Reading Ireland: Companion to Irish Traditional Music

Reading the Companion to Irish Traditional Music is a bit like exploring an ever changing and intriguing landscape, one which includes detailed intricacies of ancient stone walls, buildings which span centuries of styles, and uplifting long range views of mountains and valleys in the distance.

This is the second edition of the Companion, and as was the case with the first edition it is edited by Fintan Vallely. Vallely is both a musician and a scholar, a man whose life and experiences span both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. For this volume Vallely has recruited two hundred others, musicians, writers, scholars, and researchers from varied aspects of Irish tradition to write on subjects both well known and less widely known, the wide ranging to the narrowly focused. The articles are arranged in alphabetical fashion.

The level of information and the quality of writing are quite high. If you come at this from immersion in scholarship of Irish music’s diaspora, as I do, you will find yourself wondering at times “where is the entry on...” or “why didn’t they cover...” That does not diminish the usefulness of the book, really, but it is something to be aware of, and reason to make this volume one of your sources on Irish traditional music rather than the only one. It’s not that the ways the music of Ireland as it appears in places beyond the island aren’t covered, either. They are, but that is not what the book is about (time for me to be working on that sort of book I think). Also, as someone who has worked on academic reference works (to be clear, I did not contribute to this one) I know that there are many issues which go into the depth, breadth, and focus of a work of this sort, with several hundred contributors writing nearly 1800 articles. That said, editor Vallely has done a fine job.

In addition to articles on specific people, places, and events, there are considerations of concepts --dissonance, to take one example, and artistic consciousness for another -- which are spoken of and illustrated with examples from Irish traditional music. This sort of article should prove fascinating not only to those steeped in the tradition but intriguing to people coming from other areas of music, the arts, and history, as well.

A Timeline of Irish Music in History and a compilation of suggestions on published material on Irish music, both appearing at the end of the book, enhance the value of the project as well. Even should you choose not to read many of the articles, these additions could be worth the price of the volume on their own.



The Companion to Irish Traditional Music belongs on your reference shelf to fuel and expand your interest in Irish music, Ireland, history and all the many vistas that will open to you as you leaf through its more than 800 pages. It is not inexpensive (perhaps you will want to split the cost with friends, or to suggest it to your library, and you may at times find a discounted price available from Amazon should you choose to follow the links in this article) but it is well worth the effort to get your hands on a copy and begin exploring.

photograph is of a session in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see
another book by Fintan Vallely
Blooming Meadows: The World of Irish Traditional Musicians


learning about Irish music: a bouquet of albums
Concerts, Conversations, and Travel: Ireland

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Music and hope: Derry

Memory and emotion have run high in Derry with the release of the Saville Report, the result of a twelve year investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday thirty eight years ago. People lay dead on the streets of Derry then, and it is one of the events which deepened the divisions and struggles across the political and personal landscapes of Ireland.

Music has always been a part of the conflict, and the grieving, and the reach for reconciliation. On his album Let the Circle Be Wide Tommy Sands has a song woven from the familiar calls of both sides of the conflict, another one that considers the changes war and anger can bring in a person, a song that asks questions about times for change, and several songs, including the title track, offering hope.






















Several years ago, the BBC did a series of programs in which they invited writers to create songs based on interviews with people involved in certain events and ways of life. Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland contains both songs and spoken word from people with varying perspectives on the events of the last forty years in the north of Ireland.

Cara Dillon had a chart hit with a song Tommy Sands wrote which puts the political struggles into the context everyday life, called There Were Roses.Here is a video of Cara Dillon singing There Were Roses live.

There are other songs of conflict, and of reconciliation, of history, and of hope across the north of Irealnd, among them Sean Tyrell’s The 12th Of July (Lament For The Children)
and Robbie O’Connell’s There Is Hope. When people sing together, there is the possibility of hope.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: patrick season: far from home
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Derry: healing through the arts
and Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday

this is part of a Lonely Planet Blogsherpa carnival on favourite places, hosted by Anne-Sophie Redisch at
Sophie’s World

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Remembering Woodstock, remembering Derry

Forty years go this month, it was Woodstock. What a long strange trip it’s been --

slide show with music and commentary from Joni Mitchell; and others, from the BBC

Life magazine’s photographer talks about
photographing at Woodstock, and the people he met there

Gallery of Photographs of Woodstock

I was not at Woodstock. But I have to say, the snippets of music with the BBC slideshow shot me straight back to those times, though most of it is music that I’ve rarely thought of since then. It was a different world -- and the same one. We carry the history forward within us. It changes with us, and we change with it.

Forty years ago this August, things were not so mellow in other parts of the world. South Africa, Viet Nam, Alabama... Northern Ireland. As peace and love were being celebrated in Woodstock, anger and fear filled the streets of Derry.
An Irish time line
and a song for those days.


you may also want to see

Remembering Woodstock (American Chronicles (History Press)

Music Road: Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

now playing: In Search of Ancient Ireland dvd

In search of Ancient Ireland

In Search of Ancient Ireland is a sort archeological and sociological timeline of a program, approximately 170 minutes worth of consideration about what we know, and what we don’t known and how reliable all that information is, of the places and people of pre history up through the Viking presence in the twelfth century. This encompasses the time of the great legend such as the Tain, both when they were written and when they were supposed to have occurred, as well as the coming of Christianity, the time of Saint Patrick, and the time of time of Brian Boru.

It’s a narrative constructed mostly through interview and landscape -- not a talking heads show, this, but historical studies reveal against the, or rather as part of landscape and handed down legends and art . It’s organized into three sections, called Heroes, Saints, and Warriors, the first having to do with prehistoric time, the second with Ireland as a center of learning and faith, and the third showing the changes of the Norman invasion.

You’ll learn why the dark ages may have been really dark, and where Saint patrick lived and walked, and how it might have been for for monks in isolated places to see the long ships of the Vikings approach. You’ll get a taste of the interweaving of history and legend, which is good, and not hear much of Saint Bridgid, which is not so. There’s also not a lot of music. You’ll hear plenty of music in the varied irish accents of the scholars interviewed, though.

This program was broadcast on public television in America several years back.
I’ve been viewing on dvd these last few days because I’ve just been speaking with Deborah Robins and Peter Ashlock, who are producing a series called The Music of America: History through Musical Traditions, to air on PBS 2010. I’ll be doing a story on their work in an upcoming issue of the folk music magazine Dirty Linen. One of the people working with Robins and Ashlock on that project is Leo Eaton, who directed and produced In Search of Ancient Ireland.



more about The Music of America here

more on the folk and world music magazine Dirty Linen here