Tag Archives: music

How Ireland Thinks About Music – Lecture at the 2024 William Kennedy Piping Festival

Posted on by

Saturday, 16 November 2024
Armagh Robinson Library

Good afternoon everyone. 

It’s a real pleasure to be here in Armagh to give the 2024 William Kennedy Lecture, and thank you to Brian, Ciarán and Caoimhín of the festival for the invitation. I have never been to Armagh before though I have been aware of this incredible festival for many years and the extraordinary work of the Armagh Pipers’ Club.

Ciarán Ó Maoláin kindly sent me the book collection of William Kennedy Lectures edited by Brian Vallely, which is a fascinating read, and I can see that my lecture will be one of the few that doesn’t focus on piping, although I think a lot of the ideas that I’ll discuss will resonate with the piping community as much as any part of traditional music.

Continue reading →

What Will the 2024 Election Mean for Music and the Arts?

Posted on by

Now that the US election is over, we can remind ourselves that we are not citizens of that country, and that all of the airtime it has taken up in Irish media is time not spent talking about what matters on the ground in Ireland.

For those in music and the arts, there is much to discuss, particularly now that a general election has been called for 29 November.

Continue reading →

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

A Review of ‘What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music’ in Sound Post magazine

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

A Tribute to Charlie Lennon

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

How Ireland Thinks About Music

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

SXSW Protest is About More than Palestine

Posted on by

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. 

Continue reading →

A review of my new book by Sherry Ladig in the Irish Arts Minnesota Newsletter

Posted on by

An Leabhragán/The Bookcase

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and Other Essays
Toner Quinn (The Journal of Music, 2024)

This new book on Irish music has been a quarter of a century in the making. The fifty or so essays and articles are drawn from Toner Quinn’s work as editor of The Journal of Music in Ireland, first published in print form in 2000, now entirely online since 2010. Quinn saw that there was no real public discourse about music in Ireland; all Irish music, not just classical, jazz, traditional, or popular music. There have been separate forums for all of these. But where was the discussion about what it means to be an Irish musician of any kind in Ireland today? Toner Quinn saw a space for this discussion and created it. Twenty-four years later, the magazine has become a respected and valued place for musicians, composers, collaborators , organizers and listeners to discuss and inform on the topic of Irish music. Many subjects, some of them controversial, have come up: what, exactly, is trad music? How is its practice different from two or three generations ago? How do we value an art form which has been highly praised publicly, but underfunded and underpaid to those who create the music? What classical music is being created and performed in Ireland? How about jazz, collaborative works between classical and traditional artists, experimental music?

Continue reading →

Toner Quinn’s New Book Launched by Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive

Posted on by

See a news item from the Journal of Music on the launch of my new book below. The original is here.

A new book by Toner Quinn, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, has been launched by fiddle player Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin.

A collection of writings on Irish music, the book contains more than fifty essays and articles drawn from Quinn’s work as Editor of the Journal of Music as well as a number of radio essays and public talks.

Continue reading →