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A Review of ‘What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music’ in Sound Post magazine

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What Ireland Can Teach the World about Music – and other essays
By Toner Quinn
Published by: The Journal of Music
Available from: https://journalofmusic.com/shop

Book Review
By David Agnew
Published in Sound Post magazine (published by the Musicians’ Union of Ireland), Autumn 2024. Visit https://mui.ie/

I like creative doers. People who do something different, find a way to set out their stall, for themselves as much as for everyone else to take part. Toner Quinn wanted a space for regular, thoughtful writing on music and culture in Ireland, to stimulate deeper intellectual debate, without being academic, and started it himself in 2000 through The Journal of Music. This book is a compilation of his writings in four sections on that journey. Initially in hard-copy to 2010, exclusively online from 2014, with a stark pandemic section 2020–2022, finishing with a list of impossible ideas for the future, all of which are entirely reasonable, if utopian.

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Publishing Desmond Fennell

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A lecture given at the first Desmond Fennell Summer Seminar on 14 June 2024 at Sandymount Hotel, Dublin 4, organised by Gerard O’Neill, Finbarr Bradley and James Bradshaw.

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Good morning everybody.

I’m delighted to contribute to this seminar on Desmond Fennell. Thank you Finbarr, James and Gerard for organising this event and for inviting me to speak.

Today I would like to explore the publishing dimension of Desmond Fennell’s work, including his ideas on book and magazine publishing, and I’d like to talk about my own publishing relationship with Desmond and discuss the current publishing scene.

I have been enjoying re-reading Fennell’s work over the past few weeks in preparation for this talk, and I want to thank Desmond’s son Oisín for providing me with books and essays that I didn’t previously have, and also for giving me access to some fascinating correspondences with publishers, which provide further light on Desmond’s publishing world.

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A Tribute to Charlie Lennon

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Remembering the great traditional musician and composer who passed away on 8 June.

When the sad news came that the great fiddle player, piano player and composer Charlie Lennon had passed away on 8 June, my mind turned to something that had happened just two evenings before and which I had, somehow, already been thinking about repeatedly.

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How Ireland Thinks About Music

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Does Ireland have its own way of thinking about music? How might this perspective have developed? And could it explain the current dynamism in Irish musical life? In this essay, the edited text of a talk given at Farmleigh House on 11 May, Journal of Music Editor Toner Quinn explores these questions and more.

Almost four months ago, I published the book What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and I realise this title may sound presumptuous, but in reality every country has something to teach the world about music, because every country has its own history and musical traditions. Ireland, therefore, should have something that it can offer the world, particularly given the impact our music has had, and even if, publicly, we tend not to talk too much about what that might be.

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Lecture this Saturday at Farmleigh House in Dublin at 3pm

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This Saturday 11 May at 3pm at Farmleigh House in Dublin, I will be giving a talk exploring some of the ideas in my new book, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music. 

Please see booking details here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/toner-quinn-what-ireland-can-teach-the-world-about-music-tickets-839964114277

Best wishes/Le gach dea-ghuí,

Toner

An Sean-nós mar Éiceachóras

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Píosa cainte a thug mé ag an oscailt oifigiúil do Fhéile Joe Éinniú 2024 (Áras na hOllscoile, Carna, 3 Bealtaine 2024).

Dia dhaoibh a chairde, agus go raibh míle maith agat a Mhíchíl agus an coiste ar fad as ucht an gcuireadh a bheith anseo anocht. Is mór an onóir dom.

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SXSW Protest is About More than Palestine

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The national news cycle has already moved on: a brief appearance by Kneecap on Morning Ireland, followed by Soda Blonde on The Tonight Show and Newstalk, but apart from some coverage by what remains of the music press, the public discussion about the SXSW protest by Irish bands over Palestine has all but ended. We have become used to the conveyor belt nature of the news ticker and don’t expect more. It would be convenient for Ireland’s official agencies if the issues at the heart of the protest also went away once the bands came home, but they won’t. 

Palestine has become a flashpoint for the frustration of a generation, the high end of a line of grievances and clearly where their patience has run out. Ten Irish bands refused to play at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, because they learnt that it was being sponsored by the US Army and US arms manufacturers. The slaughter in Palestine, enabled by these entities, made the thought of performing in such a context ‘abhorrent’, as Faye O’Rourke of Soda Blonde said. 

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A review of my new book by Sherry Ladig in the Irish Arts Minnesota Newsletter

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An Leabhragán/The Bookcase

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and Other Essays
Toner Quinn (The Journal of Music, 2024)

This new book on Irish music has been a quarter of a century in the making. The fifty or so essays and articles are drawn from Toner Quinn’s work as editor of The Journal of Music in Ireland, first published in print form in 2000, now entirely online since 2010. Quinn saw that there was no real public discourse about music in Ireland; all Irish music, not just classical, jazz, traditional, or popular music. There have been separate forums for all of these. But where was the discussion about what it means to be an Irish musician of any kind in Ireland today? Toner Quinn saw a space for this discussion and created it. Twenty-four years later, the magazine has become a respected and valued place for musicians, composers, collaborators , organizers and listeners to discuss and inform on the topic of Irish music. Many subjects, some of them controversial, have come up: what, exactly, is trad music? How is its practice different from two or three generations ago? How do we value an art form which has been highly praised publicly, but underfunded and underpaid to those who create the music? What classical music is being created and performed in Ireland? How about jazz, collaborative works between classical and traditional artists, experimental music?

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Toner Quinn’s New Book Launched by Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive

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See a news item from the Journal of Music on the launch of my new book below. The original is here.

A new book by Toner Quinn, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, has been launched by fiddle player Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin.

A collection of writings on Irish music, the book contains more than fifty essays and articles drawn from Quinn’s work as Editor of the Journal of Music as well as a number of radio essays and public talks.

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‘There are no good – even tolerable – musicians coming from Ireland anymore and we don’t expect them’: Francis O’Neill Letters Published Online

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The five letters, written between 1906 and 1914, provide an insight into O’Neill’s perspective during his seminal publishing and collecting work.

Following the recent publication of his book The Cry of a People Gone: Irish Musicians in Chicago, 1920–2020, Chicago-based Irish music historian Richie Piggott has now published five previously unpublished letters written by the renowned collector Francis O’Neill.

The letters, written between 1906 and 1914, were sent to O’Neill’s friend and supporter, the fiddle player Patrick O’Leary, who was originally from County Cavan but emigrated to Adelaide, Australia, in 1876. The correspondence was given to Piggott by Judith O’Loughlin, great-granddaughter of O’Leary. Piggott has published the original letters with transcriptions on his website, http://www.richiepiggott.com.

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