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Anything I ever got in life I got from the GAA. If I hadn't played the game of hurling I'd possibly be Jimmy Smyth, the clerk or the administrator. But the fact that I played at inter-county level gave me a kind of passport into every hurling county in the country. When somebody comes into my own area and I know they've played the game of hurling, I don't go back over their record off the field. I don't research their character or anything like that. The fact that they've played hurling means everything and the fan that I've played hurling means everything to me. The same is true for Gaelic football players.

It was in Ruan in these early years that I first came in contact with a hurling ballad written by Mickey Kelly, a shoemaker from Ruan village. We all knew it and we all sang in — 'The Lovely Back Roads of Dromore'. Dromore is situated about one mile from Ruan village. It gave us an uplift. We were small; we were nobodies; and now that we had an identity, we would be remembered. It was a song in memory of old hurlers who played in Porte Hill behind my house and who had to cross o'er the foam' in search of an honest existence. A traditional hurling or football ballad is a kind of safety net for those who might feel that they were being minimized in a tough uncaring world. They express a love and pride of place and people. They give us a sense of importance. Ballads like the hurling come from childhood days - total immersion. It was this background which motivated me to pursue my interest as a postgraduate at the University of Limerick. There I completed a masters thesis on the 'Songs, poems and recitations of Gaelic games in Munster'. Subsequendy, I published a collection of the ballads and songs of the GAA of my native county, Clare, and assisted with similar books on Cork and Tipperary. As I delved through the ballads of the country I learned one important thing, 'we are all the same and we all walk side by side together'.

Note: This chapter was first published in Jimmy Smyth, In praise of heroes: ballads and poems of the GAA (Dublin, 2007), pp 16-36. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

CHAPTER 24

Traditional Music in County Clare

NIALL KEEGAN

Diverse music practices are hard to quantify. The immanence, singularity of experience, temporality and intrinsic non-referentiality of these multiple arts of sound turn our accounts of them into bottomless pits of metaphor. However, we do know through historic precedent and sheer affective instinct places where music become more important, larger in the minds and imagination of people and which type of music these are. We know that if we go to Milan we will meet Opera, if we go to Paris we will hopefully hear a musette, if we go to Java, gamalan will not be too far away. The place where we go to hear traditional Irish music is Clare.

The community of traditional music and its impact on the musical life of Clare are immense. Ennis is currently the undoubted session capital of Ireland where semi-formal music making can be (bund in several public houses any night of the week throughout the year.1 The county hosts numerous festivals such as the Fleadh Nua at the end of May, the Ennis Traditional Festival in November, the Willie Clancy Summer School in July among others that would be regarded internationally as high points in the traditional music calendar. At the time of writing the local radio station,.Clare FM devotes six separate shows, accounting for 11 hours every week, to traditional music outside of its general music programming which in itself contains a high level of traditional music. Transmission of the tradition in the county is facilitated mostly outside of formal institutional structures by numerous instrumental and ensemble teachers, many of whom are employed by music schools such as Maoin Ceol an Chliir in Ennis and Deirdre O'Brien-Vaughan's school in Clarecastle or the various Clare branches of Comhaltas Ceoltoirf Eireann (a national organisation for traditional music). There is a vibrant traditional social dance scene throughout Clare serviced by informal and formal dance bands such as the Tulla, Kilfenora and Ennis Ciili Bands (there have been over fifty cell! bands in Clare over the past century) and more populist traditional dance bands such as Shaskeen. Indeed it would be unusual for popular dance bands in Clare not to include traditional dances in their repertoire. It was quite natural, therefore, for the music venue Gldr in Ennis to initially portray itself as the national centre of traditional music although its

move away from this position is symbolic of the failure of traditional music in Ireland to attain a full part in the modern Irish music business. It would not be an exaggeration to state that county Clare has more musicians and performance events than any other county in Ireland and that the music plays a larger role in the economic, social, and aesthetic life of the county than any music anywhere else on the island.

Within the world of traditional music generally there is the perception of there being a body of 'Clare music' distinguishable by members of the community knowledgeable enough to do so. Very often this is subdivided into smaller regions, predominandy east and west Clare and other subdivisions that will be identified later. Clare music is sometimes seen as such a strong and influential tradition that it is often considered 'the home' of traditional music. This view can be viewed with some animosity from elsewhere on the island. Donegal fiddler collector, academic and activist Caoimhfn Mac Aoidh writes;

Following this were the Clare styles (all persons of my generation learned by well managed Bord Fdilte-ish PR machine rote — CLARE IS THE HOME OF TRADITIONAL MUSIC).2

Traditional musicians, perhaps more so than any other type of musician in Ireland, root their music conceptually into time and place and the role of individuals are conceived in these two axes of understanding. Time is usually measured through generations — the thing you are most likely to hear before a formal performance is 'I learned / got this tune from...', usually citing a musician from an older generation whom the performing musician was acquainted with personally and holds in some regard. To this end, traditional musicians do not like stating that they learned music from recordings (unless they are of a particularly iconic individual, separated from the performer in time) or books (with the possible exception of one or two historical publications such as Capt. Francis O'Neill's Dance music of Ireland (1907) or The Roche collection (1927).3 The community of traditional Irish musicians also has a strong tendency to categorise performance practice according to regions. Thus regions have their own sounds and this can be found at the root of much repeated cliches such as 'Donegal music is fast', 'East Galway music is slow', 'Sliabh Luachra music is all polkas and slides'.

The rooting of a creative performance practice in past practitioners and localities is of course related to the orality of the practice and is not unique to Irish music. The growing importance of understanding and organising ones music in terms of people in time and space is a product of our increasingly bigger, busier and more complex music world. In early twentieth century publications concerning Irish traditional or folk music such as Capt. Francis O'Neills Irish minstrels and musicians (1913) there are no mention of regional styles of performance, something that would be unthinkable in a general account of the tradition today.4 Indeed, the first systematic formulation of a 'map' of regional styles was proposed by Sean 0 Riada in his RTrl radio and television series

Our musical heritage after his interactions principally with a diasporic community of traditional musicians living in Dublin.5 In this publication O Riada mentions Clare styles of performance for fiddle and flute.

This regional structuring of traditional music practice in Ireland is problematic for a systematic musicology shaped by the literate tradition of western art music. Empirical examination of the regional based conceptual organisations of traditional music through musicological analysis or ethnographic research subverts the cohesiveness of the structures presented. One woman's east Clare style is another man's east Galway style. Also, implicit to the paradigm that supports regional style (i.e. that they are founded in regional isolation) is that the concept of regional style is modern. Indeed it is striking that our ideas about the sounds of regional styles, seen to be vestiges of a more varied and coloured pre-modern life, are rooted in the sounds of often the first mass-mediated, virtuosic musicians. This of course sometimes creates the paradox that the very sounds that are iconic for certain regional styles are perceived to be damaging to the diversity of their own and others. It is pethaps most important to remember that this structuring of sound, unlike many of the conceptual structuring of western art music, plays no role in performance practice. There are no manuals for playing in a 'Clare style'. Many musicians are concerned with issues of authenticity but these are all part of diverse aesthetic structuring complicated further by a general western aesthetic of individualism. Such stylistic and essentially aesthetic structuring happen after the sound, have no operational role in performance practice.

This all said I will now try and present one structured look at the music of Clare. Musicologists such as Charles Seeger warn us of the pot-holes at the 'musicological juncture' of language-based structure and music but they also acknowledge that such structuring procedures are inevitable.6 Indeed the ones presented below are mainly derived from those of the communities that practice Clare music and as such reflect the values and aesthetics of those communities.

Song The song tradition of the county is now exclusively in the English language. Of course Clare has its fair share of Irish language revival singers but naturally enough the line into an Irish language community that had effectively died out in the first half of the twentieth century is largely broken. Many would qualify this by rooting the styles of singers and musicians such as the Russells of Doolin into the Irish language based practices of recent generations. The English language song tradition is well recorded by collectors, notably the recently deceased Tom Munnelly, and like many local song traditions the region is well represented in local repertoire and versions of repertoire. Perhaps the most outstanding published collection is Tom Munnelly's The Mount CaUan garland— songs from the repertoire of Tom Lenihan ofKnockbrack, Milltown Malbay, County Clare (1994).7Tom Lenihan's (1905-1990) repertoire is typical in that it contains references to local places and events as well as the whole gamut of usual themes of popular and traditional songs. We find mention of local places such as Ennis,

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master' musicians. This certainly has led to the development of music families, where performance skills are passed down through the generations and also the belief that a particular locality is essentially musical. Families such as the McCarthys whose musical life began with Tommy McCarthy from Kilmihill, the Hayes family from Mahera and, the Russells from Doolin are central to the traditions of Clare while places such as Kilmihill, Feakle, and the areas around Doolin, Milltown Malbay and Quilty are regarded as important historical and contemporary centres for traditional musical making. Such reputations are created by these important forms of traditional transmission. The other major paradigm is that the music was spread by travelling musicians such as George Whelan and Garrett Barry. It was common throughout Ireland for people with a physical disability, particularly loss of sight, to make their living, or pan of it, from playing and teaching music and this was particularly true in Clare. Such musicians, like the dancers, would have restricted themselves to a specific area, perhaps because their disability needed a community to be prepared to actively support them. This made contacts with new communities more difficult and to be avoided unless stricdy necessary. Certainly their range was also limited by competition from similar musicians in surrounding districts.

More recently transmission has been transformed through institutional classes promoted in local music schools and branches of Comhaltas. This has raised the profile of the music in urban centres in the county, particularly Ennis. Undoubtedly more children are learning traditional music in county Clare at present in professional and semi-professional multi-instrumental group classes, very often aimed at producing ensembles for competition. The adoption nationally of British style grade examinations and the growth of traditional music in the secondary school curriculum has contributed significantly to the development of classical style one-to-one or small group teaching for specific instruments. Also, the summer schools such as the Willie Clancy Summer School and the Feakle Music Weekend, while contributing to tourism, have a significant educational impact through their classes for music and dance.

Dance Factors for some extent of stylistic homogeneity in the music of Clare are the dance traditions of the region. Central to the dance traditions of Clare are the sets. Sets came to Ireland as quadrilles which swept Western Europe in the early nineteenth century and which came originally from French courdy dances such as the cotillion. Particularly popular in Clare are the Caledonian (widely believed to have been brought to Clare by Scottish sappers), the Lancers and the Plain sets. The context of the performance of these dances would have been again the house dances and the more public occasions at pattern days, fairs and other significant days in the calendar of the locality."

These sets and step dances that today are perceived as sean~nds were taught by travelling dancing masters such as Pat Barron and Thady Casey, both in west Clare. It is remarkable that the dance tradition of Clare survived through the

twentieth century as it faced much institutionalised opposition through the Dance Hall Act and general opposition from the Catholic Church who condemned such dances and competed with them through the development of parochial halls. Junior Crehan gives us an example of this institutional opposition and the vigour of the tradition that survives it, describing an exchange between the dancing master Pat Barron and a local curate;

Barron, a dancing master from West Limerick was holding his classes in Jimmo Sextons house, near Mullagh. The local curate rode out from Mullagh fully intending to scatter the dancing school. When he came into the house, he found Barron on the floor putting a pupil through his paces while the music was being supplied by a concertina player. The priest grabbed the concertina, flung it on the fire and put his boot on it. Then he turned to Barron and is reported to have said:

Clear out of here you dancing devil or I'll make a goat of you

To which Barron retorted,

If you do, I'll give you a pucan up in the arse with my horns

Pat Barron did not evacuate Mullagh because the curate wanted him out; instead he resumed his classes and remained for another year or so and he didn't turn into a goat as far as I know.12

The opposition to traditional music and especially traditional dance by the church was not however consistent. Some curates were of course strict (like the extreme example above) but some were willing to subvert the music and dance culture to their own ends. A prime example of this is Father Larkin in Ballinakill, across the border in south east Galway who was central to the establishment of the first ensemble credited as a c£ill band in Ireland, The Ballinakill Traditional Players. They were most probably established to play music for dances to raise funds for the construction of a parochial hall and playing for dancing classes in the local national school. It is also believed that the precursors to the Kilfenora Ce*ili Band in north Clare were established in the first and second decades of the twentieth century to play for dances used to raise funds to pay a large parish debt incurred by the building of a parochial hall.13

Ceilf band tradition Dance bands have played a huge part in the successful reinvention of traditional music practice in Clare in the twentieth century and particularly since the 1940s. The two bands whose rivalry has been legendary throughout Ireland among those that follow traditional music are The Kilfenora and The Tulla CiiU Bands. However, there are records of over 50 cell/ bands in Clare over the past century

with particular local connections to village, town or parish. Indeed, in the 54 years of the All-Ireland Ceil/ Band competition, an annual event organised by Comhaltas as part of the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil, the first prize has been won thirteen times by Clare bands. Ciill bands are most often named for a particular place (although membership is most often more widely derived) and can incite ferocious support in that locality in a way similar to a local GAA club. This support has a wider base in a national community of dancers and listeners who may prefer the performance of one particular band over others. The major bands have a dual life as dance and competition bands, a life that many would say is made by the two performance practices having opposing aesthetics. The bands tend to be built around a core membership of instrumentalists (dominated by fiddles and flutes but often containing accordion, banjo, concertina, pipes and other instruments) playing in unison with piano and basic, jazz-drum kit (snare, bass, block and sometimes cymbal). These provide accompaniment for dances and, particularly for ones that would be for less traditional audiences, a singer may be drafted in to sing songs with the band for waltzes, one-steps and other dances considered more modern, less native and associated with contemporary songs. In the 1950s and 60s, when these ceil/ bands had to compete with the more modern 'showbands' (cell/ bands would have been more popular in the smaller dance halls and on the less popular nights), they started to incorporate instruments and styles from that more popular tradition.14 However, with the demise of the show-band circuit by the early 70s and the revival of the set dance tradition, the bands returned to more traditional formats. Today, ceil/ dances throughout Ireland would be described as for 'cell/' or set' dancers and the latter would be predominant in Clare.1 s These bands were the central aspect of the first professionalisation of traditional music apart from the small economy of the travelling musicians and dancing masters. It is perhaps no accident that the predominant bands (the Kilfenora and the Tulla) came from the more rural north-west area of the county and the hill country of east Clare respectively. Although none of these Clare bands were ever fully professional, the income they generated was often vitally important for the families of the musicians.

Regional subdivisions of instrumental music It would be impossible in this or any other context to give a full account of traditional music making in Clare. In presenting the tradition and some of its practices the county will be divided into four regions — the south west, the Fergus valley, north, and east Clare. This division of the county in accordance to regional music styles has been informed by the first notable textual account which uses similar divisions, Gearoid 0 hAllmhurdin's extensive thesis, The concertina in the traditional music of County Clare (1990).'6 However, it would be fair to say that these types of division are generated by musicians and audiences themselves in Clare. Instrumentalfy the tradition is unusual in that it is considered fairly multi-instrumental although the fiddle is central, particularly in east Clare. It is possible to be considered as a Clare-style banjo player, flute player, piper or

concertina player. This contrasts with other regional styles which are often considered as exclusive to one instrument (usually the fiddle) or two. For example, the idea of a Donegal-style flute player would be considered nonsensical within the tradition. Another distinction of the insttumental make-up of County Clare is the importance and central role of the concertina throughout the county. The anglo- (or anglo-German) concertina, as opposed to the English concertina, appears throughout Ireland from the late nineteenth century but only really has a strong role in the regional identity of Clare. The account of the regional subdivisions given below is not in any way comprehensive or even representational. It is just an account of those that this author has heard and seen before in pubs and print! Furthermore, examples of particular musicians are largely selected from my own aesthetic prejudices and background. The use of transcription as an analytical tool outside a community of practicing musicians is also a controversial and problematic one. In the examples given below please remember the anonymous statement — 'talking about music is like dancing about architecture' — drawing and writing about music further compounds the problems!

South-west Clare The region of south-west Clare emanating north and east from the Loop Head peninsula is often seen as a stylistic entity in its own right. This region is perceived as being musically connected with Kerry and west-Limerick through the influence of travelling teachers and performers such as George Whelan and Pat Barron. This is evidenced by the popularity of tune types such as polkas and slides which would be more normally associated with the traditions of Cork and Kerry. These tune types can be heard in the repertoire of such legendary musicians as Junior Crehan (fiddle) from Mullagh; John Kelly (fiddle) from Cree; and Solus Lillis (concertina) from Cooradare. Perhaps the dominant figure in the traditional music scene in this region in the twentieth century was Mrs. Crotty.

Elizabeth Crotty (nee Markham, 1885-1960) was born in Gower near Cooradare in 1885 but is associated with Kilrush where she and her husband, Micko, were publicans. Her reputation was accentuated by the popularity of the pub as a place for the performance of traditional music; the fact that she was one of the first musicians to be recordeefby Ciardn MacMathiina and the RT£ mobile recording unit in 1955; and the fact that she was prominent in the early establishment of CCfi in Clare, becoming president of the Clare branch of that organisation in 1956. She was a popular player for set dancing but she is perhaps most notable, outside of her playing style, for being one of the few women to gain popularity and respect as a traditional musician in this period, a period that witnessed the first substantial mass mediation of traditional music. Below is a transcription of her performance of a tune that has become synonymous with her and the region, The Reel with the Beryl recorded some time between 1955 and I960 by Ciarin MacMathiina and Ned Nugent with the Radid £ireann, Mobile Recording Unit. Here we can see some of the stylistic features of Mrs. Crotty's

style that many believe are part of the conceptual construct of south-west Clare music. The aesthetic behind the performance is obviously embodied (i.e. it is music for .dancing to). There is very little ornamentation, indeed the two ornaments annotated in bar 13 are in all probability slips or inaccuracies on Mrs. Crony's part. Instead of using the normal larger ornaments common throughout the tradition such as crans and rolls she rather plays through notes of longer duration, using slight pressure on the bellows to accentuate a quaver motion as can be seen in bars 5 and 7 of Round One (Rl) below. The most notable feature and the most complex is the 'doubling' where she plays the tune in octaves (with a couple of small exceptions where she diverges to a more harmonic effect). An interesting aspect is the swelling effect on the notes of longer duration signified by the hairpins. This is partly rooted in the physical nature of the instrument where the draw of the bellows would cause the effect but it is arguably an important aspect of performance style throughout the county. The overall feeling is one of a dance-centred simplicity that would perhaps be seen as central to much music from this area.

The Reel With the Beryl

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The Fergus Valley This central band of music presented as one of the regional sub-sets of Clare music is regarded as the most complex and open to outside influence because of its proximity to Ennis. Members of this community of musicians indude Bobby Casey, Joe Ryan (fiddles), Tommy McCarthy, Paddy Murphy (concertinas).

Bobby Casey (1926-2000), a fiddler from the Crosses of Armagh, near Milltown Malbay, is one of the more significant figures in the recognition of this style. Bobby emigrated as a young man in 1952 to London where he became a central musician to the burgeoning London pub session scene at the time. Bobby's complex tonality and general musicality is perhaps the least communicable through transcription but the transcription of the second tune, Farewell to Connacht, of the first track of his 1979 recording Taking Flight does illustrate the intricate nature of the performance. We can see from the nominal slurring that the bow work is relatively complex, sometimes slurring over the main beats of the reel (e.g. bars 17 and 18), effectively hiding those beats. There is much complex ornamentation (particularly in bars 17 and 19) and he subdy plays with the intonation of the fiddle in ways which are perhaps impossible to fully account for with western notation but some are indicated below in the glissando symbols in the transcription. The double stopping is also quite complex, indeed it is difficult to separate this from the strings resonating which is equally a part of the performance style but isn't indicated bdow. He even alters the intonation of tones while double stopping — the 'E flat' in bar 4 is perhaps the most extreme example of that. Although the full extent of it cannot be shown below he engages in much subtle variation, especially at the end of phrase points, in the second part of the tune. Kevin Crehan gives a personal account of Casey's complexity and musicality when he writes:

Listening to, and playing with Bobby, this joking, shocking, irreverent side of his personality was always to the fore. His music is full of inventiveness and devilment. .The flourishes are bountiful and spread effortlessly over the phrasing. Indeed as Cait Reed once commented, 'Bobby Casey ornaments his ornaments!' This expression is presented as a wave of inventive and complex embellishment.17

Farewell to Connacht

From Bobby Casey (1979), Taking Flight, Mulligan Records.

North-west Clare The musical community in and around the Burren would also be regarded as a distinctive community with a much more rhythm-focused, uncomplicated aesthetic. Naturally enough perhaps the most important feature of the musical environment in north-west Clare is the Kilfenora dillBandbut many individuals stand out and would be regarded as iconic for this particular approach to Clare music, such as Chris Droney from Bellharbour and the Russell brothers from Doolin. There is a recognisably strong flute tradition in this area to compete with that of the fiddle and concertina.

Below is a transcription of the first round of a single jig performed by a younger exponent of that tradition, flute player Garry Shannon. Although Garry is generally regarded as a modern flute player whose style can be seen as more cosmopolitan, in the performance annotated below he is deliberately performing in a style associated with this region and particularly that of the admittedly idiosyncratic flute, whistle player and singer Miko Russell. Miko was from Doolin, a village on the west coast that has become an international tourist mecca

for traditional music The entire track on Garry's recording is called 'Heirloom', implying that the tune is something that has been handed down, but this tune in particular is called The Clare fig, which is a completely different tune to the double jig usually given this title.

The tune is a single jig, a relatively rare tune type in petformance practice generally these days and associated for playing for solo step dances or figures of social set dances. Garry here has chosen not to use the plethora of contemporary flute ornamental techniques that he would otherwise deploy, such as rolls and crans, but instead he uses single note grace notes and looks for subde complexity elsewhere. The performance is perhaps more like Mrs. Crotty's than Bobby Casey's above although, like all, there is the notable use of the crescendo dynamic on occasional long note (as in bar 9, 10 and 11). Related to this is the accent utilised to make the pulse on an otherwise slurred note on which the main beat would fall (as in bars 8 and 12). Notable is the emphasis on presenting different phrasing patterns such as hiding the natural phrasing of the tunes which would be based around sequences of two bars.18 Much of the articulation is not annotated below but it is a central tool used by Garry to provide the rhythmical sensibility of the tune (see bar 5).

The Clare Jig (Garry Shannon)

From Garry Shannon, Loozin Air, Brick Missing Music.

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1

REFERENCES 1. A session is the most popular musical event for traditional musicians who gather in a public house, for

recreational and / or financial reasons, and play mostly dance music but maybe not for an audience who specifically come not to listen or dance to the music!

2. Midieal O Suilleabhlin and Theiise Smith, Stltctedproceeding? from BIAS the local accent conference (Dublin and Limerick, 1996) p. 67.

3. FnncisO'Nati, DanceMusicofIreland (1001 Gems), (Chicago. 1907); Francis Roche. The Roche collection of Irish traditional music (Cork, 1927).

4. Francis O'Neill, Irish minstrels and musicians (Chicago, 1913). 5. Sean 0 Riada, Our musical heritage, RTE. 6. Charles Seeger, Studies in musicotogy 1935-75 (California 1977). 7. Tom Munnelly, The Mout Callan Garland — Songs from the repertoire of Tom Lenihan of Knockbiaclc

Milltown Malbay. County Clare (Dublin, 1994). 8. GeanSid 0 hAllmhuram, The concertina in the traditional music of County Clare, unpublished PhD

thesis, Queen's University Belfast (1990), p. 11. 9. Brendan Taaffe, Aeroplanes out of scrapheaps: Patrick Kelly from Cree, unpublished MA thesis, University

of Limerick (2005), p. 11. 10. Paddy Canny, P.J. Hayes, Bridie Lafferty & Peadar O'Loughlin, 2001: An historic recording of Irish

traditional music from County Clare and east Galway (Shanachie, 2001). 11. Usually annual celebrations of local saints, separated from institutional religious practice since the reformation

and sometimes incorporating some older religious practices, often focused on sites such as holy wells. 12. Muiris 6 Rochiin and Harry Hughes, 'Junior Crehan Remembers' in DatgCais, 3 (1977), p. 78. 13. Garry Shannon, 'You can't bate breedin the origins of the Kilfenora Oil! Band, unpublished MA thesis,

University of Limerick (2000) p. 30. 14. The showbands were popular music bands who performed covers of pop, country and jazz music popular

in 50s and 60s. mainly for dancers. 15. Set dancing, perceived in a modem context to be more traditional, are round dances descended from late

eighteenth / early nineteenth century courtly quadrilles. The Ceili dances are from the revivalist tradition promoted by the Gaelic League at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of (he twentieth centuries, partly and paradoxically in reaction to the perceived foreign nature of the set dances.

16. Gearoid 0 hAllmhuriin, The concertina in the traditional music of County Clare, unpublished PhD thesis. Queen's University Belfast (1990).

17. Kevin Crehan, Bobby Casey, virtuoso of west Clare (2000), hnp://www.irishfiddJe.com/caseyessay.html [accessed Sept. '07]

18. Micheal 6 Suilleabhiin, "The creative process in traditional dance music in Irish Music Studies I: Musicotogy (1990).

19. Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill, Live in Seattle, Green Linnet (1999). 20. There have historically been ties between the musicians of the two regions and also North Tipperary,

particularly through mixed personnel in ensembles such as the Tulla and Aughrim Slopes Ceilf Bands and the influence of individual musicians such as Joe Cooley, Paddy O'Brien and Jack Mulkere.

21. A shout used by musicians in a session to indicate that a change in tune is about to happen.

CHAPTER 25

'A Dub in Clare': Tom Munnelly, Folklore Collector

RfONACHUfOGAlN

Tom Munnelly was a close friend and colleague for 30 years and more. His official position was that of collector/archivist with the Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin. This article will concentrate primarily on his field work. It is essential, however, to bear his many other attributes and talents in mind at the same time. These include his work as ballad and folklore scholar, traditional music and arts consultant, writer, archivist, lecturer and teacher, festival organiser and, of course, he was also a singer.

The book Dear far-voiced veteran: essays in honour of Tom Munnelly was published in June of 2007. Since Toms passing in August 2007, numerous obituaries and accounts of some of his work have been published and broadcast. These included several references to the origins and development of his interest in the collecting of traditional song.

Tom was born in Dublin on 25 May 1944. While still a teenager, he left school and had a variety of jobs. In the early 1960s he attended sessions and clubs where he heard traditional singers and musicians. As a singer, he valued singers, songs and their lore. This love of songs prompted him to set about collecting. Tom's first paid recognition in the field, of song came in 1969 from California through D.K. Wilgus, professor of English and Anglo-American folksong in UCLA Tom worked with the manuscript collections of the Irish Folklore Commission, 82, St. Stephens Green, where he researched and catalogued narrative songs. In 1971, he was hired to collect songs as part o£.a music collecting initiative headed by Breandin Breathnach under the aegis of the Department of Education. In 1974, Tom and Breanddn transferred to the newly established Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin where they both continued their work in traditional music. The Irish Folklore Commission had been disbanded since 1971 and its staff and holdings transferred to University College Dublin. Breandin became head of the Folk Music section, which was based in Earlsfort Terrace, and Tom was to spend the remainder of his working life, primarily associated with collecting music and song.

Tom's diaries, photographs, field recordings and correspondence are the basis for firsthand knowledge and understanding of his field work and of his collecting