RTÉ has just published its document ‘A New Direction for RTÉ’, but where is the renewed vision for music, asks Toner Quinn.
It is noticeable in RTÉ’s new vision document, A New Direction for RTÉ, which was published this week and unlocked €56m of additional funding from the government, that of the 36 photos appearing in the manifesto, 25% of them are of musicians. From the rock band Thumper to the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, from the singer Mary Black to Seán Monaghan of the Máimín Cajun Band and accordionist Johnny Óg Connolly, the colour-tinted images clearly illustrate the role that RTÉ plays in music in Ireland.
‘Thank you, Sinéad!’, ‘We love you, Sinéad!’, they called as her cortège moved along the Bray seafront. They threw roses and white feathers onto the hearse, sang ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, applauded and wept. Messages written on small rocks taken from the beach were left outside her house. A note read ‘Thank you for the lessons and truth’. Sinéad O’Connor’s musical and activist journey, which for almost four decades was intertwined with her public suffering, has ended with her country mourning her, celebrating her, people of all ages saddened, shocked and grateful. The camper van leading the procession down Strand Road where she lived for fifteen years played Bob Marley’s ‘Natural Mystic’: ‘There’s a natural mystic blowin’ through the air / If you listen carefully now you will hear’.
RTÉ is immersed in a crisis that has long-term implications for the broadcaster, but what will the consequences be for music, asks Toner Quinn.
The more we learn about the management of RTÉ through the Board’s statements on the covert payments to Ryan Tubridy, the more we have to consider the role the broadcaster plays in music in Ireland.
It is not that anyone would want its contribution to be further reduced – that has been the trend for years already – but the organisation doesn’t seem to realise its own importance to the Irish musical ecosystem. In all of the statements and on-air discussions of RTÉ’s value to Irish society, the emphasis has been on its role as a news organisation with some reference to entertainment shows and sport. There has hardly been a mention of its wider musical and cultural role, and this should be of real concern to the music community.
This is a tune that I wrote a few years ago, based on the Conamara song ‘Cóilín Phádraig Shéamais’ by Pádraig Ó hAoláin. When I moved back to Conamara, it was the first song I heard when I walked into a session in Tigh Hughes. If you know the song, you might hear elements of it in this jig.
Bláth na hÓige is the title of a recently concluded seven-part television series on TG4, and now also the name of a new album of songs taken from the programme.
As music programmes on television go, the format is familiar. Eight talented young singers, mainly in their twenties, are brought together under the tutelage of two experienced musicians, with each show focusing on the emerging artists. At the conclusion of the series, the singers perform a concert together, which is also filmed.
What makes Bláth na hÓige different, however, is that these are eight young Irish-language singers, mainly specialising in sean-nós, and so the series carries deeper layers of cultural interest. Several are also not just singers but instrumentalists, and they compose and arrange too. Did anyone predict that the world of youthful sean-nós would be so multi-faceted in 2023? Despite the challenges facing the Irish language and the Gaeltachtaí, somehow the traditional music world has created a network of creativity so robust that it can nurture these kinds of fluent musicians. It is incredible that there is not more discussion of music and the arts when it comes to Gaeltacht matters, because these art forms have achieved what decades of policy have not.
A tribute to the Irish fiddle player Seán Keane who died on 7 May.
For any fiddle player, the music of Seán Keane, who sadly died on Sunday, is never far from your mind. We may think about how he combined traditional style with classical technique, or his incredible dexterity on the instrument, or that he mastered piping techniques and a variety of regional styles in his playing, but it is the individual voice that he developed, which drew so much out of tunes we thought we knew, that is never easily explained.
It is not that there is no sign of it on the few solo tracks he made for Gael Linn in 1969, when he was in his early twenties. The clear technical ability is there and the natural rhythm, particularly on ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’. He had already been playing with Ceoltóirí Chualann for six years, a band he joined when he was, incredibly, just seventeen (‘I just went for it,’ he said in Seán Keane: A Portrait of an Artist, a documentary produced by the Irish Traditional Music Archive), and he joined the Chieftains in 1968. There can rarely have been such an auspicious start for a young Irish musician.
His solo playing, however, did not feature strongly on the Ceoltóirí Chualann albums, and it wasn’t until The Chieftains 4 (1973) that we experience the full individual artist on ‘The Bucks of Oranmore’. It is here that we begin to hear what fiddle player Paddy Glackin described in the ITMA documentary as the ‘bow-to-string contact’, the attack in his playing, in addition to the mastery of piping ornaments, which would, in part, make Keane so distinctive. But there was more to come.
Perhaps one could speculate that by the time Keane took to recording his first solo album, Gusty’s Frolicks on the Claddagh label, released in 1975, he had been part of two of the most popular Irish traditional music groups for 12 years, with strong individuals, and now was the moment to express something of his own, which he unquestionably did.
Gusty’s Frolicks is an album that draws fiddle players back to it repeatedly. It was produced by Paddy Moloney but features Keane entirely solo for 16 tracks. It asserts itself throughout: the ambush that is the opening tunes ‘Bonnie Ann’ and ‘Jinnie Bang the Weaver’, the cuts and rolls bouncing off the notes of the tune (sometimes the other way around); the prising open of the reels ‘Doctor Gilbert’ and ‘Colonel Fraser’, finding fresh nuances in what are already tightly constructed melodies; the rolling ornaments on ‘The Gold Ring’, the sorrow of the crans and trills on the slow air ‘Mickey “Crumbaw” O’Sullivan’s’. It is quite unprecedented musically and still hugely influential.
His 1981 album, Seán Keane, released on the Ogham label and produced by Brian Masterson with Keane, deserves to be equally well known. On the sleeve notes, Keane writes, ‘On actually sitting down to record this LP, I had no idea of the order of the various tracks. I wanted to relax myself, to take myself easy and float into the spirit of the occasion.’
The opening tune, the hornpipe ‘Mrs Galvin’s’, may adhere to that description, but the album soon becomes an intense exposition of virtuosic fiddle-playing, from the jig ‘The Major’ and the set of three reels, ‘The Piper’s Despair’, ‘The Boys of Ballynahinch’ and ‘The Jolly Tinker’, to the Italian classical tune ‘The Banks’. Glackin has used the word ‘volcanic’ to describe aspects of Keane’s style and it is in the reel and jig playing on this album that we increasingly get a sense of this.
Coming in 1981, the recording also seems to bookmark the earlier phase of his career. In the notes, he reflects on his time with Ó Riada and joining at such a young age:
Being only seventeen years old when I joined Ceoltóirí, I was indeed very proud to be accepted amongst my peers. We all had our own style of playing, our leader Seán Ó Riada never wished us to play as one, in fact he became rather anxious when at one time we seemed to be heading in this direction. … We played as much for Ó Riada as with him, he enjoyed us, we were a complete cross section of what traditional Irish music was about. I learned a lot during those golden years with Seán Ó Riada.
In the 1980s, as well as continuing to record with the Chieftains, Keane released Contentment is Wealth with Matt Molloy, followed by The Fire Aflame, again with the flute player and another life-long friend, Liam O’Flynn. His third solo album, Jig it in Style (1990) with Arty McGlynn on guitar, is adventurous, combining an improvised version of the Elvis song ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ with the ‘Cliffs of Moher’ jig, but there is also big statements such as the opening and final sets of reels, sliding between different keys, each tune becoming more challenging and virtuosic than the last.
I met Keane only once, at a session in a pub in Rathcoole, Co. Dublin. He happened to be in another part of the bar having a drink with friends, but when we heard who was there, we all quickly put down our instruments and one by one went in to meet him. He was friendly, kind and interested, and our conversation was partly about Joni Mitchell, who had recently recorded a song with the Chieftains.
The last time I heard him play was at a gathering in the Teacher’s Club on Parnell Square in Dublin following a commemorative event for the late Tony MacMahon. Keane entered with his fiddle, and rather than dawdle at the bar, he headed directly for the session at the other end of the room that had been struck up by Peadar Ó Riada and James Kelly, and to play with his life-long friend Mick O’Connor. Keane has said that, ever since he was a teenager, all he ever wanted to do was play the fiddle, and it was evident then too.
He was still performing on stage as recently as last month. Maybe that is the explanation behind his unique voice, a commitment to the musical journey, ‘an open mind’, as he says in the ITMA documentary, always ready for new musical and technical challenges. But the mystery of his ability to combine dexterity with subtle artistry remains. Towards the end of the documentary, he says that the three most important things about music are to ‘Listen, listen and listen’. As we lose another giant of traditional music, that is still the most important thing we can do. RIP the great Seán Keane.
Tá alt agam san eagrán Bealtaine den iris Comhar. Is eagrán speisialta é seo a dhíríonn ar cheiliúradh 70 bliain de Gael Linn. Scríobhaim faoin lipéad ceoil atá ag an eagras agus an fáth go bhfuil fís nua don lipéad ag teastáil anois. Léigh an t-alt anseo.
I have an article in the May edition of the Irish-language magazine Comhar. It’s a special issue focusing on Gael Linn’s 70th birthday. My article focuses on the organisation’s record label and why a new vision for the label is now needed. Read the article here.)
A lot has been achieved in Irish traditional music over the past several decades, but what happens next? What are the challenges for this music, and how can the traditional music community work together to create an even better future? Below is the edited text of a talk given by Toner Quinn, Editor of The Journal of Music, on 24 November 2022 as part of Na Píobairí Uilleann’s ‘Notes & Narratives’ lecture series.
Seo aiste raidió faoi an scríbhneoir Desmond Fennell, á chraoladh ar RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta mar chuid den sraith ‘Aistí ón Aer’ ar 27 Meitheamh.Éist anseo. (A radio essay in Irish on the writer Desmond Fennell, broadcast as part of the ‘Aistí ón Aer’ series on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.Listen here.)
Bhí mé díreach seiceáilte isteach san óstán i mBéal Feirste nuair a tháinig dhá théacs isteach ar mo fón, ceann ó mo mháthair agus ceann ó mo dheartháir. Bhí mo bhuanchara, an scríbhneoir Desmond Fennell, básaithe. Ní scéal é a tháinig aniar aduaidh orm – bhí aois mhór aige, 92, agus bhí fhios agam go maith go raibh sé ag éirí níos laige. Sheas mé ar feadh scaithimh, agus ansin, thug mé faoi deara an meangadh gáirí a bhí ar mo bhéal. ‘Ah, a Desmond’ a dúirt mé liom fhéin, ‘bhí fhios agat go maith go raibh mé i mBéal Feirste!’ ‘Nach i bpríomhchathair an Tuaiscirt a rugadh tusa!’
Toner Quinn 