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The famous Sliabh Luachra fiddle player and travelling fiddle-master Pádraig O’Keeffe (1887–1963) from Glountane, near Castleisland, Co Kerry, at first followed in his father’s footsteps as the principal teacher in the local national school, but in 1920 abandoned conventional school-teaching for a more bohemian lifestyle.

He had inherited music from his O’Callaghan mother’s side of the family, and over the next four decades he taught hundreds of pupils, fiddle especially but also accordion and other instruments, moving in a wide circuit within striking distance of his home. An eccentric and notably witty character with a gift for musical variation, he left an indelible stamp on the music and folklore of the region, and is an example of how an individual musician may almost create a local music style.

In his teacher-training, O’Keeffe would have learned the rudiments of staff notation and tonic solfa, but for his own teaching purposes he devised more intuitive tablature systems. For the fiddle he employed the four spaces of the music staff to correspond with the strings of the instrument, and with numerals indicating which fingers were to be pressed down. For the accordion he used numerals for the keys to be pressed and in- and out-symbols to indicate the direction of the bellows. Hundreds of the notations he left with pupils have been preserved in private hands, and two volumes of facsimiles have been published (Dan Herlihy, Sliabh Luachra Music Masters vols 1 & 2, Herlihy, Killarney, 2003 & 2007).

Andy McGann, born in west Harlem in 1928, was the young Yankee in the group of immigrants in Lad O’Beirne’s circle. His parents were good friends of Michael Coleman, who gave the boy a music stand and much encouragement. Andy got more hands-on instruction from Catherine Brennan-Grant, who gave Andy a foundation in classical violin technique, lending a polished elegance to his Sligo-style traditional music repertoire.

Andy McGann’s elegant and urbane interpretation of the classic Sligo repertoire and style brought him a deserved reputation as America’s finest home-grown Irish fiddle player. His father Andrew and mother Margaret were immigrants from Marlow, Ballymote and nearby Keash in south County Sligo. When Andy was born, the family lived in west Harlem but moved soon thereafter to 140th Street and Cypress Avenue in the south Bronx, a neighbourhood that in the 1930s and 1940s was home to many of the finest Irish musicians in America, including Sligo fiddle greats Paddy Killoran and James Lad O’Beirne.

With his brother John, Andy took step dancing lessons from Kerry master Seán Murphy. J.P. Cuffe, a family friend, interested the boy in playing the fiddle. His father tried to get another friend, Michael Coleman, to give Andy lessons but Coleman didn’t teach beginners. He did, however, give the seven-year-old Andy a music stand and much encouragement. For hands-on instruction, they turned instead to Catherine Brennan, a classically trained violinist who had been adopted into the Sligo fiddle fraternity in New York. Andy studied Irish and classical music with Brennan for five years and got a further dose of classical education as a teenager in the orchestra at Cardinal Hayes High School. By this time, Andy was sufficiently advanced to be able to play with Coleman during the master’s visits to (and occasional residence in) the McGann home. He maintained a musical friendship with Coleman until the latter’s death in 1945.

Andy was a frequent attendee at sessions in Lad O’Beirne’s apartment in the 1940s, sitting in with the fiddling aristocracy that gravitated to O’Beirne, a coterie that included Louis Quinn and Philadelphia-based composer Ed Reavy. In 1948, he struck up a friendship with Longford immigrant Paddy Reynolds, another follower of O’Beirne. Andy and Paddy formed a musical partnership that lasted for decades, playing at parties, Gaelic League céilidhe and dancing feiseanna, often taking gigs passed to them by Paddy Killoran, who took a small commission for the referrals.

In 1958, Andy was one of the founders of the New York Céilí Band, an all-star ensemble that included button accordionist Paddy O’Brien, then living in New York, as well as fellow fiddlers Paddy Reynolds and Larry Redican. He recorded a couple of unreleased tracks with the band, but family and work commitments prevented him from joining them when, in 1960, they flew to Ireland to compete at the fleadh in Boyle.

Andy’s other lasting musical partnership was with Galway button accordionist Joe Burke, who lived in New York from 1962 to 1965 and was a frequent visitor thereafter. It was Burke who gave Andy, at age 37, his first chance to make a studio recording. A Tribute to Michael Coleman, recorded in a few hours with Burke and pianist Felix Dolan, was issued in 1965 on Burke’s own Shaskeen label. Issued at a time when very few Irish traditional music records were being made, this disc, which includes several outstanding McGann solo tracks, was one of the most influential traditional albums of the 1960s.

When Dan Collins and Rich Nevins founded Shanachie Records in 1975, Andy again got the opportunity to record. His first LP for the label was a duet outing with Paddy Reynolds, backed by a young Paul Brady on guitar. A solo disc, again with Brady, followed in 1977 and The Funny Reel, a reunion with Joe Burke and Felix Dolan, in 1979.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Andy played bar gigs in New York with a series of singer/guitarists who included Corkman Donie Carroll. He was often joined at these engagements by Leitrim button accordionist Gus Murray, Kerrymen Johnny “Fiddle” Cronin and Johnny “Accordion” Cronin or Kilkenny native Joe “Banjo” Burke. Andy made occasional visits to St. Louis in these years to play with Joe Burke at McGurk’s pub and was in demand to play at traditional music festivals and concerts in New York, the Catskills and Philadelphia, occasionally reuniting with Paddy Reynolds at these engagements.

The esteem in which Andy’s music was held in Ireland was seen in 1990, when he was flown across the Atlantic to serve as the honorary president of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, held that year in Sligo Town. He returned in 1992 to perform at a Sligo fiddlers concert in Tubbercurry.

Echoes of Andy McGann’s music are still heard in New York today in the playing of Brian Conway and his students. The 1986 All-Ireland fiddle champion was taught more directly by Martin Mulvihill and Martin Wynne but was strongly influenced by Andy’s playing. Brian, in turn, has passed on McGann’s style and repertoire to Pat Mangan and many other younger fiddlers. Andy’s final studio recording session was a guest appearance on Conway’s 2002 Smithsonian disc First Through the Gate, on which the old master joined Conway and Mangan in seamless fiddle duets and trios.

Andy McGann, who worked as an accountant and bookkeeper, was married twice. With his first wife, Marie, he had four sons. Some years after her death, he married Patricia, with whom he had a daughter, Meghan, a flute player and step dancer. Andy succumbed to cancer in 2004 and was interred, with a fiddle-playing guard of honour at the graveside, in St. Raymond’s cemetery in the Bronx, where his monument stands not far from those of Michael Coleman, Paddy Killoran and James Morrison.

Paddy Reynolds landed in New York from County Longford in 1948 and briefly settled in Brooklyn before moving to the Bronx. He had already led his own dance band back in Ireland, while simultaneously working on the Ballyshannon hydroelectric project, but was awed when he encountered Lad O’Beirne’s fiddling and re-made himself in New York as a Sligo stylist. Paddy formed a firm partnership with Andy McGann, often taking gigs referred to them by Paddy Killoran when the old master had too much on his plate.
Paddy Reynolds was born on 17 December1920 to James and Mary Ann Quinn Reynolds, who farmed 67 acres in townland of Garvary in the parish of Dromard (Lower Killoe) in north County Longford. Paddy had to steal his first tunes on the fiddle, using an instrument reserved for his eldest brother James, but the youngster’s precocious talent could not be denied. His earliest musical influences were his mother, who played the fiddle, and his aunt Ellen, a singer and lilter. By the age of ten he was playing at house parties and dances with a group called “The Moonlight Rovers” and later played at a local concert that featured the great uilleann piper Leo Rowsome.

During World War II, Paddy worked as a farm laborer in Fermanagh. After the war, while working on the Ballyshannon hydroelectric project in Donegal, he led a group called the Four Provinces Céilí Band, playing for dances in south Donegal, north Leitrim and Derry. In 1948, he took a liner to Halifax, Nova Scotia and made his way to New York, where his sisters Helen and Mary had preceded him. He moved to Brooklyn and got his first musical employment in a trio with John and Nancy Ryan. At one of their gigs, he met Elizabeth “Lilly” Roughneen from Mayo. They married in 1951 and settled at Cypress Avenue and 149th Street in the south Bronx, a neighbourhood already crowded with traditional musicians, including Sligo fiddle great James Lad O’Beirne.

Paddy became a regular attendee at Lad’s Friday night house sessions, where he played with Paddy Killoran, Larry Redican, Martin Wynne, Louis Quinn, and other members of the city’s Irish music aristocracy. Paddy formed a duet partnership with fiddling neighbour Andy McGann. Over the next three decades they would play together at countless parties, weddings, céilidhe and step dancing feiseanna .In 1958, Paddy was a founding member of the New York Céilí Band, joining a fiddle section that included Andy McGann and Larry Redican. He was with the band when they travelled to Boyle, County Roscommon in 1960 to compete at the All-Ireland fleadh.

In the 1960s Paddy and Lily moved to Brooklyn, where they raised their daughter Mary and two sons Stephen and James. Paddy struck up a music teaching partnership with accordionist John Glynn. There were few opportunities for Irish traditional musicians to perform in public in those years, but live television offered an occasional outlet, especially around the time of St Patrick’s Day, and Paddy appeared on the Ed Sullivan and Merv Griffin shows.

In the 1970s, Paddy finally got a chance to put his fiddling on record. In 1971 he collaborated with button accordionist Charlie Mulvihill and pianist Felix Dolan to record eight solo and duet tracks for Sweet and Traditional Music of Ireland, a Rego Irish Records LP that also included cuts from button accordionist James Keane. Paddy and Charlie’s contributions to that disc were later reissued on the Kells Music CD The Atlantic Wave. In 1977 Paddy and Andy went into the studio with a then-obscure guitarist named Paul Brady to make an LP for Shanachie Records, a disc widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish fiddle duet recordings of all time. Paddy can also be heard on the 1990 Green Linnet CD My Love is in America recorded at an all-star fiddle concert at Boston College. He featured prominently in From Shore to Shore, a 1993 video documentary on Irish music in New York City, and played for a dance scene featuring Brad Pitt in the 1997 Columbia Pictures film The Devil’s Own. Paddy passed away in Staten Island in 2005 at the age of 84. Paddy Reynolds: Classic Recordings of the Irish Fiddle Legend, a collection of privately made and unreleased tracks, was issued shortly after his death.