Originally from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rik Walton has spent a lifetime photographing music and theatre all over the world. In the early 2010s he lived in South-West Donegal and recorded the music he found in that community with his camera. The selection of images presented here are of Donegal fiddler’s performances at the Glencolmcille Folk Village. For more information on Rik and his images see https://www.rikwalton.com
Des Gallagher is ITMA’s photographer in residence for 2023 and has been busily taking photographs at various ITMA and non-ITMA events since January. The gallery here is a selection of his images taken at:
TradFest, Dublin, 28 January 2023;
Drawing from the Well, National Concert Hall, 12 March 2023;
Gradam Ceoil TG4, University Concert Hall, Limerick on 23 April 2023;
Tradition Now: Reflecting Migrations at the National Concert Hall, 11 June 2023;
The Willie Clancy Summer School, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare, July 2023;
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, Mullingar, August 2023;
and the March and August Sessions with the Pipers in the Cobblestone, Dublin.
Des is also preparing his vast archive of photographs of events for inclusion in the ITMA Collection.
gallery of images presented below for Heritage Week 2021 comes from the collection of Gráinne Yeats which was donated to ITMA by the Yeats Family in April 2018. Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013) was a professional harper, singer, teacher, arranger, historian and recorded artist. She left an extremely rich collection of printed books, music manuscripts, photographs, slides, lecture scripts, diaries, music arrangements (mostly for the Irish harp), research notes, ephemera, artefacts, and commercial & non-commercial sound recordings.Yeats’ image collection consists of photographs, both in colour and back & white, negatives and a large number of slides, amounting to just over 1,200 items in total. Gráinne’s life-long passion for the Irish harp is very much reflected in this collection. The collection covers a wide range of topics relating to the Irish harp and will be an invaluable resource to all students and enthusiasts of this wonderful instrument.
During a concert tour of Japan in the autumn of 1972 Gráinne and her husband Michael Yeats travelled by train to Fukui city which is located on the Japan Sea coast in the Chubu (central) region of Japan. There they visited the Aoyama harp factory and collected a nylon strung lever harp which had been made especially for Yeats. The gallery includes is a record of their trip to Aoyama on the 9 October 1972. This harp was one of a number of harps that Yeats performed on. It can be heard on the iconic recording published by Gael Linn in 1980 and re-issued in 1992 Féile na gCruitirí Bhéal Feirste 1792: the music collected by Bunting at the historic Belfast Harpers Festival 1792.
The gallery also looks back at the many harp festivals, concerts and events which Gráinne Yeats attended over the years. Below are just a small sample of the many images in the Yeats collection which focus on this aspect of her life. In the course of her career Yeats performed, tutored and lectured extensively in Ireland, Europe and abroad, including a number of tours of North America, Japan, Russia, India and Australia. She was a frequent attendee at international harping events, most notably the World Harp Congress which takes place every three years at different locations around the world. Yeats and Máire Ní Chathasaigh were the first Irish harpers to perform on the Irish harp at the 1993 World Harp Congress in Copenhagen. Some of the other events featured in the images below include: An Churit Chruiterachta, July 1992; ‘Festival for Irish Harp’, Downpatrick, Co. Down, 1988; The World Harp Festival, Belfast, May 1992; O’Carolan Harp Festival, Nobber, Co. Meath, 1992; and the World Harp Congress, Copenhagen, 1993.
ITMA’s unique image collection now stands at over 21,700 items. Many of these exist in obsolete physical formats only which limits access to this material to those who can visit the ITMA premises in Merrion Square, Dublin. This year (2021) the Heritage Council has awarded ITMA a grant to digitise, preserve and make accessible, to archival best practice, some 4,500+ slides, negatives and photographs from the collections of two highly significant figures in Irish traditional music: Breandán Breathnach (1912-1985) & Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013).
This gallery of images was published for Heritage Week 2021. The images presented below are from Cnuasach an Bhreathnaigh (the Breandán Breathnach Collection) which was the foundation collection of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Breandán Breathnach, 1912–1985, was a great expert in Irish traditional music — an uilleann piper, collector, publisher, writer and organiser. His collection contains sound recordings, music manuscripts, printed items, a thematic index of dance tunes, and personal papers and was deposited in trust to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by the Breathnach Family in August 1987.
Breathnach’s image collection consists of photographs, both in colour and back & white, negatives, slides, postcards, etc. and covers a wide range of topics relevant to Irish traditional music, song and dance. His huge passion for the uilleann pipes and uilleann piping is very much evident throughout his collection and it will come as no surprise that the vast majority of images in the collection relate in some way to uilleann pipers and uilleann piping. Breathnach was a founder-member of Na Píobairí Uilleann, along with Seán Reid and others, and was the organisation’s chairman from 1968 until his death in 1985. Many of the images below were taken at Tionól held in various parts of the country including Bettytown, Co. Meath and Ennistymon, Co. Clare.
Breathnach also sourced images from a variety of organisations, media outlets, individuals, libraries, archives, galleries and museums. For example we see here a wonderful image of the Castle Céilí Band taken in 1962 by an Independent Newspapers photographer. The clarity and composition of the image are telling signs that this photograph was taken by a professional. The fun of a great evening in the Francis Xavier Hall, Dublin is very much evident in this picture. ITMA is grateful to Independent Newspapers and the National Library of Ireland for permission to reproduce this image here as part of Heritage Week. However, not all images in Cnuasach an Bhreathnaigh were taken by professionals. The image below from 1957 of Willie Clancy at the first Fleadh Cheoil in Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare may have been taken by an amateur photographer (Jim Griffith a visitor from the States) but what a fantastic picture of a young Willie Clancy surrounded by his many adoring fans! This and five other images taken at the same time were sent to Breathnach by Terry Wilson in August 1985. ITMA would like to thank Terry for granting permission to make this image available here.
ITMA’s unique image collection now stands at over 21,700 items. Many of these exist in obsolete physical formats only which limits access to this material to those who can visit the ITMA premises in Merrion Square, Dublin. This year (2021) the Heritage Council has awarded ITMA a grant to digitise, preserve and make accessible, to archival best practice, some 4,500+ slides, negatives and photographs from the collections of two highly significant figures in Irish traditional music: Breandán Breathnach (1912-1985) & Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013).
The images presented in this gallery illustrate the collecting work of Sidney Roberston Cowell on the Aran Islands in the 1950s, and the wider context in which she collected. More information on this topic, and on these images, can be found in the accompanying blog:
Sidney Robertson Cowell records in the Aran Islands and Conamara, 1955-56
Tony Kearns, Nutan, Colm Keating and Peter Laban have each spent many years taking photographs at the festival and are regular visitors to Miltown Malbay. As part of ITMA’s contribution to the virtual Willie Clancy Summer School for 2020 we published a selection of images from their collections. Also included in this gallery are images from Danny Diamond, Orla Henihan, Liam McNulty and Mal Whyte.
As ITMA’s Photographer-in-Residence 2022 Christy McNamara was invited backstage in the National Concert Hall for the Drawing from the Well: Liam O’Flynn Collection Concert on the 15th March 2022.
The images from the gallery show the performers rehearsing and preparing for their on-stage performance.
For more images of the performers on stage see Des Gallagher’s Gallery from the same night.
More information on Christy McNamara can be found on his own website.
The William Kennedy International Piping Festival has been held annually in Armagh city and district since 1994. Founded by Brian & Eithne Vallely of the Armagh Pipers Club, which has been teaching and publishing traditional music widely in Armagh since 1966, the festival is named after William Kennedy (1768–1834), a blind musician, uilleann-pipe maker and inventor who died in Co Armagh. While the uilleann pipes are the focus of the Armagh Pipers Club, the festival itself celebrates the wide diversity of mouth-blown and bellows-blown pipes and bagpipes that are played across Europe and further afield, and it brings together pipers (and other musicians) from different countries and different piping traditions. Recitals, concerts, workshops, lectures, exhibitions, and impromptu sessions of piping are at the heart of the William Kennedy Festival.
Dutch designer and photographer Paul Eliasberg began learning the uilleann pipes in the 1990s, and spent some months in Ireland learning from the Dublin piper Néillidh Mulligan. With his singer wife Thirza, he settled in Armagh in 2003, where their family has been born. From 2004 to date he has been documenting the William Kennedy Festival with his camera, and has kindly donated copies of photographs in his copyright to the Irish Traditional Music Archive for public access. The selection presented here covers a wide range of north and east European pipes, and pipes from the Mediterranean countries, as played at the festival.
PS ITMA has been making audio and video field-recordings at the WKPF since its early years and these recordings are available for reference listening and viewing in its premises. In 2003 a selection of these audio recordings (made for ITMA by Glenn Cumiskey) was published by the Armagh Pipers Club on the CD Live Recordings from the William Kennedy Piping Festival. For further information visit the website here.
With thanks to Paul Eliasberg, the subjects of his photographs, and the William Kennedy International Piping Festival. ITMA always welcomes such donations or the opportunity to copy such materials.
Nicholas Carolan, 1 June 2010
Since the 19th century, Irish postcards have carried representations of Irish social life and symbols of national identity, and this process increased with the rise of national feeling in the early 20th century. Symbols of identity have frequently been musical. The national instrument of the harp, in various forms, has been particularly prominent. Also to the fore have been the uilleann pipes (the Irish form of bellows-blown bagpipes) and traditional dance.
The Irish Traditional Music Archive accordingly collects Irish musical postcards (which are normally undated) of all periods as representing aspects of Irish traditional music. It presents here a selection of these cards.
With thanks to postcard donors the Breathnach Family and Matt Murtagh. ITMA always welcomes such donations or the opportunity to copy such materials.
Nicholas Carolan, 1 October 2008
‘They Love Music Mightily’: Contemporary Recordings of Irish Traditional Music – An Ceol Comhaimseartha was a joint cross-border audiovisual travelling exhibition of the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum in Cultra, Holywood, Co Down, and the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin. It was on display in various venues from 2000 to 2004. The exhibition was intended to emphasise that Irish traditional music is an exciting and varied contemporary artform. It consisted of stands with giant back-lit transparencies of thirteen leading contemporary singers and musicians, and sound recordings on headphones of the featured performers. The title of the exhibition is a quotation from the writings of William Good, an English observer of the Irish in the 1560s.
The exhibition was initiated by Robbie Hannan (then Curator of Music at the UFTM), advised by Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin of the University of Limerick (former Chairman of the ITMA Board). It was designed by Michael Donnelly of the UFTM, and featured specially commissioned photographs by Paul McCarthy (an independent photographer) and sound recordings by Glenn Cumiskey (then ITMA Sound Engineer), with additional recordings by Robbie Hannan, Niall Keegan (UL), and Paul Dooley, one of the featured performers. It was curated by Robbie Hannan in Cultra and by Nicholas Carolan (ITMA Director) in Dublin, with the assistance of Orla Henihan (then ITMA Visual Materials Officer). For further information on the life of the exhibition, click below.
The exhibition catalogue (produced by Robbie Hannan and Glenn Cumiskey) was a CD with the recordings and photographs featured in the exhibition, and with notes on the performers and material. It was only on sale in conjunction with the exhibition.
With thanks especially to the thirteen performers who took part in the exhibition, to all listed above and otherwise who contributed to its success, and to the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum and Robbie Hannan, Head of Folklife and Agriculture at the UFTM
Nicholas Carolan, 1 October 2009
The Irish Traditional Music Archive documents contemporary Irish traditional music activity as keenly as it acquires historical material, and every year since 1993 its staff has carried out field-recording at various festivals throughout the country, as well as on other occasions. Recordings are made in audio and video formats, and are made available to the general public for reference access and study within the Archive.
In the last year or so ITMA Field-Recordings Officer Danny Diamond has been supplementing the audio and video field-recordings made by himself and other staff by also photographing singers, musicians and dancers, in his own time. A selection of these photographs, taken during recording trips in the first half of 2010, is presented here. They come from the Frankie Kennedy Winter School in Gweedore, Co Donegal, in January; the Inishowen Folk Song and Ballad Seminar, Co Donegal, in March; Sean-Nós Cois Life, Dublin, in April; and the Willie Clancy Summer School, Co Clare, in July.
For further examples of Danny Diamond’s photography, see his website www.dannydiamond.ie.
With thanks to Danny Diamond and to the traditional performers here who are the subjects of his photographs.
Nichols Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2010
The family photographs of those involved in Irish traditional music are often a valuable informal record of the music as seen from the inside, and preserve images and memories of events, activities and organisations that would otherwise be forgotten. This is the case with a selection of images recently donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by Síle Quinn-Davidson of London and Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in memory of her father James Quinn, and reproduced here.
James Quinn (1915–1960), born in Briarfield, Ballinasloe, Co Galway, was an uilleann piper and piccolo player who was prominent in Irish music circles in London in the 1940s and 1950s. Left-handed, he played a set of pipes made for him by Leo Rowsome of Dublin, and made his own reeds. Having gone to work in Kilburn, London, as a young man, he took part in many house sessions there with other traditional musicians from the 1940s, and also played in Irish dance halls such as The Hibernian on Fulham Broadway and The Banba in Kilburn. With his wife Susan (née Doherty) from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, a singer with a large repertory of Irish songs learned from her grandmother, he kept an open house for musicians, playing music particularly with uilleann piper Tommy Coley from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, fiddle player Tom Sullivan from Cork, London-born uilleann piper Pat Goulding, and fiddle player Julia Clifford from Kerry. Following a routine operation James Quinn died in his mid-forties. A huge funeral procession accompanied his coffin to the Mail Train at Euston Station, led by warpiper Larry O’Dowd, and he was buried in Abbeyknockmoy, Co Galway.
His daughter Síle, a stepdancer, was one of the first pupils of the Ted Kavanagh School of Dancing in Cricklewood, and was a prizewinner at Bethnal Green Feis. Music continues in the present generation of the Quinn family: in Briarfield, accordion player Gary, singer Norrie, and banjo and mandolin player Kieran, and in Dublin, singer and guitarist Michael Quinn.
With thanks for images and information to Síle Quinn-Davidson, Galway, and Jimmy Shields, London
Nicholas Carolan, 1 February 2010
Postscript
Since this web page was first put up, we have received a scan of another photograph of James Quinn by donation from Reg Hall, the well known London musician and music historian who has been closely involved with Irish traditional music activity in London since the 1950s. Reg only saw James Quinn once, in the Ceilidh Club in Cecil Sharp House one Sunday afternoon in the mid-1950s. He clearly remembers him singing and playing the pipes at the same time; the song was She Moved through the Fair.
Reg’s photo, now the last one in the sequence, was taken in The Bedford Arms pub, Arlington Road, Camden Town, London, c. 1956. He received it from the late Tony Martin, but it is by an unknown photographer. It shows, left to right, Tommy Maguire almost hidden (accordion), Michael Gorman (fiddle), Paddy Breen (flageolet), Margaret Barry (banjo), James (aka Seamus, Jim) Quinn (uilleann pipes), & Tony Martin (fiddle). The man in front may have been named Liddy.
With thanks for photograph and information to Reg Hall.
NC, March 2010
ITMA not only collects sound recordings, books and images but also thousands of event flyers, posters, and small artefacts from events around the country.
Known in the archival world as ephemera, they provide in many cases the only documented record of concerts, local sessions, and the life and times of musicians and bands.
We hope this gallery will provide a window into the weird and wonderful world of our ephemera collection.
As part of Heritage Week 2017, ITMA is also running an exhibition in our premises at 73 Merrion Square, which you can read more about here.
The Limerick-born music collector, historian, and educationalist PW Joyce (1827–1914), in spite of his very many publications, generally has only been represented by one undated photograph. Showing him in his prime, it is presumably one that he commissioned and approved for use. It was widely reproduced during his own life time.
In 2013, a second undated Joyce photograph was donated to ITMA by his great-nephew Robert Dwyer Joyce of Dublin; it shows PW Joyce with his wife Caroline at a family meal.
Patrick Weston & Caroline Joyce at lunch (CID18219; Image courtesy of Robert Dwyer Joyce)
Another six photographs of PW Joyce, mostly taken at festive family gatherings in his home at Lyre-na-Grena, Leinster Road, Rathmines, have now been donated to ITMA by actor and singer Éamonn Hunt. They are all dated and are reproduced here in chronological order, ranging from 1896 to 1911. They show a solid prosperous Dublin middle-class family at the end of the Victorian era. At least one was taken by Joyce’s son, Weston St John Joyce, an author and keen photographer. Another proves to be the source for the photograph of Joyce and his wife received earlier from Robert Dwyer Joyce. The final photograph shows an elderly Joyce by himself in 1911, seemingly at 18 Leinster Road West. Joyce moved to the new address, where he was cared for by servants, after the death of his wife and the dispersal of his family.
Éamonn Hunt stumbled upon the photographs about 17 years ago. Although he did not recognise the subjects, he knew that the photographs were of historical interest and preserved them. After ITMA mounted its PW Joyce Microsite, Éamonn identified Joyce from his official photograph, contacted ITMA, and kindly donated his photographs for public use. The many other photographs discovered in the cache have been returned to the Joyce family.
With thanks to Éamonn Hunt
Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin, Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw, 31 May 2018
On Sunday 17 October 2021 a memorial service was held in the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. This was to remember and celebrate the life and music of accordion player Tony Mac Mahon, who passed away the previous week. The service was attended by family, friends, President Micheal D. Higgns and many from the traditional music community. The event was live-streamed and recorded by ITMA and can be watched here.
Photographer Colm Keating was asked by ITMA to take photographs at the service, and at the gathering afterwards in The Teacher’s Club, Parnell Square. The selection below are just a sample of the photographs he took on the day. The are many more available in the ITMA collections.
With thanks to Colm Keating for his permission to reproduce these images online.
Peter Laban has been beavering away in Co. Clare over the past few months as ITMA’s inaugural photographer-in-residence. He has been preparing images for donation to ITMA, and in the first of three galleries we give you a preview of this wonderful addition to our Images Collection.
Peter describes these images as a “random selection” but he did pick out two particular images in a nod to recent pandemic times.
The final two images were picked on purpose. Tony Linnane and Danny Mahoney were the last concert before the lockdowns. Covid was looming and nobody knew what to expect, things were just new and uncertain. … Sorcha bookends the lockdowns nicely, emerging happily from that phase.
On March 15 2022 ITMA held a concert in the National Concert Hall to honour the memory of Liam O’Flynn.
The concert was curated by Liam O’Connor and Seán Potts. It featured artists that had performed with Liam, music that he had composed and music that was associated with him. It also featured artists that had been inspired by his work and, in particular, by his papers that were donated to ITMA by his widow, Jane O’Flynn, after his death in 2020.
The line-up included Louise Mulcahy, Colm Broderick and Pádraic Mac Mathúna, who each played a set of pipes that had once belonged to Liam himself. Liam left these pipes to Na Piobairí Uilleann who in turn entrusted these three performers with their care.
The evening was MC’ed by actor Stephen Rae, who read snippets from the Liam O’Flynn Collection, including some poetry written for Liam by his friend Seamus Heaney.
The programme from the event is available free with any purchase in the ITMA shop, while stocks last.
ITMA was delighted to hear in April 2022 that it had been awarded a Community Heritage Grant from the Heritage Council for its project “Physical to Digital: A Complete Scanning Solution for the Irish Traditional Music Archive.” This funding has enabled ITMA to purchase a state-of-the-art specialised large format archival scanning system. Presented below is a collection of LP covers which have been digitised for Heritage Week 2022 using this new scanner.
The scanner which was manufactured by I2S a French company who specialise in image capture and processing is A2 in size. This machine enables ITMA to scan a range of large-format materials which we have been unable to do in-house in the past. Materials like large-sized sheet music, posters, LP covers, a wide range of manuscripts, printed books, periodicals and images. This specialised equipment will future-proof the safe in-house digitisation of all this material for many years to come.
Watch the behind-the-scenes video which documents the installation of this new state-of-the-art scanning system and read our Heritage Week blog here.
Heritage Week 2022 – ITMA Scanner – YouTube
The Irish Traditional Music Archive has over 4,100 LPs in its collection.
The 1950s was the first full decade in which the new long-playing vinyl discs (LPs) were on sale. Being easily scratched or warped, the discs were sold in stiff cardboard sleeves, unlike their predecessors, the 78 rpm discs, which normally came in printed paper bags (and sometimes in cardboard ‘albums’ like photograph albums). The cardboard sleeves gave record companies the opportunity to use graphic design to set up favourable associations for the music on the records and thus attract customers. The typical disc was 12 inches in diameter (some were 10) and the sleeves provided a large image surface for artists and photographers. (Nicholas Carolan, 1 October 2011)
The LPs presented here are from a collection recently donated to ITMA by the Mac Ionnraic Family. They mostly date from the 1970s and 1980s with one published in 1968 by Gael Linn – Trup, trup, a chapaillín. The collection includes recordings of Irish and English language songs as well as instrumental music. Many of the artists and groups popular at the time are represented in this collection including Clannad, De Dannan, The Black Family, Moving Hearts, etc.
The selection presented here is only the tip of the iceberg, with this new large-format scanner ITMA hopes in time to scan every LP cover in its collection!
Another gallery of LP sleeve designs from the 1950s is available below.
With thanks to the Mac Ionnraic Family.
ITMA was delighted to hear in April 2022 that it had been awarded a Community Heritage Grant from the Heritage Council for its project “Physical to Digital: A Complete Scanning Solution for the Irish Traditional Music Archive.” This funding has enabled ITMA to purchase a state-of-the-art specialised large format archival scanning system. Presented below is a collection of LP covers which have been digitised for Heritage Week 2022 using this new scanner.
The scanner which was manufactured by I2S a French company who specialise in image capture and processing is A2 in size. This machine enables ITMA to scan a range of large-format materials which we have been unable to do in-house in the past. Materials like large-sized sheet music, posters, LP covers, a wide range of manuscripts, printed books, periodicals and images. This specialised equipment will future-proof the safe in-house digitisation of all this material for many years to come.
Watch the behind-the-scenes video which documents the installation of this new state-of-the-art scanning system and read our Heritage Week blog here.
Heritage Week 2022 – ITMA Scanner – YouTube
The Irish Traditional Music Archive has 1000s of posters in its collection.
The humble poster still catches the attention in spite of the increasing use of electronic advertising media in Irish traditional music, and it brings to public notice festivals, summer and winter schools, concerts, recitals, dances and classes, and a whole variety of publications. The effect of posters has been noticeably enhanced in modern times by increasing local expertise in graphic design and computerised printing, and they are likely to continue to decorate shop windows and pub walls far into the future.
The poster has a secondary, archival value: it serves as a record of events and the places in which they take place, the performers who appear at them, the groups in which they appear, the instruments they play, and a range of other information, from prices to other advertising techniques. Often the poster remains as the only record of a musical event and the people who participated in it. For these reasons, the Irish Traditional Music Archive has always actively collected posters (along with flyers, programmes, and other advertising material). (Nicholas Carolan, 1 April 2010)
Presented below are a selection of Irish music posters from three different sources in the ITMA collection. The first is a collection of posters donated to ITMA recently by Paddy Glackin. The posters mainly focus on Dublin based events in the 1970s and 1980s in venues such as Trinity College and Liberty Hall. The second selection of posters is from the Tomás Ó Canainn collection which was donated to ITMA by his family in 2020. These posters date from the 1970s and feature the Cork group Na Filí which Tomás founded in the late 1960s with fiddler Matt Cranitch and whistle player Tom Barry. Finally a selection of poster from ITMA’s collection is also featured below.
Each of the singers pictured in this gallery featured within the Inishowen Song Project.
Each of the singers pictured in this gallery featured within the Góilín Song Project.
Ephemera from the Góilín Singers Club
Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry is a classic collection-study made by Hugh Shields of seventy-four traditional songs in English, several in multiple versions, which he recorded in the field from 1961 to 1975 in Magilligan, north Co Derry. It was first published in Belfast in 1981.
Presented here are photographs of most of his source singers – chief among them being Eddie Butcher – courtesy of Evelyn Mullen, daughter of Eddie Butcher, and of the Shields family.
The earliest visual images of Irish music published by Francis O’Neill in Chicago, in 1903 and from 1907, were frontispiece photographs featuring contributors to his music collections: Irish musicians permanently or temporarily living in Chicago and musicians living in Ireland whom he met on a visit home to Ireland in 1906. In his first study of Irish music, Irish Folk Music:A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago 1910), the same mixture of photographs is seen along with some Irish line drawings and other illustrations from older sources (see below).
In his second study of Irish music, Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago 1913), the textual treatment of the music and musicians is now greatly expanded in range and detail, and likewise the number of visual illustrations reproduced has been increased. They again come from the same kind of sources as the earlier books, and in addition some images are reproduced from Continental and British sources, a reflection of O’Neill’s placing of Irish music in a European context. New images used in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (excluding music notations) are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, along with a few visual illustrations from his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (Chicago 1922; 2nd ed. 1924).
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2011
Captain Francis O’Neill (1848–1936), a traditional musician from Tralibane in west Co Cork, was also chief of police in Chicago from 1901 to 1905. He made and published there, in collaboration with various associates, large and highly influential collections of Irish traditional music, from 1903 to 1924. O’Neill was also a pioneer in the sound-recording of Irish traditional music and a number of his cylinders have recently come to light (see here).
In addition Francis O’Neill wrote and published in Chicago two ground-breaking studies of Irish traditional music: Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby in 1910 and Irish Minstrels and Musicians in 1913. In the course of his researches for these and other volumes, he painstakingly undertook the collection of existing visual images of Irish traditional musicians and music performance, and the creation of others.
O’Neill’s various books contain therefore the largest pictorial collection illustrating Irish music made until his day; many of the images would not exist if he had not commissioned them. The introductory illustrations from his O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903), different editions of his The Dance Music of Ireland (from 1907), O’Neill’s Irish Music. 250 Choice Selections (1908), and the larger collection of illustrations from his first volume Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (excluding music notations) are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 December 2010
The earliest visual images of Irish music published by Francis O’Neill in Chicago, in 1903 and from 1907, were frontispiece photographs featuring contributors to his music collections: Irish musicians permanently or temporarily living in Chicago and musicians living in Ireland whom he met on a visit home to Ireland in 1906. In his first study of Irish music, Irish Folk Music:A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago 1910), the same mixture of photographs is seen along with some Irish line drawings and other illustrations from older sources (see below).
In his second study of Irish music, Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago 1913), the textual treatment of the music and musicians is now greatly expanded in range and detail, and likewise the number of visual illustrations reproduced has been increased. They again come from the same kind of sources as the earlier books, and in addition some images are reproduced from Continental and British sources, a reflection of O’Neill’s placing of Irish music in a European context. New images used in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (excluding music notations) are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, along with a few visual illustrations from his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (Chicago 1922; 2nd ed. 1924).
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2011
Luke Cheevers, from the old Dublin fishing village of Ringsend, is a dramatic and entertaining singer specialising in Dublin songs, and he has been a familiar performer at singing festivals in all parts of Ireland since the 1970s. For many years he has also been a stalwart of the Góilín Singers Club which has met regularly in a variety of Dublin venues since the early 1980s. Luke is also a photographer, and he has donated a selection of his photographs taken at musical events in the 1990s to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Those reproduced here were taken mainly at the Góilín Club when it met in the Ferryman pub at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay on the Liffey and later in the Trinity Inn on Pearse St; others come from the Féile na Bóinne festival in Drogheda, and elsewhere.
With thanks to Luke Cheevers.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 August 2011
On Saturday 20 July 2013, as part of the Irish national Gathering Festival, a free Riverdance family day of music and dance will be hosted throughout Merrion Square in central Dublin, where coincidentally the Irish Traditional Music Archive has its home. Dancers from the company will provide informal dance instruction and lead an all-comers ceili, with face-painting, bouncy castles, food and refreshments.
The Irish music and dance phenomenon which is Riverdance, as all the world knows, began as a highly acclaimed seven-minute interval presentation of the Eurovision Song Contest of April 1994, which was hosted by Ireland, directed for RTÉ by Moya Doherty, and seen by 300 million viewers. With music composed in traditional moulds by Bill Whelan of Limerick (a former ITMA Board member) and with dancers led by Irish-Americans Michael Flatley of Chicago and Jean Butler of New York, the piece was developed into a theatrical production from 1995 by Moya Doherty and her husband television director and producer John McColgan, and again with music by Bill Whelan. Riverdance: The Show has been performed over 10,000 times during almost twenty years to date, and in multiple companies. Its enormous success has imprinted Irish music and dance on the consciousness of audiences worldwide.
ITMA has documented Riverdance since 1994 by collecting its publicity materials (press releases, flyers and posters, programmes, etc), press cuttings, commercial CDs, videos and DVDs, and magazine articles, academic studies and books, and by creating bibliographic and discographic catalogue records for them. In anticipation of the Merrion Square occasion, a selection of Riverdance images is presented below from ephemeral flyers, posters and brochures, along with covers from videos, DVDs, CDs, and dance magazines, etc
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2013
Dublin photographer Steven de Paoire documented a host of Irish traditional singers and musicians in the Cobblestone pub in Smithfield, Dublin 7, over a number of years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They include regular and visiting performers, some of whom are now deceased. His collection of photographs were taken both in the main bar where the regular sessions are held and in a former performance space upstairs, and selections from them decorate the pub. He has kindly donated a selection of these images to the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
The Cobblestone, on Smithfield Square in north central Dublin, has been a traditional music venue and a meeting-place for traditional musicians over recent decades. Owned and run by musician Tom Mulligan, member of a well known Leitrim-Dublin musical family (the youngest teenage generation of which now plays frequently there), the Cobblestone hosts nightly (and sometimes daily) informal sessions and has a regular scheduled programme of musical events, notably the monthly concerts of Na Píobairí Uilleann.
With thanks to Steven de Paoire for the donation of digital images to ITMA & for permission to reproduce a selection of them here.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2013
The emphasising of rhythm by the use of percussion instruments is not as usual in Irish traditional music as in many other forms of traditional music, probably because of the prominent part that melody plays in the Irish tradition. Nevertheless, percussion instruments are nowadays commonly enough employed in this music, in spite of resistance from some musicians, and even though they were little used in the past. A selection of images of percussion instruments as used for accompanying dance music or song is presented below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
The commonest such percussion instrument played in the current tradition is the bodhran, a musical instrument now but once a useful multipurpose domestic container and utensil. In all its modern forms the bodhran has enjoyed a phenomonal growth in popularity during the last half-century (in both its noise-making and musical capacities), and this popularity has been paralleled by an astonishing development in the playing techniques brought to bear on the instrument. The bodhran naturally predominates among the images of percussion instruments reproduced below: players are seen playing it on the face and on the rim, by hand and by stick, manipulating the skin-sound by pressing on it, tuning it and singing to it.
Less often used are spoons and bones, and, since the decline of the ceili band, bass drums, snare drums and drum blocks. A gong makes a unique appearance, and our initial 19th-century newspaper image shows that any domestic implement that could make intimidating noises would be pressed into service for political purposes.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 December 2012
It would seem that when bellows bagpipes were first brought to Ireland in the late 1600s they were introduced at a fairly high social level. Certainly they were often played in their early centuries here by prosperous amateurs, ‘gentlemen pipers’. Professional Irish uilleann pipers were employed by the gentry and were well rewarded by other wealthy patrons, in England even by the monarchs George III and George IV.
But as the instrument grew in popularity, cheap sets were played by low-status and often disabled musicians, performing for poor audiences on the street, and in cottages and taverns, and at fairs. In the 19th century, with changes in musical fashion, the uilleann pipes became generally associated with these indigent street pipers, especially after the Great Famine of the mid-century. Poverty became the hallmark of pipers, and the collective term ‘a poverty of pipers’ was used to describe them.
The images reproduced below are of uilleann pipers from this period of decline in the late 19th and early 20th century. With the growth of the Gaelic League and the establishment of pipers’ clubs in Cork and Dublin in the years around 1900, the decline of uilleann piping and pipers was temporarily arrested. The final image below, a photograph of pipers taken at the Dublin Feis Ceoil of 1901, as well as including amateur pipers of farming stock and piping-club enthusiasts, includes the blind professional Galway city piper Martin Reilly who was forced to have recourse to the poorhouse there at periods in his life.
With thanks to donors of photographs: Breathnach family, Nóirín Leech (Pavee Point), Ted Hickey, & Liam McNulty.
Nicholas Carolan & Ian Lynch, 1 October 2012
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the annual all-Ireland competitive traditional music festival of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, was first held in 1952, in Co Monaghan. Ten years later, by June 1962 when it was held in the town of Gorey, Co Wexford, the fleadh had grown enormorously in popularity and was a fixed event on the national calendar. In those years the festival was held at the Whit weekend.
The large crowds that were drawn to Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann were of interest to Bord Fáilte, the national tourist board, which often sent its photographers to capture the musicians, singers and dancers, and the crowds. The result was a body of professionally taken images which were used in contemporary tourist brochures, posters, and magazine like Ireland of the Welcomes.
By now these photographs have achieved archival status and are a valuble cultural record of the traditional music of other times. The selection preseneted here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are reproduced courtesy of Fáilte Ireland (as Bord Fáilte is now called).
Nicholas Carolan & Ian Lynch, 1 August 2012
The Irish Traditional Music Archive, since its foundation in 1987, has had a fruitful association with the Willie Clancy Summer School and its musicians, and this is reflected in the large number of sound recordings and video recordings made by ITMA staff for public access.
Photographs are also taken as part of the documentary record and a selection of photographs taken at the 2001 School by Galway musician Orla Henihan (then Melodies & Images Officer of ITMA) is reproduced here from the ITMA collections.
The photos cover a range of the School’s activities, formal and informal. There is a concentration on instrumental music, with a strong emphasis on teaching and learning.
With thanks to Orla Henihan & to the WCSS performers, teachers, students, & organisers.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2012
Dublin photographer and student fiddle player Mark Jolley was one of the many drawn to the traditional fiddle playing of Donegal, after the music of the county had begun to emerge from an undeserved national obscurity in the 1980s. A selection of his black & white and colour photographs taken at Cairdeas na bhFidléirí fiddle events in Donegal in 1997, and donated by him to the Irish Traditional Music Archive, are reproduced below.
There were several reasons for the rising 1980s popularity of Donegal music, among them the live playing and archival recordings of older fiddle players such as John Doherty and Con Cassidy, the taking up of the music by a young generation of musicians focused on local repertory, the international success of the Donegal-based group Altan, an injection of new compositions by such as fiddle player Tommy Peoples, and the setting up in the early 1980s of the voluntary organisation Cairdeas na bhFidléirí to support and promote the music.
Among its annual activities – which include teaching, publication in sound and print, and the support of the contemporary musicians – Cairdeas hosts gatherings of fiddle players from Ireland and beyond in the remote and beautiful Donegal localities of Glencomcille and Glenties. Mark Jolley’s photographs document some of those who participated in March and October 1997.
With thanks to Mark Jolley for the donation of his photographs to ITMA and for permission to reproduce them here.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2012
The Irish music postcards reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are mystery items of uncertain date. All are lovingly designed and executed, seemingly by the artist William O’Duane. From a rubber-stamp advertisement on one, they may have been produced by the Dublin postcard publisher Fergus O’Connor of Dublin, possibly in the 1920s. They are nationally minded, appearing in two series ‘Eire go Bragh’ (Ireland for ever) and ‘An Seantír go Deo’ (The old land for ever). The first series as held in the ITMA collection is numbered consecutively from 178 to 185, but it is not known if there were more in the series. The second series is unnumbered and ITMA holds only two postcards from it. All were purchased in the George’s Street Arcade, Dublin; four (178, 180, 181, 182) by Dermot McLaughlin in September 1989 and donated by him to ITMA, the remainder by ITMA in February 1990. None had been used.
The song postcards are less mysterious, although they seem older. ‘Molly Bawn’, one of a ‘National Series’ was posted in 1904, and the others, undated, were produced by the large English firm of Bamforth in Holmfirth.
ITMA would like to acquire other items from these or similar series, and to find out more about these ones. Answers on a postcard, please…
With thanks to Dermot McLaughlin.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 December 2011
The 1950s was the first full decade in which the new long-playing vinyl discs (LPs) were on sale. Being easily scratched or warped, the discs were sold in stiff cardboard sleeves, unlike their predecessors, the 78 rpm discs, which normally came in printed paper bags (and sometimes in cardboard ‘albums’ like photograph albums). The cardboard sleeves gave record companies the opportunity to use graphic design to set up favourable associations for the music on the records and thus attract customers. The typical disc was 12 inches in diameter (some were 10) and the sleeves provided a large image surface for artists and photographers. But sixty years on most of their designs look dull and unadventurous.
The design of 1950s LPs of Irish traditional music, which began to appear in numbers in the second half of the decade, followed the general trend of their time. Being normally issued in small runs, the record sleeves often employ cheap two- or three-colour printing and existing landscape photographs provided by tourist boards. Nevertheless, the sleeve designs convey a strong feeling of period and of a sense of national identity. THe LP covers presented here come from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
With thanks to Vincent Duffe, donor of the majority of these recordings to ITMA, and also to donors Ciarán Dalton, Matt Murtagh, John Loesburg, Bernard Croke, Ciaran Weber, Finbar Boyle, Siobhán de hÓir, and Bill Meek.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 October 2011
The earliest physical format used for the recording and playback of sound was a cylinder mounted on a revolving phonograph mandrel. The invention in 1877 of the American Thomas Edison, this format employed a cylinder which was at first covered by tinfoil, and then by ‘wax’, celluloid, and other substances. Increasingly replaced by gramophone discs from the late 1890s, cylinder recordings were essentially obsolete technology by the period of the First World War, although Edison persisted with their production until the onset in 1929 of the Great Depression.
Since most people alive today will never have seen cylinder recordings, a selection of images of cylinders from the hundred or so in the the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive is presented here. This gallery consists mainly of images of recordings made in Dublin in 1907 by the Sterling Company of London. It is to be viewed in conjunction with an ITMA audio playlist of Sterling cylinders, which are available here, along with the story of their creation.
The ITMA cylinder collection will be the basis of a Heritage Week 2013 exhibition in ITMA’s premises at 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, which will be complemented by these images and the connected audio playlist.
Nicholas Carolan & Elaina Solon, 1 August 2013
The ‘ballad boom’, so called, refers to a period of some dozen years from the end of the 1950s to about 1970 when there was a nation-wide vogue in Ireland for the singing of (mostly) Irish songs in English by ballad groups: small vocal groups accompanying themselves with guitar, banjo and mandolin, and sometimes including a whistle player or other melody instrumentalist.
Inspired by the robust and dramatic LP recordings and live performances of a singing group formed 1958–59 in New York by the actors Paddy, Tom and Liam Clancy from Waterford and Tommy Makem from Armagh (who were themselves influenced by the concurrent American folk revival and its musical norms), hundreds of ballad groups rediscovered an almost forgotten heritage of traditional song and the pleasure of making live music. The improving Irish economy of the 1960s enabled some of the more talented groups to become professional or semi-professional, performing for audiences who could afford to attend concerts and clubs, or travel to competitions and festivals.
By about 1970 the trend had run its course. While some singers continued with successful careers, the ballad audiences and the amateur groups turned to other forms of music, including Irish traditional instrumental music.
The images reproduced here are from Irish newspaper and magazine clippings preserved in scrapbooks compiled by Breandán Breathnach from the late 1950s and donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by the Breathnach family in 1987.
With thanks to the Breathnach family
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2011
The first fleadhanna ceoil (festivals of music) were organised in the early 1950s by the traditional-music organisation Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, soon after it had been established in 1951. Competitive and organised on county, regional and all-Ireland bases, the fleadhs were modelled on the long-established feiseanna or competitive cultural festivals of the Gaelic League. The fleadhs also provided meeting places and informal performance opportunities for hitherto isolated musicians and they grew in popularity with musicians and audiences throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.
The colour photo-slide transparencies of musicians at early fleadhs reproduced below were taken by Pádraig Ó Mathúna, the well known Cashel, Co Tipperary, silversmith, who has lived in An Daingean, Co Kerry, for some years. From the 1940s Pádraig and his brother Éamonn, both fiddle players, were involved as musicians in a variety of Gaelic League and other music activities – feises, concerts, ‘aonaigh’ and ‘aeraíochtaí‘ (indoor and outdoor assemblies), and radio programmes – throughout Munster and further afield, and in the 1950s and 1960s they also took part in CCÉ fleadhs.
The photo-slides form part of the ITMA’s Pádraig Ó Mathúna Collection, a valuable donation made by him of scrapbooks, correspondence, programmes, posters and other rare ephemera, and photographs, which uniquely document in detail traditional music activity of the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s.
With thanks to Pádraig Ó Mathúna, Eamonn O’Toole & Aibhlín McCrann. The ITMA would welcome identification of any of the musicians seen on the photo-slides.
Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 April 2011
The humble poster still catches the attention in spite of the increasing use of electronic advertising media in Irish traditional music, and it brings to public notice festivals, summer and winter schools, concerts, recitals, dances and classes, and a whole variety of publications. The effect of posters has been noticeably enhanced in modern times by increasing local expertise in graphic design and computerised printing, and they are likely to continue to decorate shop windows and pub walls far into the future.
The poster has a secondary, archival value: it serves as a record of events and the places in which they take place, the performers who appear at them, the groups in which they appear, the instruments they play, and a range of other information, from prices to other advertising techniques. Often the poster remains as the only record of a musical event and the people who participated in it.
For these reasons, the Irish Traditional Music Archive has always actively collected posters (along with flyers, programmes, and other advertising material). It brings such materials to the attention of visitors to its premises in the case of upcoming events and current publications, and it then preserves them in its collections for future access and study. Anyone producing such materials is asked to include the Archive on its mailing list (ITMA, 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2) and/or on its electronic circulation list (info@itma.ie).
Dating tip: Many posters carry the day of the week and the month of an event, but not the year. To calculate the year in such cases, use one of the many Universal Calendars available on the Internet.
Thanks to the many donors of these posters to the Archive’s collections, including Claddagh Records, the Willie Clancy Summer School, and the organisers of the various events and publications they record.
Nicholas Carolan & Grace Toland, 1 April 2010