The return of live music to the Lime Tree Theatre in Limerick featured Iarla Ó Lionáird, Úna Monaghan and Kevin Murphy on a Music Network tour. Toner Quinn reviews.

The narrative for the return of live music has been regularly repeated. After eighteen months, everyone will launch themselves into the experience. It will be characterised by joy and celebration. It will be a relief to be back to normal, or what you feel normal is. But what if it is not quite like that? We are different now. We carry a new experience that shifts the way we look at the world. Music and art will change.

Unless music is coated in nationalistic terms it will struggle, writes Toner Quinn.

It was when I heard the interview with Justin Green of the Events Industry Association of Ireland on RTÉ’s Drivetime on Tuesday (23 August) that I realised things had become desperate. Referring to the 18 months the industry has been closed, he said: ‘We were asked to do everything [i.e. cease holding events] … for the country.’ ‘We all understand that we have to do our part… for the country,’ he reiterated. Green understood that the only way left to make his argument for the return of live music was to coat it in the language of nationalist, patriotic rhetoric.

The restrictions on live music are frustrating and perplexing for musicians and they point to larger issues, writes Toner Quinn.

The frustration over the lack of planning for live music continues to grow. Minister Catherine Martin held another meeting yesterday (18 August) with a number of organisations working within the live events sector, and yet no date was set for a full reopening. It appears that the Minister’s plan for reopening the music and entertainment sector was rejected at the beginning of the month by Government.

When it comes to reopening the live music sector, we have fallen for the classic Irish mistake: dreaming, but not taking practical steps, writes Toner Quinn.

It is now almost five months since Minister for Arts Catherine Martin struck this optimistic note:

The Live Entertainment Industry has extensive expertise in developing health and safety protocols and, following two successful test pilot events in 2020, I now intend to establish a consultative stakeholder forum that will help solidify the guidance for reopening and returning to live performance. 

Six weeks later, at the end of April, there seemed to have been more progress. The Minister added:

The writer Desmond Fennell, who died this week, had clear ideas about the role of new thinking and debate in society. They are relevant to Irish music today, writes Toner Quinn.

One of the lessons I learned from the Irish writer Desmond Fennell, who sadly passed away this week, was that every societal challenge is all down to the way we think about it, and therefore applying yourself to thinking in new ways about a particular issue is valuable. He took the role of thinking and articulating new ideas seriously and dedicated his life to it. 

Neasa Murphy from SYP (Society of Young Publishers) Ireland hosts a conversation with editor of The Journal of Music and university lecturer Toner Quinn. They discuss the emergence of online publishing, building a readership, and Ireland’s only publishing master’s degree course. www.nuigalway.ie/courses/taught-p…-publishing.html

Now in its seventh edition, the latest ‘Tradition Now’ festival took place at the National Concert Hall on 19–20 June, but it is still not clear what this event is trying to achieve, writes Toner Quinn.

Any reader of Irish traditional music history will tell you how complex it is. There is still so much we are learning about how this music developed. The story is complicated because it involves Ireland, Britain and the US, colonisation, the famine, the Irish language, political and cultural movements, the harp and the uilleann pipes, different forms of dancing, music collectors, recording, broadcasting, and now the internet. And of course it has never existed in a musical vacuum, so there are overlaps with classical music, popular music, marching band music and more. Presenting festivals and concerts of this music, therefore, is full of exciting avenues to explore.

In his recently published autobiography, the English folk-rock singer and guitarist Richard Thompson tells the story of one of his most famous songs, which gives the book its title. ‘Beeswing’ is the story of a free-spirited woman who refuses to be tied down by any man or job. ‘You might be lord of half the world,’ she replies to her lover, ‘You’ll not own me as well.’ Thompson explains that the character is a composite of various people: the folk singer Anne Briggs, a tramp named Ted that Thompson used to take in and feed in the 1970s, plus other strong personalities he had known. Also drifting through the song is a reflection on the challenge of the creative life, and the spirit of the 1960s and 70s generation who rejected contemporary society and sought out alternative ways of living. Thompson did this too, converting to Sufism and moving to rural Suffolk to live near a religious community.

Music and broadcasting go hand in hand, but RTÉ’s leadership role in music has been shrinking in recent years. Toner Quinn suggests four ways to turn the situation around.

Public service broadcasting in Ireland would be unimaginable without the contribution of music and the Irish music sector. Music recordings make up the majority of radio broadcasting, and music permeates every aspect of television and online broadcasts, from music performances to music themes, soundtracks and all forms of entertainment.

Martin Hayes’ livestreamed concert from the National Concert Hall last week (8 December) gave an insight into the changing music of the fiddle-player, and revealed new collaborative directions. Toner Quinn reviews.

We hear a quiet strum of four strings, checking his tuning, and then, solo on the stage of the National Concert Hall in Dublin, fiddle-player Martin Hayes begins the air ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’. It’s a tune familiar to those who grew up in Ireland before this difficult millennium. It was the theme tune of a long-running Sunday morning radio programme. Then it was comforting, now it is wistful.