The Rolling Wave radio programme on RTÉ is presented and produced by fiddle player, Aoife Nic Cormaic. During the initial lockdown of 2020 the programme, in association with ITMA, commissioned 10 composers to write new tunes in a project called Faoiseamh. Initially the composers recorded the tunes on whatever devices they had in their homes, and these, along with interviews were broadcast in June and July of 2020. A further round of compostitions were commissioned in November 2021 and broadcast that December.
As part of the series the tunes were published on the ITMA website with a full suite of learning resources.
The tunes in this collection, along with interviews with the composers, were featured on two editions of The Rolling Wave radio programme. The first was broadcast on the 5 December 2021, and the second on the 12 December 2021.
The Rolling Wave is presented and produced by Aoife Nic Cormaic.
56 was the number of the house my maternal grandparents, Marie and Dermot Power, lived in Dublin. When my granny wrote us letters, which she often did when we were away, she would simply write ’56’ in the top right hand corner for the address. We spent a lot of our childhood with them and in that house and this tune is a small tribute to them.
An Cailín Mara is a light, happy jig in A major written for my water-loving six year old daughter, Sadhbh.
An Glaoch is one of those tunes that arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, fully formed.
It was written in Schiphol airport while waiting for a delayed flight. I remember taking the fiddle out of the case and plucking the strings, willing the time to pass more quickly. By the time we were ready to board, An Glaoch had arrived. The word ‘glaoch’ can mean a few things- a vocation, a call but I always think of it as meaning ‘the call’ in relation to this tune.
Bainis Cathrach was written for my brother Ruadhán and his wife Jean on their wedding day which took place on a cold winter’s day in City Hall in Dublin.
Caitlín Maude was a poet and singer from Connemara who died in 1982. She, her husband Cathal and their son Caomhán lived near us in Tallaght, Co Dublin and when I was a baby she ran a small Irish language playgroup from our front room. Growing up I heard lots of stories about her and about her singing and her poetry. Later, when I began to play myself I was fascinated by her. I didn’t know any professional musicians, especially women musicians and she was a very inspiring figure. I think as well, as a child, I found it difficult to understand the tragedy of her death at such a young age and I remember looking at her image on the cover of the album she made for ‘Gael Linn’, almost hoping to find answers there. In 2005 I directed and wrote a documentary for TG4 called ‘Concerto Chaitlín Maude’. The programme was divided into musical movements and I wrote music for each one. ‘Bainis Chaitlín’ was one of the tunes written for that project. It’s a light, happy tune and I associate it with Caitlín as a young woman, so full of energy and vitality.
‘Béal Bán’ and its partner jig ‘56’ were two of the first tunes I ever wrote. I grew up in an Irish speaking household in Dublin but my parents weren’t native Irish speakers and they only began to speak Irish at home when I was born. Consequently and probably as a result of trying to pacify a crying baby while also looking up words in a dictionary our early vocabulary was peppered with words that didn’t mean what we thought they meant or sometimes didn’t exist at all! ‘Béal Bán’ was one of those.
This tune was written over the course of a few winter evening walks and conveys for me a feeling of rhythmic and constant movement. It was written during a very busy period where there was a lot going on and there seemed to be very little opportunity to stop or even pause for a moment. It’s my reminder to myself that’s sometimes there’s no harm in standing back a little and taking things one step at a time.
This is a three part waltz written in and named after our first house which was on Sperrin Road in Drimnagh, where we lived for many happy years.
A pandemic initiative from RTÉ’s The Rolling Wave, in conjunction with ITMA
Aoife is a fiddle player and composer from Dublin. She was introduced to traditional music at primary school when she was eight years old and she has been playing ever since.. In 2011 she completed an MA in Music Performance in DIT, writing her thesis on the music of Paddy Cronin and she released an album of her own compositions, Cuas na bhFáinleog/The Hollow of the Swallows in 2013.
She has won numerous awards for her radio and television programmes including an IFTA and Gradaim Chumarsáide an Oireachtais for her television documentary Concerto Caitlín Maude and a Celtic Media Festival award for a special edition of The Rolling Wave featuring Donegal fiddle player Danny Meehan.
As a radio producer she has worked on a wide range of programmes including Arts Tonight, Off the Shelf, Today with Pat Kenny and Sunday Miscellany. She is currently the producer of RTÉ Radio 1’s long running programme Céilí House and since 2018 has presented and produced the weekly traditional music programme The Rolling Wave.
Aoife Nic Cormaic is a fiddle player and broadcaster from Dublin, and is the presenter of The Rolling Wave on RTÉ Radio 1. Some of her featured compositions are new, and some come from her 2013 album Cuas na bhfáinleog : The hollow of the swallows.
