Gerdie Cummane was born on October 6, 1917, in Ballyknock, Kilnamona, Co Clare. He started playing the concertina in 1926, learning by “hit and miss” from his father’s humming of tunes.
There weren’t many musicians around in his young days and instruments were very scarce. A man called Tim Ryan was the only man in the parish who could read music, “but he only had an auld bags of a German concertina!”
Gerdie experimented with tin whistle, fiddle and drums until he finally decided the concertina was for him. The has a Jeffries concertina which he has been playing since it was bought in London from a JJ Vickers in 1950. A man from the locality, Paddy Rynne, brought it home and Gerdie paid the princely sum of £14 for it.
Gerdie has never travelled with his music but he is a well-respected performer at the festivals and concerts around Co Clare. He has enjoyed a revival of interest in his playing since the release in May of a CD, Two Gentlemen of Music, which he recorded with fiddler Joe Ryan and Owen O’Neill in his own farmhouse.
Discography
Two Gentlemen of Clare Music, Clachan Music, 2000