51 f N
icholas Carolan is, in many senses, the public face of tradi- tional music in Ireland. A dap- per, affable, former teacher from Drogheda in County
Louth, he first came to national promi- nence when, from 1983 until 1986, he pre- sented the RTÉ radio series The Irish Phonograph (assisted by producer Harry Bradshaw), based upon their research into old recordings. Since 1994 he has also pre- sented Come West Along the Road, a hugely popular RTÉ television programme now in its fifteenth season, and broadcast at the prime time of 7.30 on Friday evenings, which draws upon archive footage from RTÉ’s and other TV stations’ coverage of Irish music since the early 1960s. The programme also has an Irish- language version, Siar an Bóthar, on the TG4 channel and four compilation DVDs from the series have been released.
Before sitting down to conduct my
interview, Nicholas gave me his personal tour of the building, introducing me to the staff (all musicians or singers) and describ- ing the Archive’s functions. Broadly speak- ing, these can be divided into four areas: collection, preservation, organisation and dissemination. ITMA not only collects all published material related to Irish tradi- tional music (as well as from Scottish, Manx, Welsh, English and North American traditions), but also undertakes its own audio and video recordings of singers, musicians and dancers (some 1,300 individ- uals so far) as well as lectures, recitals, con- certs and other public events. A systematic process of preservation includes storage of items in files and boxes made from acid- free paper or card (to prevent damage by record sleeves or CD liners) and copying all materials into digital formats. Materials are methodically organised not only by standard library protocols, but via an extremely powerful network computer system (visit the digital catalogue and you’ll soon see how fast it is). Lastly, dis- semination occurs via public access (whether by personal visits or contact or via ITMA’s website) and through its own publishing activities and support for other organisations involved in the field of Irish traditional music.
Back downstairs in the staff common room I take Nicholas back to 1987 and ask the question “Why did the Archive come into existence?”
Nicholas’s response is immediate. “I’d taken it back even further. I’d take it back to 1851 and then even further back to 1792 because there has long been a feeling that traditional music was one of the artistic treasures of the country and was also one that was most at risk compared to other art forms. So the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival could be seen as the first organised institu- tional impulse to collect and preserve this material, clearly for further use, and Bunting published it for dissemination.”
Nicholas then moves forward to 1851, explaining how the Society for the Preser- vation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland was “very consciously set up after the devastation wrought upon traditional culture by The Famine to preserve the music, using the only recording device available at the time, pen and paper.” The product of this was the 1855 publication of volume one of The Petrie Collection of Ancient Irish Music.
This urge to collect and thus attempt to maintain traditions is intrinsically relat- ed to Irish history and British colonisation.
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Ireland’s native art forms have long been largely oral or physical (song, music and dance), far less durable than statuary, paintings or architecture, and always under threat from the country’s curse of mass emigration. More modern initiatives have included the establishment of the Irish Folklore Commission in 1935, the for- mation of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann in the early 1950s and Na Píobairí Uilleann (the Irish pipers’ association) in 1966. How- ever, in terms of ITMA’s origins, Nicholas turns to the foundation of the Folk Music Society of Ireland in 1971 and its intention to “educate about, promote and preserve traditional music”. One of the Society’s co- founders was Breandán Breathnach (his tune collections comprise the four-volume Ceol na Rince na Éireann) who envisaged the idea of a national archive and began actively promoting the concept when he became a member of the Arts Council in the 1980s, chairing a committee which for- mulated a report proposing such a body.
reathnach died in 1985, but, as Nicholas remembers, “There was another parallel scheme in progress”. Nicholas was the Folk Music Society’s honorary
secretary, but had also been privately indulging a personal interest in the discography of Irish music, supported by Arts Council funding, which took him to both Britain and the USA to research the various labels which released Irish records (first in shellac, then vinyl formats). This led to the previously mentioned collabo- ration with Harry Bradshaw on The Irish Phonograph radio series. As a result, “we received many offers of old recordings, 78s especially, but older reel-to-reel recordings as well. We were getting more than we could possibly use in the very small window allowed by the radio series so we put in a very modest proposal to the Arts Council about preserving this material. The Arts Council put the two ideas together, these practical proposals from people who obviously had a track record in achieving things, and it allocat- ed funding of £20,000 for a two-year pilot project, commencing in 1987.”
Finance also arrives via a ‘Friends of ITMA’ scheme, individual donations, and funding from the Mícheál Ó Domhnaill Trust (creat- ed in memory of hugely influential musi- cian who co-founded The Bothy Band and Nightnoise and also recorded with fiddlers Kevin Burke and Paddy Glackin). Add to that various project funding and the huge support of the public in supplying private recordings and other material and it becomes clear that ITMA is not just an ongoing concern but also one for which digitisation has become paramount.
In 2012 ITMA reached its 25th anniver- sary and embarked upon an ambitious programme of initiatives to celebrate the occasion. Alongside publications such as Tunes Of The Munster Pipers, Volume 2 and continued work on the Goodman col- lection of Irish airs, Nicholas is justifiably proud of the work undertaken to make an increasing number of the Archive’s sound and video recordings available for public access. Enter the ‘Digital Library’ section of the website and you’ll discover a munifi- cence of sound and video recordings, pho- tographs, song collections and, the current jewel in the crown, the Innishowen Song Project (
http://www.itma.ie/inishowen).
Nicholas describes this as a micro-site and is clearly enthused by the prospect of developing more of them. Drawing hugely upon the generous donation of work by Jimmy McBride, who began collecting songs from older singers from the Innishowen Peninsula of County Donegal in the early 1970s and still organises the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle and its related annual festival (
www.inishowensinging.ie/), this part of ITMA’s online archive includes more than 2,000 items, including numerous aural and video recordings (some undertaken by ITMA itself) of singers, transcriptions of songs, and assorted other publications.
“We’ve been putting up various pack- ages, linking songs, music, still images, and publications in various ways,” Nicholas explains, “but this is essentially a new medium which incorporates elements of both television and radio, integrated into one entity. We chose a particular facet of Irish music, the English language song tra- dition of North Donegal, but, now we’ve set the template, it could equally be Irish language singing in Kerry, uilleann piping in County Wicklow or as many rooms as there are in the mansion, of course. If the materials exist, then other integrated sites could be created.”
Nicholas Carolan
Said pilot rapidly became established as a permanent model, overseen by a board whose collective members (each serving only three years) have always spanned the range from field researchers to academics via singers, instrumentalists, broadcasters, organisers and those involved in the com- mercial side of Irish music.
I ask how ITMA is funded. Nicholas responds: “Our main core bread-and-but-
ter funding comes from the Arts Council, v620,000 for 2012-2013, and our second main funder is the Arts Council of North- ern Ireland which provides £30,000.”
I pose Nicholas the question whether such technological advances are at odds with the musical tradition. His reply is utterly to the point. “We exist primarily to document and feed into the contemporary tradition, but we have to fight against a stereotype or misconception all the time; we’re about a contemporary art form, not a historic art form. We collect materials within our area of interest; we’re also unusual in producing our own materials within that sphere of interest. Between our 21st and 25th anniversaries the dia- logue has changed considerably and that’s why we’ve put huge investment in the last few years into the digital side. That has enormously increased our reach.”
As I walk back via the neatly organised paths of Merrion Square, pondering these conversations, I realise how glad Ireland should be that its musical heritage is in such safe and, dare I say, kindly hands.
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