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

Aided by screen photos, videos and recordings, Barney McKenna and John Sheahan were joined on the road in Germany by Dubliners past and present for a series of memorial concerts.

It has rang out at packed sports arena, been done to death by drunks at closing time,denounced as sectarian, balladed, rocked and punked.
Often mistaken as a folk song, The Fields of Athenry was actually written by Dublin songwriter Pete St John in the mid 1970s. It is set during the Great Famine which devestated Ireland [...]

Detailed interview with the man at the heart of the Pogues at http://blogs.pitch.com/wayward/2009/10/wayward_qa_interview_with_philip_chevron_the_pogues.php

There is only one Galway Bay – but there are two songs of that name. The first, known to many as The Old Galway Bay was written by-
Francis Fahy (1854-1935).
Born on September 29, 1854, into a family of 17, eight of whom survived. Francis Fahy’s father, Thomas, came from the Burren area and his mother [...]

McAlpine’s Fusiliers is a lively, successful Australian Celtic Rock group … More at  http://www.myspace.com/mcalpinesfusiliers

Alan Gilsenan’s frank and intimate film about the life and stage career of Liam Clancy goes on general release in Ireland. It is a portrait of what’s behind the performer’s mask and where he is today. Review at culch.ie

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. [...]

A record company put ideals before profit – and survived.

The Dublin City Ramblers are teaming  up with the Southern rock supergroup The Legends of Southern Rock to present a dual cultural concert …

Renowned sideman Declan Sinnott now has his own band, Small Town Talk

Brothers Christy Moore and Luka Bloom have inspired a nd guided each other through lives filled with music

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

He is the man with the longest CV in Irish music. Donal Lunny was born in 1947 into a large family in Tullamore before moving to Newbridge, Co Kildare. His mother came from Ranafast in the Donegal Gaeltacht, his father from Enniskillen. He shunned early attempts to teach him the piano and his introduction to [...]

I never met Bob Dylan but I sang with Pecker Dunne – Christy Moore
Pecker Dunne was born into a Wexford travelling family. He was actually born in a horse-drawn caravan in Castlebar, Co Mayo, on April 1, 1932. He tells us in the song Wexford that his father was a fiddle player and was known [...]