tradition of music into an academic teaching environment’. Discussed the problems of integrating oral traditions of music ? in particular Irish music ? into a university music programme.
• Sommers-Smyth, Sally: ‘The Founder Effect: a Model of Traditional Music Evolution’. Discussed the differing standards of performance in Ireland and America.
• Tansey, Seamus: ‘Irish Traditional Music ? the Melody of Ireland’s Soul’. Explored the place of traditional music in his home culture, its evolution from the environment, the land and the people.
• Topp-Fargion, Janet: ‘Continuity, Change and the Forging of New Identities’. With reference to the popular, urban music of South Africa and the Swahili Coast.
• Trew, Johanne: ‘Ethnicity and Identity: Music and Dance in the Ottawa Valley’. Discussed the way in which the Ottawa Valley ? settled by Irish, Scots and French-Canadians over the past 200 years ? developed and maintained its unique tradition and culture because of relative isolation.
• Uí Ógáin, Ríonach: ‘Camden Town go Ros a’ Mhíl ? Aspects of Change in the Connamara Song Tradition’. Examined recent development in the Connamara song tradition of a new type of song, how this has become part of the repertoire of Sean-nós.
• Wilkinson, Desi: ‘An Overview of Breton Traditional Dance Music’. Considered how social and musical influences have been brought to bear on the performance of dance music forms in Brittany.

5. Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – The speakers

• Pat Ahern, guitarist with the Four Star Trio, lecturer and weekly ‘folk’ columnist with the Cork Examiner.
• Fenella Bazin, an authority on the music of the Isle of Man in the period up to 1896, she researches the social history of Manx music.
• Margaret Bennett, a singer, is from a renowned family of traditional singers on the Isle of Skye, and is Research Fellow at Glasgow University.
• Georgina Boyes is a Research Associate at the Centre for English Cultural Tradition at Sheffield University; author of The Imagined Village.
• Deasún Breathnach, from Dublin, is a journalist, author, poet and musician.
• Barry Burgess, lecturer in Education at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, he has had a long term commitment to Irish music in the educational curriculum in Northern Ireland.
• Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, lectures writes and broadcasts in the area of Irish traditional music. From Louth, he has presented the RTE programs The Irish Phonograph (radio) and Come West Along the Road (TV). His books include the Francis O’Neill biography A Harvest Saved.
• Barra Ó Cinnéide is Prof. of Marketing at University of Limerick, and is author of many case studies in Agri-business and tourism.
• Sean Corcoran, a native of Co. Louth, is a singer, bouzouki player, researcher and song collector and performs with the traditional group Cran.
• Matt Cranitch, fiddler and author of The Irish Fiddle Book, he is an authority on the music of Sliabh Luachra.
• Catherine Curran is a post doctoral researcher at DIT working on cultural and communications policy and the evolution of Irish music.
• Dr. Martin Dowling, fiddler and historian, is presently Traditional music officer with the Northern Ireland Arts Council.
• Martin Gaffney is a flute player and graphic designer.
• Cathal Goan, born in Belfast, since 1994 has been Ceannasaí of Telefís na Gaeilge. He worked in RTE TV on current affairs and Irish language programmes, and is an authority on the singing of the Donegal Gaeltacht.”
• Reg Hall, musician and an authority on Irish music in England and Ireland; his PhD is on Irish Music in London.
• William Hammond, for several years director of the Cork Folk Festival, he has played a key role in set dancing in Cork.
• Robbie Hannan, uilleann piper, he is Curator of Musicology at the Ulster Folk Museum, Cultra, Co. Down.
• Janet Harbison, a harper, from Dublin, she is founder of the Harp Foundation and the Belfast Harp Orchestra.
• Áine Hensey, from Dublin, is a presenter of traditional music programs on RTE-Radio 1, Radio na Gaeltachta and formerly at Clare FM.
• Harry Hughes is an administrator and founding member of the Willie Clancy Summer School, and founder editor of the journal Dal gCais.
• Lillis Ó Laoire, Sean-nós singer, lectures in Irish at Limerick University where he is director of Ionad na Amhrán at the Irish World Music Centre.
• Cathy Larson Sky is a Traditional music writer and researcher, and fiddle player.
• Caomhín Mac Aodha, a fiddle player and teacher, he has been a key figure in the teaching of Donegal fiddle music, a founder member of Cairdeas na bhFhidléirí, and author of Between the Jigs and the Reels.
• Roibard Mac Goráin, Ceannasaí of Gael-Linn and Head of Gael-Linn Records and Distribution since its foundation. He has also been involved in their film making and theatre productions.
• Dermot McLoughlin, fiddle player, from Derry, he was the Arts Council’s Traditional music officer for many years and is currently its Artform director.
• Mick Moloney is a folklorist, musician, broadcaster, and lecturer in ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish Studies; a singer and guitar, Bouzouki and banjo player, he has many recordings.
• Robin Morton, from Co. Armagh, singer and writer, he was a founder member of Boys of the Lough group, a former director of the Edinburgh Folk Festival and runs Temple Records in Scotland.
• John Moulden is a former teacher, and well known as a singer, lecturer and researcher into Ulster songs, particularly the Sam Henry collection.
• Tom Munnelly is a folklore Collector with Dept. of Folklore UCD, a singer, and has published extensively on English language song in Ireland.
• Joe O’Donovan, step and set dancer, he is a major figure in the Irish dance scene, tutors at UCC, and is a member of the dance committee of CCÉ.
• Máire O’Keeffe, a fiddler, from Co. Tipperary, she is a former presenter of RTÉ’s traditional radio programme “The Long Note”, and is researching the accordion in Ireland.
• Muiris Ó Róchain, from Kerry, living in Clare, is the founding organiser of Scoil Samhradh Willie Clancy at Miltown Malbay.
• Paschal Preston is a senior lecturer in School of Communications in DCU, Dublin.
• Rina Schiller, an organologist and multi-instrumentalist; born in Berlin she lives and teaches in Belfast.
• Dr. Thérèse Smith is senior lecturer in music at University, College Dublin.
• Sally K. Sommers Smith, a fiddle player, she is Associate Professor of Biology at Boston University.
• Seamus Tansey, flute player and raconteur, originally from Gurteen Co. Sligo now living in Co. Armagh.
• Janet Topp Fargion, an ethnomusicologist, was born in South Africa, and is curator of the International Music Collection at the National Sound Archive in London.
• Johanne Trew, a researcher in Canadian music at UL, is Quebecois of Irish parentage.
• Ríonach Uí Ógáin is an archivist at the Dept. of Irish Folklore, UCD.
• Desi Wilkinson, a flute player and singer, plays with the group Cran and has completed a PhD thesis on Breton music.

6. Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference 1996 – Support

Croisbhealach an Cheoil (the Crossroads Conference) was the first ever conference called to debate the issues of ‘tradition’ and ‘change’ in the world of Irish traditional music. It was held at the Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin over the weekend of 19?21 April, 1996, initiated by Cormac Breathnach and Fintan Vallely, and was planned and organised from the beginning by a committee which also included Liz Doherty, Hammy Hamilton and Eithne Vallely. Each of the organisers was outside of traditional music’s established organisational structures, all were musicians. The two major organisations of Traditional music – Na Píobairí Uilleann and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ) chose not to participate, the remarkable success of the event in such circumstances strongly indicating how independent and self-sustaining the music had become in forty five years of revival. The conference received the official patronage of Irish President Mary Robinson, and was supported by An Comhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council; Arts Council of Northern Ireland; The Irish Music Rights Organisation; Music Departments in University College Dublin, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, University College Cork; School of Music, Trinity College Dublin; Irish World Music Centre at University of Limerick; Queen’s University Belfast, Dept. of Ethnomusicology; The British Council.