Dear Editor,

I enjoyed Nicholas Carolan’s article ‘From 2RN to International Meta-Community: Irish National Radio and Traditional Music’ and, indeed, have been an admirer of his work for traditional music for many years. Given that this article is based on his 2001 Thomas Davis lecture, could I update you on RTÉ lyric fm’s current traditional music programming? We now have a specialist traditional music show – Grace Notes, presented by Ellen Cranitch – on Tuesdays 8-9pm throughout the year. Within this slot we try to cover a range of approaches to highlighting, promoting and interrogating the tradition. So, in addition to playing traditional music CDs, we also record for broadcast traditional music concerts including Music Network’s ‘Best of Irish’ series and West Cork Music’s ‘Masters of Tradition’ festival in August each year of which we have been the media sponsor since its inception. We also make special programmes with musicians where our guest presenter, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, interviews and plays tunes with such notable artists as Jackie Daly, Steve Cooney and Padraig O’Loughlin. Recently we travelled to Donegal to record a number of these focusing on the Inis Owen penninsula.

Traditional music is also regularly played on The Blue of the Night with Paul Herriott and The Breakfast Show with Carl Corcoran and on other programmes throughout the week.

Eoin Brady
Producer, RTÉ Lyric fm
Cornmarket Square
Limerick