Funding for the arts is essential, but without the right approach it can blunt artists’ entrepreneurial skills, writes Toner Quinn

In the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland, visitors are sometimes frustrated because they speak Irish to locals and are responded to in English.

A new generation of musicians and singers is pulling the English folk scene alongside its Irish and Scottish neighbours, pointing to a new era of collaboration – and perhaps even the healing of old wounds, writes Toner Quinn

The direct impact the new digital culture is having on music, in terms of access, dissemination and copyright, is well documented, but the indirect impact less so.

‘I mbliana ní raibh aon urraíocht ar fáil faraor, leis an tseachtain ealaíne is oidhreachta a reachtáil mar a bhíonns againn go hiondúil.’ Or, in English: ‘Unfortunately, no sponsorship was...

The rise and fall of the Irish new music scene.

Fidil, 3, FID002CD

The search for a sustainable business model for the producing and selling of music in the digital age persists, but it is crippled by a narrow view of the internet.

Arc Light (Navigator 20)

For nine years, I have been poised as a magazine publisher, ready to leap into the virtual world entirely. From about 2006, I was expecting it every month. It has yet to happen.

Has the affection for the piano in the home sustained – or is it now a piece of technology to be superseded?

A radical new vision of music subsidy is needed

Parents sing, sing, sing to their children in the pre-school years... and then it stops. Why?

Arts funding continues to look vulnerable in this economic recession, but it always has been, and we have to seriously look at why this is.Arts communities have continually put forward economic, cultural and social arguments for funding for

How the arts can get through this recession

Seanchairde/Old Friends3-Scones-2008-001The fiddle-playing of Dermy Diamond is the revelation on this trio recording. Although a familiar figure on the Irish traditional music scene, this is the first recording that carries his name.

There are many issues involved in writing about music, some of which are addressed in this issue in articles by John McLachlan and Bob Gilmore, but traditional-music criticism has problems all of its own.Unlike other genres, the body of hig

Welcome to the first issue of The Journal of Music.Our philosophy is simple: we look for the bigger picture in musical life, and we ask those at its coal face – musicians, composers and listeners – to write about it.We connect across genres

What values are inherent in traditional Irish music?

On learning traditional Irish music from outside Ireland

In 1996, for a speech given at the Crossroads Conference in Dublin, Tony MacMahon wrote the following: ‘Underlying the affection of a large section of the public for [traditional music and song] is a preconception – that apart from its ente

Before JMI began in 2000, I wrote down a list of people I intended to ask to write for the magazine. They were people I regarded as cornerstones in Irish musical life.

How outstanding traditional musicians separate themselves from the crowd

For over a decade, John Kelly has been broadcasting his own distinct mix of music on national radio, first with the BBC, then Eclectic Ballroom on Radio Ireland (now Today FM) and Mystery Train on RTÉ Radio 1, establishing a reputation as a

In a new series of columns, Toner Quinn looks at contemporary issues in traditional music.

Improvements in music education are down to political will

Music education and the musical country

In April 1994, the seven-minute performance of Riverdance, combining the music of Bill Whelan with a reinterpretation of traditional Irish dance, had an immediate and remarkable impact on the Irish public. Shining a new, international...

The reputation of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the organisation founded in 1951 to promote Irish traditional music, reaches far and wide. Seldom is the rise of this music over the past fifty years mentioned without paying tribute to its...

Which social groups are more likely to attend different music events? Why are some people many times more likely to be involved in music than others? Are some people excluded from musical life?

In 2008, fiddle player Martin Hayes received the TG4 Gradam Ceoil award. Toner Quinn explores the work of an artist who has walked new ground in traditional music.

One of the Forum for Music in Ireland’s most important roles has been its highlighting of the slow development of music education in Ireland. It does this through its bi-annual meetings, its website and its campaigns.

The third annual festival of the Institute of Ideas in London – The Battle of Ideas – took place in October.

From Rathfarnam in County Dublin, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh is a fiddle player, whistle player and uilleann piper.

The interview with fiddle player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh in this issue raises the issue of experimentation in traditional music, and it is coincidental that the Contemporary Music Centre has just commissioned a study ‘on the feasibility...

What is new in the Arts Council’s relationship with the traditional arts?

The matter of providing state-funded music education services is still unresolved.

On tunes and musicians' relationships to tunes.

Talk about ‘music education’ in Ireland is actually about classical music education.

A review of the recent Temple Bar Trad traditional music festival in Dublin.

The idea of an avant-garde wing in Irish traditional music may seem a contradiction in terms, but it shouldn’t be, argues Toner Quinn.

Just as this issue is going to print, the Arts Council has published its report, The Public and the Arts 2006, providing a snapshot of the behaviour and attitudes of Irish people as regards the arts.

Public-service broadcasting is a vital two-way conduit for those seriously interested in music.

For reasons that perhaps have more to do with Zeitgeist than design, this issue is punctuated by thoughts, comments and comparisons that consider the music and culture of Ireland in the context of the wider world.

Na Píobairí Uilleann's 39th Anual Tionól, which took place in Dublin.

It is possible that, over the past five years or so of JMI, Seán Ó Riada has received more mentions in the magazine than any other Irish musical figure.

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, 23 February 2006The challenge for Trihornophone was clear from the start: trumpet, alto sax, baritone sax, and drum kit appeared – where’s the rest of the band?

-- This open article is from the Journal of Music archive, 2000–2009.For 39 euro per year, you receive six copies in the post plus full online access to all the latest issues.Visit www.journalofmusic.com/subscribe-- Mermaid Arts Centre, Bra

The BBC Radio 4 Reith lectures by Daniel Barenboim.

Little captures the imagination like the idea of the ‘traditional music purist’ – though it’s a notion rife with inconsistencies.

Various venues, Temple Bar, Dublin, 26-29 January 2006Although Dublin has the greatest concentration of traditional musicians in the country, Temple Bar Trad, which took place over the last weekend in January, was the first broad-based fest

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co.

For all the ties that bind Ireland to England – not least in family and employment – it remains in our perception a force to be pushed against. In this jostling, there are expressions of English culture which we are prone to overlook.

There is a new and very large advertisement for alcohol on the main street in my town, and the image is of a stylish and very contemporary-looking Irishman, dreadlocked and in his twenties, moodily playing a harp which has been painted Iris

It seems timely that we lead in this issue with an article that focuses on jazz, for there are many important developments taking place at present in the jazz scene in Ireland.

Commitment to tradition versus experimentation.

I am sure that our lead article will ring a bell with anyone who has ever tried to explain their area of musical speciality to someone with entirely different musical interests.

The news that the Arts Council has allocated 3 million euro to the traditional arts for 2006, with that figure set to increase in 2007 and 2008, is both welcome and significant.

Reading aloud Folk Music and Dances of Ireland...

Irish traditional music has played an interesting role in the writing on Irish classical music through the years – sometimes an inspiration to composers, sometimes a burden – but, asks Toner Quinn, do traditional musicians recognise themsel

Gerry Godley’s article on the common ground that traditional musicians and jazz musicians share reminds me again that there is an extraordinary amount of music out there that I don’t make enough time to seek out and listen to.

Understanding the decline in the standard of traditional music CDs.

Without giving away too much, one point raised in Axel Klein’s travelogue of his recent (and most enterprising) trip to the US can be commented upon here. Mr Klein suggests that it is ‘Irish people’ (and not he – who is German and based...

Many thanks to those of you who took the time to fill out our online survey. The responses have been detailed and full of good ideas, and we intend trying to bring as many of them as possible to fruition over the coming year.

There are so many different lines of musical questioning taken in this issue that it would be unwise of me to try and summarise them or somehow join up the ideas as an introduction.

‘Why don’t traditional musicians play slow airs anymore?’ asks our front cover for this issue.

In 1976, Frankie Gavin, aged just nineteen, made one of the outstanding fiddle albums of the latter half of the twentieth century, Traditional Dance Music of Ireland with bouzouki player Alec Finn.

It was only after the interview with Frankie Gavin that I once again thought about the need for an Aosdána-type body for Irish traditional musicians.

‘The Inside Track’ was a day long seminar on traditional music which took place in the Glór Irish Music Centre, Ennis, at the end of last November.

That JMI has raised more questions than provided answers over the past three years goes without saying. Few will be surprised or bothered by this.

Many who have had the benefit of a music education are surprised to learn how many others go without.

Ireland’s alcoholic nature, though coming under increased scrutiny and criticism in recent national debates, still has a true ally in traditional music.

Ireland in the 1990s. A country in the throes of change and traditional music was demonstrating in musical terms some of the tensions that such a transition creates.

Who puts the limits on what we can do, creatively or imaginatively?

Ireland makes no creative use of young talent and energy beyond keeping the multi-nationals and the economy ticking over.

Still looking for silence fifty years after 4' 33".

Barra Ó Cinnéide's new book, Riverdance: The Phenomenon, presents a market idea of self-confidence – 'now you have it – now you don't'.

Traditional musicians and Aosdána.

The growing controversy regarding a separate 'Traditional Arts Council'.

Is Irish traditional music anti-intellectual?

Naomi Klein and David Gray are capturing in music and words something distinctive about this particular era.

Irish traditional music still lives under the shadow of the folk revival myth of the 1960s and 1970s, but more and more we will find that our music today will make no sense to folk revival thinking or language.

If JMI’s existence points to anything, it is that Ireland needs many more such ventures.

How is music in Ireland perceived by those who are not involved in it to any serious degree?

John Blacking's commonsense view of all music.

Why can't art and politics mix?

Picking through an interview with six twenty-something Irish composers.

A review of accordion player Tony MacMahon's first solo recording in over thirty years.

How Irish Music magazine makes a nonsense of traditional music.

A review of a the first enyclopaedia of Irish traditional music.

A review of a CD compilation by Robbie Harris of leading bodhrán players.

Introducing a magazine that's all about music and ideas.