Launch of Beating Time: The Story of the Irish Bodhrán Willie Clancy Summer School Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare Sunday 6 July 2025 Words by Nicholas Carolan This very day last year, when I was launching the third edition of Fintan Vallelly’s encyclopedic Companion to Irish Traditional Music on this very spot, I thought he had…

The launch was structured to present words and music which illustrated and complemented the book’s breadth and content. Fintan Vallely’s words: Thank you all for travelling, and coming out this evening, some of you undoubtedly out of a passion for the bodhran. But most of you perhaps out of interest in or curiosity about an…

Compánach Performed by Fintan Vallely (concert flute), John Kelly (fiddle), Mark Redmond (Irish pipes) Thursday 09 May in O’Reilly’s pub, Stuttgart – after 6pm Saturday 11th May, 7pm. Höfingen, altes Rathaus Sunday. 12th May. 4pm in Studio Olgastr., at Olgastrasse 93b, Stuttgart A Traditional-music concert with songs and melodies from each county on the island…

Fintan Vallely is the recipient of this year’s TG4 Gradam Saol award. This is in recognition of his writing, teaching and performance work over the years since the early 1960s.  The award was presented at a night of music in the University of Limerick Concert Hall on Sunday, April 23rd, 2023. The concert was broadcast…

This virtual-performance DVD and movie is a Covid-era response to the absence of live performance. It is a  TV-style documentary of still images with music, linked sequentially in Traditional tunes named for each county on the island of Ireland and its Diaspora regions of England and the USA. The imagery and music embody hundreds of…

Topical tunes to while away the quarantine with sanguinity. Forty years ago on ‘dry’ Good Friday this small house in Dublin was christened with music and a party that was provisioned with alcohols from under the counter by the legendary Bertie McCormack’s Rathmines grocery shop. Since it was from before the age of photographic incontinence,…

China Meets Ireland is an inter-cultural programme begun in 2014. It presents two poles of Chinese and Irish musics featuring traditional Chinese music from a thousand year tradition and new music from China written in the past 10 years. Ireland’s rich heritage of traditional music is presented with old airs and dance tunes on Fiddle…

The hind teat: strategic misassumption in the promotion of Traditional song in the English language. An article originally given as a paper at A Changing Traditional Landscape : The Folklore, Song and Music of Ireland – symposium in the Princess Grace Library, Monaco, September 2012. The paper was part of a session titled: Connecting the Dots: Identifying Key Changes…

A detailed review of this book was done for the February, 2013 edition of The Living Tradition magazine. An interview was also done for RTÉ 1 radio’s Arts Show. In order to understand it better it was necessary not just to read content, but to have statistics upon which to base comment. These were extracted…

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music is now available in digital formats. On February 1st 2013 it was released as an ebook on Kindle and on iBooks. It is also available to libraries on-line through the Project Muse UPCC collection, as part of a greater collection, or, later in 2013 as an individual title; libraries can…

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music has been ranked 11th in a shortlist of 644 ‘Outstanding Academic Titles’ (OAT) chosen by a key US librarians’ resource, Choice Reviews Online. The shortlist was selected from a total of c. 7,000 academic reviews of books in all subject areas which were themselves chosen by Choice Reviews for…

“A Changing Traditional Landscape : The Folklore, Song and Music of Ireland” – symposium in the Princess Grace Library, Monaco, September 2012. Session title: Connecting the Dots: Identifying Key Changes and Developments in Irish Music, Song and Folklore in Recent Times Paper: From amateur professional to professional amateur … reflections on the Traditional singing genre. Traditional song…

Fintan Vallely is the academic convenor of the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention’s biennial conference in late June, 2012. This is a unique conference set in a week of exceptional music performances in Derry city and Co. Donegal which addresses a challenging issue for Traditional musics in the 21st century – the shift of emphasis from music for…

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music has been awarded a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) for 2012. Coinciding with this award is the Companion’s release on Friday, 1st February as an ebook: ibook kindle Full information on the Companion’s contents is at comitm.com This includes information on its launch in Dublin on November 24th. The words…

‘News’, a one-hour mosaic of music and poetry as part of a Ranelagh district community event. Core of the event is c. 1000-year-old poetry in Irish composed by poets who would have spent time in the vicinity of Cullenswood and the general area. Translated by Brendan Ellis from various sources, only one of these pieces is…

Paper in Irish Music Panel – Indigenous Modernities: Fintan Vallely with Mats Melin and Martin Dowling. Papers: Fintan Vallely. The invigorating enablement of a perfect past: Past and future in modern-day revision and rationalisation of Irish Traditional music practices, instrumentation and motivational impetus. Mats Melin. Cape Breton step-dance on the small screen: The influence of…

A study in text, photographs and graphic design of the fiddler Ben Lennon of Kiltyclogher, Co. Leitrim. Ben Lennon is known widely as a stylistic performer and teacher in the national and international world of Irish Traditional music. He began playing the fiddle at the age of ten, growing up inhttp://www.fobl.ie an atmosphere of home,…

The Life of Brian A night of song, music and readings to celebrate the life of the Belfast singer songwriter, cartoonist and playwright Brian Moore, who died earlier this year. Wednesday 29 June in the Black Box in Belfast. Singers, musicians, and  friends will come together to celebrate  the life of Brian, a lifelong political activist, founding member of the legendary…

The compilation of The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2011′, IAML, Trinity College Audio-Visual Commission for the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. Annual conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 24-29 July 2011.  Conference Programme Paper by Dr. Fintan Vallely, Music Dept., Dundalk Institute of Technology. Digital Tír na nÓg in 2011: Issues of…

In the nineteen sixties the bodhrán was loftily looked down noses at in the early Irish music scene and became the butt of the very first Traditional music jokes. But by now it has well passed out the pipes and has taken over from the harp as a popular visual representation of Irish music, if…

Hunting for borr- án – shaking a stick at the origin myths concerning the Irish drum. Evening lecture for Na Píobairí Uilleann at Henrietta St., off Bolton Street, Dublin on work in progress on the history of the tambourine and bodhrán in Ireland. The paper challenges myth, imagination and wishful thinking in the currently accepted history of that unique Irish…

Guest Lecture to Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana Illustrating by performed music and select images, Dr. Fintan Vallely explores the nature and significance of ‘free spaces’ generated by Irish traditional music in the 21st century. November 5, 2010, afternoon Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Guest Paper to Shamrock in the Bush, Galong, NSW, Australia Fintan Vallely: ‘Tír na nÓg in 2010: Keeping Traditional music forever young’. Issues of passion, canon and change arising from the compilation of the encyclopedia Companion to Irish Traditional Music in 1999, and its revision a decade later. Guest lecture at ‘Shamrock in the Bush’ Irish…

Melbourne – Monash University Guest Paper Fintan Vallely: ‘The Irish drum – stone-age innovation in the digital age’, guest paper at Monash University, Melbourne, Research and Work-in-Progress seminars.

A 2003 conference that concerned itself with the assessment and provision of Traditional music education at all levels from the practical to the academic, throughout the island of Ireland and abroad.

Croisbhealach an Cheoil (the Crossroads Conference) was the first ever conference called to debate the issues of ‘tradition’ and ‘change’ in the world of Irish traditional music.