Singer Dolores Keane (58) was banned from driving for four years and fined €300 for drunk-driving at Glenties District Court (June 28, 2012). The former De Danann singer is now on her third driving ban. The singer had admitted being nearly twice over the alcohol limit when driving outside the courthouse and less than 80m [...]

Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamonn Gilmore has criticised supporters of a cultural boycott of Israel, who are accused of bullying the music group Dervish into abandoning an Israeli tour, as “totally unacceptable”. Justice Minister Alan Shatter had already accused Dervish’s critics of “cyber bullying”.
Dervish had pulled out the tour of Israel because of an [...]

Fiddle player and composer Tommy Peoples has been elected to Aosdana.
Born near St Johnston in Donegal, Tommy Peoples has been a member of traditional Irish music groups 1691 and the Bothy Band and an influential and respected player in his own right. He lives in Co Clare.
Aosdána was set up in 1981 by Charlie Haughey [...]

Singer Louis O’Carroll died on March 2, 2012, following a road acident in his native Kerry. The popular balladeer was walking to a friend’s house in his home town of Listowel when he was struck by a car but was not, apparently, badly hurt and told the woman driver he was fine and able to [...]

A song based on The Rocky Road to Dublin will be the official anthem of the Irish fans at this summer’s European Football Championships in Poland and the Ukraine.
The the lyrics to The Rocky Road to Poland were compiled from suggestions put forward by listeners to Ray D’Arcy’s Today FM Show. Their contributions were then [...]

Long-time London resident Brian Rooney heads the list of recipients of the TG4 Gradam Ceoil 2012 (Traditional Music Awards) announced on February 2. Born and reared near Kiltyclogher in north-Leitrim, Brian’s fiddle playing soon earned him a place at the very centre of London’s vibrant traditional music scene in the 1970s and his recordings then [...]

Singer Tommy Makem has been nominated as a potential inductee into the Irish American Hall of Fame. “Mr. Makem is a pioneer as far as Irish folk music is concerned, and well deserving of this honour if he is to receive it,” said Mike Shelvin, a member of the Irish American Heritage Center’s board of [...]

This weekend Dublin City Hall plays host to a gala benefit concert for the Pecker Dunne. The event which takes place on Sunday, January 29 at 5pm, and is organised by writer, actor and Dublin City Councillor Mannix Flynn as part of this year’s Temple Bar Tradfest, aims to raise funds for Pecker. The singer, [...]

Flute player Tim McHugh from Newport in Mayo was announced as winner of the Seán Ó Riada gold medal and prize money of €2500 on Friday night. He was amongst 15 traditional flute and whistle players who took to the stage in the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork on Friday 13 [...]

The music of composer Seán Ó Riada will be celebrated by Louth Contemporary Music Society (LCMS) when a unique arrangement of his Mass is performed on Sunday, March 10, 2012, in Dundalk.
The new arrangement was completed by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.  A native of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, he most recently has been a composer-in-residence at Harvard University and [...]

After a rollercoaster week of about-turns and top level political intervention, Derry has been selected to host the 2013 All-Ireland Fleadh, the first time the event will take place in Northern Ireland.The 31-member central executive of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Éireann met in Dublin  yesterday (January 28) to decide between Derry, Sligo and Ennis for an event [...]

the Dubliners are to be honoured for their lifetime achievements at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. The winners of the awards – to be presented on February 8 – were announced by presenter Mike Harding on his British-broadcast Radio 2 show.
Meanwhile The Dubliners will celebrate their 50th anniversary concert in the historic [...]

Molly Malone was a character invented to send up the Irish, according to a new study into the roots of the song. Experts insist there isn’t any evidence to prove that Dublin’s most famous female ever lived in the capital or that she was a prostitute by night.
Professor Daithi O hOgain, from University College Dublin, [...]

Paddy Glackin was told he would have to buy a seat for his fiddle on a Ryanair flight from Dublin to Newcastle and nearly missed a music festival in the North of England city.
The highly regarded fiddle player has travelled all over the world with his fiddle and had always been allowed to take it [...]

Muiris O Rochain, one of the founders of the annual Willie Clancy Summer School in Co Clare, has died.
He was born in 1944 to publicans and shopkeepers Jim and Nora Rohan of John Street, Dingle, Co Kerry.  After qualifying as a teacher, he taught in Cahersiveen and Waterville where he also collected folklore from local [...]

FullSet have won the €5000 RTÉ Radio/RAAP traditional music bursary. FullSet is made up Seán McCarthy, Janine Redmond, Andrew Meaney, Teresa Horgan, Michael Harrison and Eamonn Moloney, with members hailing mainly from Munster – Cork and Tipperary – complimented by two Dubs!  FullSet released their debut album, Notes at Liberty, earlier this year, and they [...]

Christy Moore’s new album Folk Tale was released on October 28, 2011. “It is a mixture of tragedy, poetry and humour”, according to the singer’s website. The third track My Little Honda 50 is an ode to the impact of the Honda 50 on rural Ireland in the 80s. Easter Snow is a tribute to [...]

Galway born flute player Mike Rafferty died on September 13, 2011, in New Jersey. He was 84. He had been in failing health for a year, his daughter Mary said.
Mike Rafferty hailed from a small farm in Ballinakill, East Galway region. He was taught the wooden flute by his father, who was nicknamed Barrel because [...]

Within days of Michael Flatley saying he is finally quitting the stage, comes news that his two spectacular performances of Lord of the Dance at the Cliffs of Moher at the start of September had been called off.
The Irish dancer, who last performed for an audience in February, had just turned down a mutli-million euro [...]

WRITING in New Spotlight magazine in early 1967, Joe Dolan recalled the setting up of Sweeney’s Men and the . . .
Rocky Road to Success
In May 1966 Johnny Moynihan and Andy Irvine met Joe Dolan in Galway. They had played together before around the country, but never as a group. Moynihan suggested they form a [...]