Recent Album to Advance Old Irish Music Tradition

(Newswire.net — January 4, 2016) Franklin, TN — The folk music of Ireland is known as Irish traditional music or Irish trad. It is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres in Ireland. These genres are can be described as music styles that emanate from a particular region of the country.  ‘Regional style’  suggests a stable musical region with the fixed boundary created by geographical obstacles, in which communities of musicians, developed in isolation. In reality, regional style is a literate term imposed onto an oral tradition, often describing the music of only one musician, or a small group of musicians from an area who have gained national popularity and thereby are ascribed a regional identity.

One such area is known as East Galway and the small group of musicians in this case was the Ballinakill Céilí Band and The Aughrim Slopes Céilí Band. The music that originated from that area became known as The East Galway Irish Music Tradition (EGIMT).

Eddie Moloney, known affectionately as ‘the gentleman of Irish trad’ was son of Stephen who was born in 1920 and originally from Ballinakill, Loughrea, Co. Galway. He moved to Salthill in 1956. 

Eddie is considered to be the best traditional flute player of his time and a formidable violinist. He was also a member of the Mulhaire Céili Band, and the Shaskeen Céilí Band.

Moloney is also one of Irish trad’s most overlooked and under-appreciated practitioners. However a serious attempt to rectify this situation was made in 2015 when a double album of Eddie’s music was compiled and launched by his son Seán. The launch which was a musical extravaganza featured performances by Frankie and Sean Gavin, members of Shaskeen and the Mulhaire Ceili Band, Joe Burke and Anne Conroy, Carl Hession, Donal Standun, Ballinakill’s Fahey family, the Moloney family and many more.

I sat down with with Seán to learn more about his father Eddie and why he took on this venture.

 “My father died at the age of sixty and I only really got to play with him for about five years before he passed. I managed to capture my uncle Kevin but there were no commercial recordings ever done of my father’s  individual playing. And I decided I needed to make an effort to compile any live recordings that had been done of his playing” 

The new compilation album of Eddie’s music is drawn from solo recordings for radio and TV, as well as music from the National Folklore Collection; the RTÉ, Raidio na Gaeltachta, and Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann archives; the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and from collections by Mick O’Connor,  Father Dan Lyons and Seamus McMathuna,  Shaskeen’s Tom Cussen 

And from recordings of Sean Moloney

“His playing captured East Galway flute and fiddle music, as he played both and played them very well,” says Frankie Gavin, renowned fiddle player from the Irish band called De Danann. “His versions of tunes were second to none. He had the best – whether they were his own, or variants of tunes, or someone else’s. His timing, punctuation, and phrasing were also second to none. There was a warmth to his style that swept you into his world. Eddie was a gentleman of Irish music. He was charming as a man, and as a musician. With that combination you couldn’t go wrong.”

Eddie grew up in Ballinakill, East Galway and had three brothers. He was the second oldest. Jim was the oldest and he played flute and uileann pipes and was not really involved in the band scene. Kevin was the third oldest and Ambrose was the youngest of the four boys. There were five daughters and they were mostly dancers and singers.

Kevin moved to Mayo and did not play out very much. In 1997 he recorded the well-known album clalled Bridging The Gap. It was the last time that he recorded anything. He was 75 when passed away in 2004.

Jack Mulkere was a member of The Aughrim Slopes céilí band and he taught both Eddie and and Kevin Moloney. Mulkere moved to Clare and settled down in a small village between Tulla and Crusheen. He continued to cycle back over the Sliabh Aughty mountains, back to East Galway to continue teaching the young eager students such as Eddie and Kevin. The journey was thirty miles or more over rough and mountainous terrain; such was his love for and desire to pass on the East Galway Irish Music Tradition (EGIMT) to the youngsters of that area.

During my interview with Seán Moloney, he recounted how both Stephen Moloney, his grandfather and Tommy Whelan who used to play the uileann pipes and war pipes would play tunes across the fields to each other. He explained that Ireland had just secured their freedom and up until that point musicians were not allowed to gather to play; they could only play solo. He said that in the early 1900s the Black and Tans would burn a house down if the owner was known to play the uilleann pipes. The pipes had become a strong and vibrant symbol of Irish-ness and pipers always hid their sets in the rafters so that they could not be found. Such were the times back then.

James Moloney was Eddie’s grand-father and he spent time in England and USA between 1851 and 1884. Many years later, he inherited some land and he returned to Ireland where he lived out his remaining days where he was known to be an accomplished operatic singer.

In my conversation with Seán we agreed that there are slight variations in the in the East Galway Irish Music Tradition. For example, EGIMT around the Woodford area was quite a bit slower than his grandfather’s area (Stephen). And Dinny Delaney and Stephen Whyte were pipers and they gave the style to the Aughrim Slopes area of East Galway whereas Jack Fahey, father to Paddy Fahey gave the style to the Ballinakill area of East Galway.

Seán and I finished our discussion by recounting the playfulness of Eddie Kelly, legendary fiddle and button accordion-player from the Eyrecourt region of East Galway. We laughed about his mischievous streak during most of his performances where he would go off on a surprising and new musical tangent. Seán played with him often when he lived in Sligo and I loved hearing the stories about Eddie when he was in his prime, playing all those great tunes and sharing his compositions. It was a heartening way to end a very interesting and compelling conversation.

 

Éilís Crean, Founder of The Irish Gift, Inc, a company that promotes and preserves the East Galway Irish Music Tradition