Category Archives: The Journal of Music

A Glimpse into Irish Music in the 1980s and 90s

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In 2011, a treasure trove of music and arts photos from the 1980s and 90s was rescued from a skip outside the offices of the Sunday Tribune newspaper in Dublin. Among the thousands of images were those documenting Ireland’s classical, jazz, pop, rock, theatre, dance and opera scenes. In this selection of 24 photos, we offer a glimpse into the musical life of Ireland during those decades.

The Sunday Tribune Photo Archive – An Introduction
In 2011 in Dublin city centre, Nicholas Carolan and Brian Doyle of the Irish Traditional Music Archive spotted a skip outside the offices of the Sunday Tribune. The newspaper was closing down and in the skip were thousands of photos in clearly labelled brown A4 envelopes. Carolan and Doyle and another staff member, Grace Toland, rescued the music and arts photos before the skip was taken away that day, stored the traditional music ones in the Archive, and suggested that I keep the others in case they could be used in the Journal of Music. 

The photos cover classical, jazz, pop, rock, theatre, dance and opera in Ireland in the 1980s and 90s. In recent months, I finally had a chance to look through them all and have included here a selection of 24. Together, they provide a fascinating glimpse into musical life in the 1980s and 90s in Ireland. We plan to publish more selections in the future. Should you have further information about these photographs, please email editor@journalofmusic.com.

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30 Years of Questions in One Hour: An Interview with Martin Hayes

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A recording of a public interview with fiddle player Martin Hayes, conducted by Journal of Music editor Toner Quinn at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2024.

It is just over thirty years since I paused on my way out of J. McNeill’s music shop on Capel Street in Dublin to look at the tapes for sale. They were held in a tall, slender wooden case by the door with the most recent at the top. This is where I first came across Kíla’s Handel’s Fantasy as well as the re-release of Kevin Burke’s Sweeney’s Dream. On this day there was just one tape on the top shelf. The cover seemed purposefully blurred to represent motion and presented a musician standing holding the fiddle with the bow hanging from one finger. New tapes were not cheap for a student, but somehow I had precisely the right amount of money. On impulse, having never heard the name of the musician before, I bought it and jumped on the bus to Waterford.

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Why We Need to Decentralise the Arts Council

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The Arts Council has secured an unprecedented €140m in the government’s 2025 budget, but where will it be spent, asks Toner Quinn.

Recently I was asked to speak at an arts policy event in Dublin. The request came at short notice and so on the day I wrote down the thoughts that occurred to me. The first was this: in 25 years of attending round-table arts policy discussions, I always seem to be going in one direction: to Dublin. 

In the past, this didn’t seem so incongruous. Dublin was somewhere everyone could get to, and the Arts Council and many of the arts and music organisations are based there. But something has shifted over the years, and it has sped up post-pandemic: artists have been getting out of the city because it is unaffordable, and yet all of the decisions that affect their lives still take place in the capital. This leads to a disconnect. 

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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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