Cian’s radio show is a draw the world over

Music fans have much to thank the internet for – it has opened up whole new worlds by allowing them to go online and listen to quality, non-mainstream work being broadcast on radio stations all over the planet.

So it is that DJ Cian Ó Cíobháin who presents An Taobh Tuathail on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta from Monday to Friday every week, attracts fans from Germany to America and further afield for his alternative underground music show.

This Friday, May 1, Kerryman Cian will mark his 16th year presenting An Taobh Tuathail and he still retains the same enthusiasm for his work as he did when he first approached the RnG bosses about hosting a show in the late 1990s.

A graduate of the former UCG, Cian was working part-time in the Casla station when RTÉ set up its classical music station, Lyric FM. The knock-on effect was to create free hours in Raidió na Gaeltachta – until then classical music had been broadcast on the station’s network by RTÉ under the FM3 banner.

Cian submitted a 20-page proposal for his planned programme – which would feature music from anywhere in the world as long as it wasn’t in English. It was accepted. RnG had a ban on English lyrics until 2005, which was a challenge, he says. But there was plenty of electronic music and post-rock music that had no lyrics, as well as film soundtracks, so he figured he could work around it.

However, it was frustrating to listen to a song he loved and then not be able to play it because it happened to be in English.

Not allowing English lyrics might have been intended to be pro-Irish, but for him it was merely anti-English, so he was glad when the ban it was lifted.

For more, see this week’s Connacht and City Tribune.