Islands’ music brought to book in unique publication

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

A project that began more than 20 years ago when Dr Deirdre Ní Chonghaile began exploring the musical heritage of her homeplace will culminate next Thursday night in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop when her book on the subject is launched.

This landmark publication from Deirdre, entitled Collecting Music on the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice, is obviously about Irish music but, she says, “it’s also about history, historiography, memory, and media”.

It’s been a labour of love for the musician and curator, who laughs as she says that embarking on this project all those years ago “was like letting the dog off the leash”.

Deirdre didn’t have any agenda starting out, rather she was driven by curiosity about gaps in Aran’s story and brought her academic skills to researching these.

“There are books on all aspects of the Aran Islands from stones to currachs, but not so much about music and I was curious about why that was,” she explains.

Deirdre, who was studying for a BA in Music at Oxford in 2000 when she embarked on the project, points out that in order for us to know about music from the past, we rely on archives. And compiling archives requires literacy, equipment and time.

Thanks to people who visited the islands, collecting tunes and music –  and now thanks to her extensive research in putting the pieces of that jigsaw together – a new picture has emerged. It wasn’t just visitors who gathered songs, she points out. One of the most important collectors was the late Bairbre Quinn, Deirdre’s aunt, who in the 1950s, bought a tape recorder and started gathering songs and poems, which she continued to do for decades.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.