Making their U.S. debut at New York City’s Joyce Public House on Saturday, March 29, are the Collectors, a new group visiting from Ireland that features ex-NYC fiddle player Matt Mancuso and button accordion player Donal Murphy. Both Mancuso and Murphy are top musicians (they first got together in 2022 on one of Joanie Madden’s Folk ‘n Irish Cruises) that can boast of impressive resumés that include acts such as Lord of the Dance, Four Men and a Dog, the Eileen Ivers Band, the Mickey Finns, Sliabh Notes, Cathie Ryan, Breaking Trad, and Grada.
Having first performed together in 2022 on Joanie Madden’s Folk ‘n Irish Cruise, the group recently competed a European tour. On the 29th, their show will feature local luminaries Brian Tracey (Mickey Finns, the Prodigals) and Alan Murray (Solas) playing in support. Over the past several years we’ve seen a sharp downturn in the number of acts coming over from Ireland, so give this one a look. For more information, visit here.
In other news this week, I’ve got a book readers need to know about. “Heading to the Fleadh: Festival cultural revival and Irish traditional music, 1951-1969” by Méabh Ní Fhuartháin is a comprehensive look at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann’s early years that examines how it started, developed and set the tone for the way many perceive Irish music today. It is a fabulous book that historically-minded fans of traditional music who want to better understand Fleadh as it was – and by extension, as it is today – will relish.
Ní Fhuartháin is the Head of Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway, and over the years has published extensively in academic journals. She is the current editor of “Ethnomusicology Ireland,” a top journal in the field and a widely recognized and respected expert in Irish Music Studies.
In this new book, Ní Fhuartháin addresses a cornerstone of traditional Irish music’s history, the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. The time frame she’s targeted (which covers the period during which the Fleadh was held on Whit weekend) is particularly consequential because it covers Comhaltas’s establishment, its early development, how it established its initial “identity” as an exclusively grassroots, volunteerist organization, and then its early maturation, when it became a more mainstream outfit with a “professional, funded management structure supported by a grassroots base” that viewed itself as “the facilitator and gatekeeper of Irish traditional music” more formally.
The book includes seven chapters, an introduction, and an afterword. The first chapter lays out the Fleadh’s precedents and demonstrates how Ireland, as it was coming out of a period of social change, was ripe for the revival efforts that led to both the Fleadh and a re-discovering the country’s cultural identity. The three chapters that follow examine Fleadhanna from 1951-57 and offer insight into what happened at these events, what they “meant” in an abstract sense, and how they led to a change in the Fleadh’s nature. What I find most interesting across these chapters is how deftly Ní Fhuartháin contrasts the Fleadh’s early emphasis on musicality – something that really consolidated Ireland’s broader musical community in the early days – against the economic windfall the Fleadh brought its host communities. This yielded a sort of philosophical friction between art and commerce that is apparent in today’s Fleadhs still.
Ní Fhuartháin’s analysis of adjudication in chapter six, which is called “The Right Kind of Traditional Music,” is especially interesting. If you’ve ever been involved in Fleadh competition, you’ll be familiar with the fraught nature of adjudication “politics,” but Ní Fhuartháin’s writing here sheds interesting light on the subject, blending the research of the first three chapters with competition fact and folklore in a most insightful way. Chapter seven looks at the relationship between sessions and the expression of traditional music at the Fleadh. After a short but well crafted discussion of the history of the practice, she explores the importance of spontaneous music making at the fleadh and raises some of the issues that have surrounded it at Fleadhanna over the years. It’s fascinating stuff.
“Heading to the Fleadh” is a comprehensive, clearly written study that parses the beginnings of a hugely important aspect of traditional music’s development in the 20th century. Teachers in college-level Irish studies classes will find this book an indispensable addition to their syllabi, but I think anyone who has ever worked with Comhaltas on an organizational level or competed in the Fleadh Cheoil ne hÉireann will find this book noteworthy. Musicians, in particular, will marvel at not only how the Fleadh has changed, but at the number of legendary musicians who were involved in its early years – their participation and dedication tells a fascinating story. Very highly recommended! “Heading to the Fleadh” is published by Cork University Press.
