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Authority record

McLaughlin, Dermot

  • IE ITMA P00075
  • Person
Dermot McLaughlin is a fiddle player, promoter and producer. Both his parents were interested and active in music and culture: his father played harmonica, accordion, whistle and fiddle, his mother played piano. He played classical piano initially, taking part in the school orchestra and céilí band, and he and his brother Joe were taught fiddle by Tony Blace – once a member of David Curry’s band. Dermot began playing traditional music in the early 1970s, with maternal relations Denis Heaney and Paddy McMahon, Dolly McCafferty as influences, but his main inspiration has been the music of Donegal, particularly the fiddle playing of John Doherty. He has also studied the repertoire and style of such as Con Cassidy, James Byrne, Francie Dearg O’Beirne and Mickey Golly. He has recorded on Fiddlesticks, and on James Byrne’s solo album. From 1986 until 1998 he was traditional music officer, then music officer, with the Arts Council in Dublin, and was involved in the setting up of Cairdeas na bhFidiléirí and the ITMA. In 2003 he moved to promoting music with Temple Bar Cultural Trust. He has produced music for Claddagh, initiated the Temple Bar Trad Festival in Dublin, and scripted and presented The Raw Bar series for RTÉ 1 television. He is the chair of the Dublin International Dance Festival and of the ITMA.

Boyle, Finbar, 1951-2018

  • IE ITMA P00078
  • Person
  • 1951-2018
Boyle, Finbar. (1951– ). Singer, commentator. From Dundalk, Co. Louth, as a teenager, hearing The Dubliners germinated his interest in traditional singing, and local sessions in Mark’s Bar gave him a contiguous, supportive resource and platform. He taught for four years following college at St Patrick’s, Drumcondra, then worked with Dublin City Libraries prior to joining the Department of Folklore in UCD where he spent ten years. He became involved with the Tradition Club at Slattery’s, Dublin, c.1971 performing there regularly himself, and was one of the organisers of the Dublin Folk Festival in the later ’70s. He wrote reviews, critiques and commentaries on traditional music for In Dublin magazine over several years and researched music for RTÉ’s Sunday Folk radio show. Highly regarded for his detailed familiarity with all traditional musics, he programmed the Temple Bar Trad Festival from 2006 to 2008.

O'Keeffe, Pádraig, 1887-1963

  • IE ITMA P00079
  • Person
  • 1887-1963

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).

Mulvihill, Charlie, 1917-1975

  • IE ITMA P00081
  • Person
  • 1917-1975
Charlie Mulvihill was born in Manhattan, where his concertina-playing father Tom, an immigrant from Miltown Malbay, County Clare, drove trolley cars and ran a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Charlie started playing concertina when he was about nine years old and took up the button accordion soon after. On his return from army service in World War II, he and his new wife Noreen settled in the south Bronx, where he joined the company of the neighborhood’s many great Irish musicians. Lawrence Dolan, traditional music columnist for the Advocate, recalled those days in his 23 August 1975 obituary:
“Our fond recollections of Charlie go back to the early 40's when we were neighbors in the South Bronx. We often thrilled to the traditional music set forth at the Irish House - formerly the Leitrim House, on East 138th Street between Willis and Alexander Ave. Charlie would often join in with other great Irish musicians such as Paddy Killoran, Paddy Sweeney, Jack Mc Kenna, Jack Murphy, Bessie Sweeney, Harry Carroll, Joey Flynn, John McGrath, etc. The floor was always jam-packed with those up for the Caledonian Sets. The jigs and reels of Ireland were never performed any better than in those days at the Irish House, when Charlie joined his friends on the music stage.”
Charlie Mulvihill was highly regarded by his fellow musicians for his huge repertoire and knowledge of the names and histories of traditional tunes. He was one of the few D-row accordionists who could really play alongside the city’s top fiddlers on equal terms. He and fiddler Paddy Reynolds were recorded together in 1971 on “Sweet and Traditional Music of Ireland,” the first LP issued by Paddy Noonan’s Rego Irish Records label. Charlie and Paddy also often played together in the summer at Mullen’s Mountain View Farm (now the Blackthorn) in the Irish Catskills resort town of East Durham. And it was at Mullen’s that Charlie fell fatally ill in 1975. He passed on his musical talents to his children, pianist Geraldine and fiddler/singer/guitarist Tommy Mulvihill.

Moran, John Oliver, 1933-2017

  • IE ITMA P00082
  • Person
  • 1 January 1933-27 May 2017
John Oliver Moran (1 January 1933–27 May 2017) was born in Killarney and grew up in Cahirsiveen. His father was chief veterinary officer for Munster. Oliver qualified as a solicitor, worked in Rhodesia, returned to Ireland and worked there as a qualified town planner. He was the youngest of a singing family of five, but didn't play an instrument. He was unmarried.

Milner, Dan, 1945-2023

  • IE ITMA P00083
  • Person
  • 1945-2023

Dan was born in Birmingham, England on the 27 March 1945, and was predeceased by his Irish mother Nora Mary (nee Cremin) and Irish-English father, William Milner. During and after World War II his family lived in many other places including Ballybunion, Ireland, Toronto, Canada, as well as Brooklyn and Queens, NY where they became US Citizens. He attended schools in both New York City and in England.

Upon losing his student deferral for not carrying enough college credits, Dan received his draft notice during the Vietnam War era. He promptly signed up for the United States Air Force and served at Travis Air Force Base in California.

After leaving the military, he began working in the airline industry in California and then in New York. He started as a baggage handler, reservation agent, and eventually became a sales manager for two airlines. Coupled with the many moves he made during his childhood; travel became an important part of his life. Working for airline companies led to many spectacular trips around the globe.

He also worked as a National Park Ranger, a cartographer for the Census Bureau and most recently as a professor at St. John’s University in New York City.

The most important passion of his life was his singing. Music was in the family. His mother was a keen set dancer and his father a good singer and piano player. Dan’s first “performance” occurred when as a wee lad he became separated from his family at Coney Island Beach and was brought to the police station. When his mother came roaring into the station, there was Dan on top of one of the desks regaling the Irish cops with song. He narrowly escaped punishment!

A quick student, Dan learned not only his father’s repertoire, but began to absorb the canon of Irish, English, and Scottish traditional folk songs along with a strong dose of sea chanteys. In the United States, he won the Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Cheoil several times and competed in the Fleadh in Ireland twice. He was a renowned and respected singer and collector of Irish songs in the English language.

In the early 1970s he established the Eagle Tavern Folk Club in New York City. He ran weekly concerts there for 10 years attracting the best of traditional singers and musicians from here and abroad. He was a founding member of the acclaimed band, The Flying Cloud, who performed in the USA including the 1977 Philadelphia Folk Festival. Their one, eponymous recording, was with Adelphi Records. In 1983 he published his first book, The Bonnie Bunch of Roses: Songs of England, Ireland & Scotland.

Though work dominated his life at this time, he still kept a hand in music by going to sessions and concerts whenever possible. He met his beloved wife Bonnie at one such session at the Eagle Tavern. They were wed in 1989 and she encouraged him to get back to singing which led to a rich and rewarding life.

Over the years Dan made five CDs: three for Folk Legacy Records – Irish Ballads and Songs of the Sea, Irish in America, and Irish Songs from Old New England and two for Smithsonian Folkways: Civil War Naval Songs and Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea.

Upon retiring and after a 37-year hiatus from college, Dan decided to go back and received his bachelor’s and master’s degree from Hunter College in New York City. He then pursued and completed his doctorate in American Studies back “home” at the University of Birmingham in England. His doctoral dissertation led to his second book, The Unstoppable Irish: Songs and Integration of the New York Irish, 1783-1883.

Attending the Inishowen Singers weekend in Ballyliffin, Ireland was a fixed highlight on his calendar, along with the Mystic and CT Sea Music Festivals. He and his wife, Bonnie, enjoyed their music and travels together during an incredible lifetime journey.

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