This book is the ultimate reference for all players, devotees and students of Irish Traditional Music. It is an indispensable reference guide to Ireland’s universally-recognised Traditional music, song and dance. This comprehensive resource – now revised and greatly expanded – is the largest single collection of such diverse, essential data. It brings together the knowledge of two hundred contributors in an easy-to-use A-Z format with entries on:

• Song in Irish and English
• Dance – Step Dance, Céilí and Sets
• Solo and Group Playing
• Céilí Bands and Professionalism
• Storytelling
• Instruments and Technology
• Tune Types and Composition
• Styles and Ornamentation
• Organisations and Promotion
• Education and Transmission
• Collectors and Archives
• History and Revival
• Performers, Stylists, Commentators
• Broadcasting and Recording
• English, Scottish, Welsh music and song
• Music in all Irish Counties, Europe & USA
• Timeline – 1100 BC – 2011 AD
• Irish Music Books 1724 – 2011

These topics are addressed in the book by a total of c. 1800 individual articles, all of which are listed on this website:

For a full list of all A-Z entries and word-counts see Entries

For a list of major topics to which these articles relate see  Topics

For a full list of referenced people and bands see Index

Major Topics underlying the A-Z entries

The Companion topics can be reduced to the following major topics. Each of these has many sub-sections, within which are further ‘boxes-inside-boxes’ sub sections, into which all of the book’s articles can be categorised. They are numbered to facilitate searching and  note-taking:

01 - Vocal: Song in English, song in Irish, structure, styles, types, function, practices, singers, ballads, storytelling

02 - Instrumental music: tune types, instruments, transcription, style, ornamentation, composition, arrangement, classification, playing formats, regional styles

03 - Dance: Dance metres, artistic (display) dance, social dance, history, styles, ideology, competition, organisation

04 – Organisation: Fleadh, session, festival, events, organisation, promotion, education, performance, funding, buildings, policies, institutions, spaces, web, international, awards

05 - Transmission: Oral, broadcasting, recording, digital, teaching and learning, schools, collection, notation, tune books, song collections, audiovisual, Diaspora, migration

06 – People: Singers, dancers, musicians, storytellers, instrument makers, organisers, promoters, broadcasters, teachers, collectors, analysts, journalists, bands

07 – Analysis: Bibliography, information, archiving, academic, research, literature, history

Each of these topics will be developed with appropriate extra material – music, images and web links – in time. Many of the individual articles have connections with a number of the major sections outlined. For instance, an individual like the uilleann piper Willie Clancy comes under the category of ‘People’ (as a performer, stylist, authority, singer and personality). But he also comes in under ‘Social Customs’ (which includes ‘regional styles’), under ‘Transmission’ (as he was an influential teacher), under ‘Song’ (he was a recorded singer),  and under ‘Instrumental’ (his music has been notated and his style analysed). So too Seamus Ennis will cross categories as an authority, stylist, singer, storyteller, collector, performer, teacher, professional, researcher and broadcaster; Josephine Keegan can be seen as having cross links as performer, fiddler, composer, personality and publisher, as well as being associated with recording, broadcasting, collecting, Co. Armagh and with England. While the A-Z Articles page will eventually carry references to such cross-links, these can never be complete, for it is the reader will best make connections in the reading of the whole text.

Web Links: These will be added gradually in order to expand the knowledge potential of The Companion out beyond what is in the printed articles to the broader world of the music. Contributions and links are welcomed and should be sent to the editor, Dr. Fintan Vallely (f@imusic.ie) using ‘companion links’ in the subject line.

18th-20th February 2011 ‘LISTENING’

University of Ulster, Magee campus,

Derry/Londonderry

The University of Ulster, Magee campus, is proud to host the first ICTM Ireland conference to be held in Northern Ireland. The occasion will see the presentation of over twenty scholarly papers from all over Ireland, Europe and beyond. Focussed on the theme of ‘listening’ these papers, short films and recordings will explore the social, psychological, political and aesthetic significance of using music in everyday life.

Our keynote speaker will be Thomas Turino, professor of Musicology and Anthroplology at the University of Illinois, author of Music as Social Life: the Politics of Participation (2008) amongst a number of important publications. He will be introduced by Dr Suzel Reily (Queen’s University, Belfast), and also contributing to the event will be Dr Caroline Bithell (University of Manchester and Chair of British forum for Ethnomusicology).

The conference will be preceded on the Friday evening by the Annual General Meeting of ICTM Ireland, which all members in good standing are urged to attend. Saturday evening will feature the keynote speech, the conference dinner, and much contagious merriment.

Full conference programme is downloadable here.

Registration / Information

It is now possible to register online through the paypal links below. See also details of accommodation and travel. The programme will be made available on this page shortly .ICTM Ireland members will be notified by email of any significant changes in arrangements – members might want to join our Facebook page or return to this site regularly for updates.

Information on recommended accommodation can be downloaded here.

Location information can be found here.

• Programme queries should be sent to: tony.langlois@mic.ul.ie
• Post-graduate and volunteering queries should be sent to :Thomas.Johnston@staffmail.ul.ie
• Queries on venues, accommodation and travel (which are not already answered in the downloads below) should be sent to Liz Doherty at: l.doherty@ulster.ac.uk

Conference Dinner will be on Saturday night.

* By happy coincidence there’s a a tasty session on the Sunday night which might tempt you to stay another evening. It’s Máirtín Ó Connor, Seamie O Dowd & Cathal Hayden playing at the nearby Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin centre at 8pm. (Should we finish our conference business according to schedule you might even make some of the ‘meet the musicians session at 4pm). Further details are available here.

‘Movement and Music’

Keynote Speaker: Prof  Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

ISSN   2009-4094

A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Ethnomusicology Ireland, the online journal of the Irish Committee of the International Council on Traditional Music, is currently inviting submissions for its second edition, due for publication in early 2012.

The scope of this journal is wide, representing the full diversity of ethnomusicology in Ireland and about Ireland. Many ethnomusicologists based in Irish institutions conduct their research in other parts of the world, whilst Irish scholars continue to interrogate their own nation’s heritage. The musical life of Ireland today is a diverse and cosmopolitan one, including that of immigrant communities and urban cultural-scenes.

Reflecting the diversity of its membership and interests, Ethnomusicology Ireland welcomes submissions from all relevant fields of scholarship, including research into dance studies, traditional music, popular and avant-garde genres.

Available on the website of the ICTM Ireland Society http://www.ictm.ie/ the journal is accessible in two versions. On-line essays are accompanied by a variety of media illustrations. PDF versions may be downloaded freely for printing purposes. We invite you to visit the site to familiarize yourself with this publication and to learn more about the Society’s activities.

Submissions should report on original research that has not been published elsewhere. All submissions are subject to review by two readers and subsequent revision at the request of the editor. In general, essays should be around 6,000 words in length, although exceptions may be made depending upon the character of particular contributions. Without precluding any particular mode of writing, all should conform to a high academic standard and include appropriate scholarly apparatus. We follow the so-called British style as found in the Oxford Style Manual in editing text, and the Harvard style Author-Date system for referencing. Authors are asked to submit their copy in electronic form in Microsoft Word with minimal formatting to the editor at Colin.Quigley@ul.ie. Review of submissions is ongoing, but I would ask that you submit essays for publication this year by the 1st of November 2012.

Colin Quigley PhD

Editor Ethnomusicology Ireland

Senior Lecturer and Course Director Ethnomusicology

Irish World Academy, University of Limerick

Please note that access to media-rich online version is available only to current members of ICTM Ireland.

Ethnomusicology Ireland  is a registered online publication        ISSN   2009-4094

Gordon Ramsey

MUSIC, EMOTION AND IDENTITY IN ULSTER MARCHING BANDS
Flutes, Drums and Loyal Sons

Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2011. XIV, 334 pp.

Peter Lang Publishing Group

Synopsis:

Ulster’s marching bands form perhaps the most vibrant participatory folk music tradition in contemporary Europe, and are one of the most significant and visible elements of working-class loyalist culture in the divided society of Northern Ireland. Their significance springs largely from the central place they have assumed in the lives of their members.
This book presents an ethnography of three County Antrim flute bands from the very different genres of ‘part-music’, ‘melody’ and ‘blood and thunder’. The author explores the emotional rewards of communal music-making and the way that identities are formed through the acquisition of tastes, competences and skills within specific communal contexts, paying particular attention to the impact of class position. These issues are examined in the context of the competitions, concerts and street parades that are central to the social lives of thousands of band members and supporters in Northern Ireland.

Contents:

Contexts, purposes and methodologies – Music and embodied identities – Parading traditions in Ulster – Part-music flute bands and the contest world – Melody flute bands and the parading world – ‘Flow’, boundary creation and boundary transcendence – Class and aesthetics in Melody and Blood and Thunder flute bands – Music, meaning and politics: identities formed and transformed in practice.

Gordon Ramsey holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Queen’s University Belfast for his research into Ulster marching bands. He currently teaches at Queen’s and remains an active musician, performing with two flute bands.

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You can order this book here
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International Conference

June 27^th-July 1st, 2012

University of Ulster, Magee Campus, City of Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Call for papers

The Tailor’s Twist

A study in text, photographs and graphic design of the fiddler Ben Lennon of Kiltyclogher, Co. Leitrim.

Ben Lennon is known widely as a stylistic performer and teacher in the national and international world of Irish Traditional music. He began playing the fiddle at the age of ten, growing up in an atmosphere of home, céilí-house music-making and served his time with his father as a tailor. He developed his skills in post-World War 11 London among superb artisans and there immersed himself in a cosmopolitan city lifestyle. Back on Irish soil he returned to traditional music in its headiest revival years, first in Limerick and then Cork, while also engaged as an innovator and organiser in major clothing businesses. He returned north to Leitrim after twenty five years and relocated himself in local music, going on to teach his instrument, and to record and broadcast.

Ben’s life is documented here in words by writer Fintan Vallely and he is presented within his music society in a hundred and more striking photographs by international award-winner Nutan Jacques Pirapez. These elements are integrated by a vigorous, complementary design by Martin Gaffney as the visual story of a personal journey in music by a commentator who has a bird’s eye view that is a panorama of the technological and artistic transformation from the old Ireland to the new, from traditional music redundancy to its artistic supremacy.

The text is based on interviews done By Fintan Vallely in June, 2010, as well as on other conversations with Ben and on his own personal biographical notes; photographs represent conviviality, community, vitality and joy and cover a wide span of years with emphasis on the contemporary. The book is tenderly endorsed by Séamus Connolly, Ciaran Carson provides a poetic Prologue and Fr. Séamus Quinn a touching epilogue, and it includes comment by Maurice, Brian and David Lennon, by Gabriel McArdle, Desi Wilkinson, John Carty and Andy Dickson.

160 pages, full colour, large format; 42,000 words text, 120 photographs, 34 notated tunes; price €25

The book can be purchased here

Summary

The Tailor’s Twist was conceived by Nutan Jacques Piraprez and the concept developed with Martin Gaffney and Fintan Vallely working as Friends of Ben Lennon – FOBL. It includes both contemporary images of Ben and material from Nutan’s photographic archive assembled over several decades. Additional informative imagery has been assembled by Martin Gaffney from archival and other resources and from Ben Lennon’s and the Lennon family’s memorabilia. Other images courtesy of Derek Speirs (Report), Fintan Vallely and others as credited.

Song texts quoted by Gabriel McArdle and tune transcriptions by Gerry (fiddle) O’Connor and Fintan Vallely. Niamh Parsons did the interview transcriptions, Áine Hensey helped with captions, and numerous others provided support and additional information.

The project was made possible by research and development funding generously provided by the Deis Traditional music support initiative of An Comhairle Ealaíon – The Arts Council of Ireland. Supplementary funding for travel and research was given also by The Coleman Traditional Irish Music Centre, now CCÉ’s Regional Resource Centre for counties Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Leitrim and Fermanagh. The Tailor’s Twist has had the unstinting cooperation of Ben Lennon himself, and is inspired by all his friends throughout Ireland who have been hugely appreciative in their thousands of hours of music-making and late-night holding court with him over the decades.

ITMA are pleased to announce the release of its latest publication

All the days of his life : Eddie Butcher in his own words : songs, stories and memories of Magilligan, Co Derry is the latest publication in the Studies in Irish traditional music / Taighde ar cheol dúchais Éireann series from the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

This illustrated record of the life and songs of Eddie Butcher (1900-1980), an outstanding singer from Magilligan, Co Derry, brings back a vanished way of rural life and verbal entertainment. Hugh Shields (1929-2008) was teaching in Coleraine when he first met Eddie in Magilligan in 1953. Their musical friendship continued until Eddie’s death. During this period Hugh recorded and published a large repertory of songs from Eddie. The words and notated music of 67 unpublished songs, together with stories and recollections, are given in this book. It is accompanied by three CDs with Eddie’s singing of all the songs.

For more detailed information please see:

http://www.itma.ie/images/uploads/eddiebutcherpressrelease%281%29.pdf

The book is available for purchase from the ITMA online shop http://www.itma.ie/itmashop/product/eddie-butcher/