The news that the Arts Council has allocated 3 million euro to the traditional arts for 2006, with that figure set to increase in 2007 and 2008, is both welcome and significant. Setting aside for a moment the practical impact it could have on traditional Continue reading
Tag Archives: irish traditional music
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
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
What We Won’t Tell the Visitors This Summer
Every now and then, if you are a traditional musician, you will get a call from a friend, a friend of a friend, or a relation, and they will tell you they have some people from abroad staying with them, and could you recommend a place where they could go and hear some Irish music? You picture the hosts that evening, who are normally only Continue reading
The Proposed Traditional Arts Committee
Two recent events will certainly have major repercussions for Irish traditional music. The first is the Government’s backing of the Arts Council’s new five-year plan, a document which has serious intentions for the traditional arts. The second is the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands’ presentation of a new Arts Bill which includes a proposal to establish a traditional arts ‘Standing Committee’ which ‘shall make recommendations to the Continue reading
Critical Reflection
As the many Irish music festivals taking place this summer begin to devise their programmes of events, it will be interesting to see whether any take the initiative of furthering the debates that have surfaced in this magazine. Not that JMI presumes it should set the agenda for these events, but it would certainly supply some continuity to the Continue reading
Time to Kill off the Revival
The idea for this article came after reading a piece by Siobhán Long in the Irish Times (22 September 2001) entitled ‘Language of rhythm and metre’, although I was also encouraged to write it after hearing the performance of Ronan Guilfoyle’s band Lingua Franca during the ESB Jazz week, also in September.
John Blacking
I haven’t spoken to many other traditional musicians who undertook a music degree so I don’t know how representative my experience is, but it seems appropriate at the moment to introduce into the magazine this particular aspect of Irish third-level music education. I do think that the integration of traditional musicians into third level is a healthy development for both traditional music and Irish music education, not simply because a Continue reading
Introducing The Journal of Music in Ireland
Welcome to The Journal of Music in Ireland. Appearing every two months, JMIaims to bring together new writing on classical, jazz and traditional music in Ireland. Although we have called it a journal, it is not to define it as anything academic. The simple aim behind JMI is to provide a space where those involved at the grassroots level of Continue reading
Toner Quinn 