When the children leap into the car, I have to listen carefully for the first few minutes, because that’s when the rush of information on the day’s events will come. In a few minutes, their enthusiasm will settle down and their minds will turn to thoughts of a swim at Spanish Point. 

My daughter and son have just completed their third year attending the lessons at Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy, the annual traditional music summer school in Miltown Malbay, County Clare. Listening to a fourteen-year-old boy tell you about what his fiddle teacher James Continue reading →

Published in The Journal of Music on 27 June 2014.

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Musicians need to harness the printed word to affect their fortunes.

The reason I have spent the last fourteen years writing and publishing about music is because of a simple principle that I happen to believe: that the writing about a music affects the fortunes of a music.

Every genre of music produces a body of literature, from the specialised to the general, and the quality and range of that writing will Continue reading →

Every morning during our summer holidays as children in An Cheathrú Rua, each of us had a job to do. My responsibility was tidying the sitting room. In general, it involved fixing cushions on the couch, clearing ash and the odd beer can out of the fire, emptying the ashtray, Continue reading →

His voice snapped at the air around him as he presented his idea: ‘It would be like water or electricity, a utility that you pay for.’ The radio voice was talking about streaming. ‘Music would always be available to you, accessible to you, all around you.’

I thought of the hundreds of upcoming concerts that I see listed on The Journal of Music, about the musical riches that are available to us, about how things are undervalued. Music is all around us, but until we get the bill for it, do we notice?

Continue reading →

One of the particularly interesting parts of Singing from the Floor, a fascinating new history of British folk clubs by J.P. Bean, is a chapter that contains interviews with the children of the singers, musicians, audiences and organisers who generated the heyday of the clubs in the 1960s and 70s.

Their children, people such as Eliza Carthy, Nancy Kerr and Seth, Sean and Sam Lakeman, remember sitting at folk clubs when they were children, usually with a lemonade and crisps, and describe their learning process as ‘organic’ and ‘by osmosis’. As soon as they were old enough, they were involved in performance themselves.

What jumps out, however, is not just how culturally rich their childhood was, but how their parents also created a creative economy for those Continue reading →

It’s light, tentative and short, but I listen closely to every word. I’m talking about the moment at the end of a concert, when a member of the audience approaches you. The conversation is about making a connection beyond the stage rather than discussing anything in detail, but that immediate period post-concert is a raw moment for a performer; even a few words can stay with you.

‘You know, my daughter used to play violin, I wish she had kept it up. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. I sent her because I Continue reading →