Broadcaster Ciaran Mac Mathuna’s contribution to Irish music was invaluable.

Pádraig O’Keeffe was born in October 1887 in Glounthane, near Scartaglen and Castleisland, Co Kerry. His father, John, was a school principal and he was the eldest of nine children. His mother, Margaret O’Callaghan came from a musical family and his uncle, Cal O’Callaghan, was a well-known fiddler.
After training in Dublin he became a schoolmaster [...]

Tony MacMahon was born in 1939 and grew up in the Turnpike in Ennis. His father, PJ, came from Kilmaley, not far from Miltown Malbay, and an area steeped in traditional music and dancing. His mother played the concertina. Joe Cooley, who worked in Ennis for several years was a regular visitor to the house. [...]

Horslips was made up of a group of like-minded musicians, who happened to work in advertising in Dublin. The success of their single Johnny’s Wedding led to their 1972 album Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part and Celtic rock had found its feet. Along with Planxty and the Bothy Band, they changed how a generation [...]

Biography of the Irish traditional tin whistle player Mary Bergin.

BORN in Kilnadeema, south of Loughrea in Co Galway in 1939, Joe Burke was introduced to music at an early age. His mother played the box in the old style. He recalls that he was four years of age when he first started playing. “There was always dancing in the house,” he told one interviewer. [...]

Biography of the Irish traditional music fiddle player Mairtin Byrnes from Co Galway.

Dennis Cahill was born to Irish parents in the southside of Chicago in 1954. At age ten he became interested in folk music such as Peter Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, and got his first guitar at that time. In his late teens he began playing in the local clubs in the folk scene [...]

Liz Carroll was born in Visitation Parish on the south side of Chicago on September 19, 1956. Her mother came from Ballyhahill, west Limerick, and father from near Tullamore, Co Offaly. Her grandfather on her mother’s side was a fiddler while her father, Kevin, played the accordion in the old push-and-draw or C#D style.
Liz started [...]

One of the big names of Irish fiddle playing, Bobby Casey was born at the Crosses of Annagh near Miltown Malbay, Co Clare. He has lived in London since 1952. His father John ‘Scully’ Casey, who died when Bobby was 15 or 16, was a well-known fiddler as well as being a flute and concertina [...]

Paddy Canny was born in Glendree, near Tulla in Co Clare, in 1919. His father Pat played the fiddle, as did both his brothers, and the blind fiddle instructor Paddy MacNamara boarded with the family during the winter and gave music lessons to many local children. His mother, Catherine McNamara, came from Feakle. In 1961 [...]

Willie Clancy was an iconic figure in the revival of the uillinn pipes and traditional music from the 1960s onwards. He was born in Miltown Malbay in west Clare on December 24, 1918. His father Gilbert played flute and concertina and had known and listened to legendary blind travelling Clare piper Garrett Barry. Willie played [...]

Julia Clifford was born on June 19, 1914, into a musical family at Lisheen, Gneevgullia in the Sliabh Luachra area north of Killarney, Co Kerry. The travelling fiddle teacher Padraig O’Keeffe tutored both Julia [...]

Johnny Connolly was born on the now-abandoned island of Inis Bearacháin, off Leitir Móir in the Connemara Gaeltacht. Once, when he was about nine or ten, with his parents away at the currach races in Leitir Móir, he got his hands on his older brother’s melodeon. Soon he was playing a tune on it. By [...]

THE great Irish novelist John McGahern once said that he expected his characters were waiting for him to die off before taking on lives of their own. The accordeon music of Joe Cooley has taken on a life of his own since his death in 1973.
Joe Cooley was born into a musical family in Peterswell, [...]

Fiddle and concertina player, singer, composer and storyteller, Martin (Junior) Crehan was born on January 17, 1908, in Bonavilla, Mullagh, Co Clare, into a house of flute players, concertina players and dancers. His father was a teacher at Shanaway National School. Junior learned concertina from his mother and later when learning fiddle was greatly influenced [...]

Associated by many with the revived fortunes of the concertina, Elizabeth Markham was born on December 6, 1885 in Gower, Cooraclare, in south west Clare. Better known to traditional musicians as “Mrs Crotty,” she grew up on a small farm in a home that was full of music. Her mother learned to play the fiddle [...]

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 [...]

ALTHOUGH now an iconic figure of Donegal fiddle music, as a musician John Doherty was very much an individualist. But more than any other musician, he did draw attention to that county’s distinctive fiddle style.
The musical lineage of the Doherty and McConnell families goes back many generations of Travellers that alternated between settled and life [...]

Admired by the many people who stopped to listen to him at fairs and sporting events in the 1930s and ’40s, the travelling piper Johnny Doran played an influential role in the revival of the uilleann pipes in Ireland from the 1950s onwards. He played with imagination and flair and his music continues to inspire [...]