Without giving away too much, one point raised in Axel Klein’s travelogue of his recent (and most enterprising) trip to the US can be commented upon here. Mr Klein suggests that it is ‘Irish people’ (and not he – who is German and based in Bonn) who Continue reading
The decline in traditional music CDs
We may be reluctant to admit it, but as the years wind on it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny. While we may look on in awe at the degree of enterprise traditional musicians have shown in independently releasing dozens upon dozens of CDs in Continue reading
An Interview with Frankie Gavin
In 1976, Frankie Gavin, aged just nineteen, made one of the outstanding fiddle albums of the latter half of the twentieth century, Continue reading
A Feel for the Terrain
That JMI has raised more questions than provided answers over the past three years goes without saying. Few will be surprised or bothered by this. But the act of questioning is valuable in itself, for it sketches out a map of the wire-fences and high walls in our society that decide the path for new ideas. After three years ofJMI, often publishing Continue reading
Education v. Branding
Many who have had the benefit of a music education are surprised to learn how many others go without. Ireland, the musical nation, with a harp on its coins and one of Europe’s strongest folk music traditions, compares poorly to other European counties in the provision of music education. For those who are passionate about music education, Continue reading
Music and Booze
Ireland’s alcoholic nature, though coming under increased scrutiny and criticism in recent national debates, still has a true ally in traditional music. A key conscript in the marketing and selling of Ireland’s pub culture, it can be sometimes difficult to tell whether traditional music is propping up our drink culture, or if it is the other way Continue reading
Crossroads Questions
Ireland in the 1990s. A country in the throes of change and traditional music was demonstrating in musical terms some of the tensions that such a transition creates. Searching albums by young musicians and bands, Riverdance, A River of Sound on television, heated debate in pubs on ‘tradition’, ‘innovation’, ‘change’, and then, excellently Continue reading
No Limits
JMI is now half way through its third year. You would imagine that things should be getting easier. I have sat down to write this editorial several times over the last two months, each time grounding to a halt after a couple of paragraphs. It seems I have become a victim of the exact subject I wanted to discuss: limits. Generally, when I Continue reading
No Brain Required
There is great satisfaction in producing an issue of JMI that contains reviews of both contemporary Irish music and sean-nós singing, if only because one does not observe this same sort of coupling often in Irish musical life. The division in understanding that exists between ‘classical’ and ‘traditional’ music in Ireland is a feature of our Continue reading
Noisy Little Country
This year, two young Irish composers, Jennifer Walshe and Donnacha Dennehy, both selected John Cage’s 4’ 33” (1952) to be performed as part of their ‘Composer’s Choice’ concerts at the National Concert Hall. To have Cage’s audacious four minutes and thirty-three seconds of ‘silence’ performed in an archetypal respectable venue such as Continue reading
Toner Quinn 