The first premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive when it was founded in 1987 were in what had been the Irish Quaker Library, in no 6 Eustace Street in Temple Bar, Dublin 1, a complex which then housed a number of arts organisations and is now the Irish Film Institute. During its foundation years there, the first video documentation of ITMA, Tomb or Treasure House, was filmed in September 1988 by Cathal Goan, an RTÉ radio producer from Belfast who was then training as a television producer-director with the national broadcaster. Selections from a resultant VHS copy of his documentary are reproduced here with his permission.

Cathal would go on from television production and direction to become Editor of Irish-Language Programming in RTÉ in 1990; to found the national Irish-language television channel TG4 in 1994; to become Director of Television in RTÉ in 2000; and to become Director General of RTÉ from 2003 to 2011. He is now Adjunct Professor in the School of Irish Language, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics in University College Dublin. In his spare time Cathal was, for twelve years, a highly effective Chairman of the ITMA Board.

From the video, it is striking on the one hand how the essentials of the ITMA project were in place from the very beginning, but also how future developments, and especially the transformative effects of digitisation and the Internet, were as yet undreamed of. It was also unknown that television crews would be filming regularly in ITMA over the next twenty-plus years for the archival television series Come West along the Road on RTÉ and Siar an Bóthar on TG4.

With thanks to Cathal Goan, Paddy Glackin, Dermot McLaughlin, Seán Potts, Seóirse Bodley, Adrian Munnelly, & the others who contributed to the making of the trainee film.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 August 2012

The operations of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are overseen by a Board of Directors with performing, collecting, broadcasting, and archival experience in Irish traditional music, and with financial, marketing and management expertise.
The three Chairmen of the ITMA Board to date have been noted experts and lecturers in Irish traditional music and song: the late Dr Tom Munnelly, Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, and Dr Cathal Goan. Tom Munnelly, from Dublin, was a folklore collector with the Department of Irish Folklore of University College Dublin, and made the largest field-collection of Irish traditional song ever compiled by any individual. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, from Clonmel, is a musician and composer, and Professor of Music at the University of Limerick. Cathal Goan, from Belfast, is Director-General of RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster, and has a particular expertise in the Irish-language song of Ulster.

A sample audio recording of a lecture from each is given below with the kind permission of Ms Annette Munnelly, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, and Cathal Goan. The recordings were not originally made at the time for archival preservation in ITMA, but as basic reference recordings for future summary in publications of the Folk Music Society of Ireland. Meant to capture content, they also incidentally catch a sense of occasion and personal style.

Tom Munnelly: ‘Traditional Singing in Ireland’, public lecture as part of lecture series in conjunction with National Museum of Ireland exhibition They Love Music Mightily (in association with Ulster Folk & Transport Museum and Irish Traditional Music Archive), NMI, Collins Barracks, Dublin 7 (12 May 2002), 67 minutes

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin: ‘Creativity in Irish Traditional Music: Phrasing, Rhythm, Pitch and Structure’, lecture to Folk Music Society of Ireland as part of its annual lecture series, 6 Eustace Street, Dublin 2 (29 October 1988), 50 minutes (over-head projector running; best listened to through headphones). Written by Nicholas Carolan and Danny Diamond.

Cathal Goan: ‘The Year of the French: Irish-Language Songs of 1798’, lecture to day-seminar of Folk Music Society of Ireland on Songs of Conflict, Kinlay House, Lord Edward Street, Dublin 2 (25 May 1991), 26 minutes

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 December 2008