Irish Traditional Music Archive

Whyte, Aggie, 1920-1979

IE ITMA P00184
Person
1920-1979

Aggie Whyte was born in Ballinakill, Co. Galway, in 1920. Her father Tommy was a well known musician and a founder member of the Ballinakill Dance Players, later the Ballinakill Ceilidhe Band. Ballinakill was an area renowned for its musical tradition and at that time, every house boasted a fiddle or flute in the chimney corner.

Aggie's first teacher was, undoubtedly, her father Tommy, and then arrived on the scene one of those rare, dedicated teachers of traditional music, Jack Mulkere. Aggie was one of his first pupils in Ballinakill old school. From an early age, she showed great promise and it wasn't long before she was in demand at concerts, feiseanna and particularly in her own house in Ballinakill which, at that time, was a mecca for musicians from far and near. Her earliest successes included trophies won at feiseanna in Creggs, Roscommon, Ardrahan, Gort and Ballinakill itself. All along the way, she was encouraged by her parish priest Fr. Tom Larkin, himself a fiddler and a founder member of the Ballinakill Dance Players. In 1938, Aggie travelled to England with the band. On returning from London, they made recordings in Dublin under His Master's Voice label. From then on she was a regular member of the band and they travelled extensively. Incidentally, one of their engagements was playing at the 21st Birthday party of Lord Killanin, later to be President of the Olympic Council.

By now, Aggie had become a household name. This was due to her success in 'Newcomer's Hour' on Raidió Éireann and her participation on many radio programmes in Ireland, England and Scotland. During post war years, Aggie featured in reciprocal folk music programmes with Irish, Dutch and Italian radio stations. She paid many visits to Dublin and the 'Calling House' was of course 'The Pipers Club'. Here she partnered the Rowsomes, Searys, Recks and many others.

In January 1951 Alan Lomax and Robin Roberts undertook the work of systematically mapping by recordings, the folk or oral music tradition of Ireland. Recordings had already been made by Brian George of B.B.C. in 1947. Accompanied by Séamus Ennis, they travelled to places in Ireland where Irish was spoken and music played. With the co-operation of Séamus Ó Duilearga and Séan O'Sullivan of the Irish Folklore Commission, Raidió Éireann and the B.B.C., a collection of recordings was issued. Solo recordings of Aggie are featured in this collection, as well as with the band and a duet with her sister, Bridie, entitled, 'The Mason’s Apron', adjudged by Séamus Ennis as being a perfect fiddle duet.

In 1952 Aggie married Séamus Ryan, a Cork man with a great love of the Irish language and culture. In 1953, their twin daughters Kathleen and Maureen were born. The following year in 1954, Aggie won the All-Ireland Senior Fiddle Competition in Cavan, a win she prized all her life. She also won All-Ireland honours in duets with Joe Burke, and with bands, notably the Leitrim Céilí Band. She also played and toured with the Tulla Céilí Band. In 1958, Aggie won the Oireachtas Gold Medal for Fiddle, and the Oireachtas Duet competition with Peadar O'Loughlin – another great feat.

Along with competing, Aggie and Séamus became popular and most competent adjudicators at county, provincial and All-Ireland level. Of Aggie, her co-adjudicator Fr. P.J. Kelly once said:
Along with her artistic accomplishments, was also her ability at fleadhanna to adjudicate with real skill. I could face my audience with complete self assurance once I had talked it over with Aggie.
In the Whyte family the music was not confined to Aggie alone. Her sister Bridie, an accomplished fiddler, joined her in recordings and radio and television appearances and also in a later grouping of the Céilí Band. Eva, a versatile ballad singer featured also on radio and was nationally known for her renderings of 'The Little Thatched Cabin'.

There was a constant stream of musicians to Aggie's home in Ballinakill. Joe Burke was a regular visitor; so was Peadar O'Loughlin, Séamus Connolly, Eddie Moloney, Mickey Hanrahan, Willie Clancy, Paddy O'Brien, Paddy Carty and many more. Fr. J. Solon, C.C. Portumna, recorded a wealth of this music. There was always one who got into the act at the most inopportune time - Pudsy, the black and white terrier, who barked in the middle of the recording!

Aggie's help to aspiring fiddlers was always forthcoming. Although she never taught the fiddle, yet she shared her expertise with young musicians. She was ready to show them correct positioning and intricate triplets or correct phrasing. Aggie's musical life continued throughout the 1970s. In 1971 the family journeyed to East Durham, a holiday centre in the Catskills, in Upstate New York. There, Andy McGann, Mike Rafferty, Tom Comiskey, Jack Coen, Pat Mulvihill, and the Kehoe family came and joined in the sessions.

Also during the '70s, Séamus and Aggie really enjoyed performing in the local Seisiún productions. In February 1978, Aggie was invited to University College Cork, where a seminar on fiddling styles was held. Aggie represented the East Galway style.

Nature hushed on the 16th August 1979 when Aggie Whyte Ryan said her final goodbye to Ballinakill and the country she loved so well. This wonderful musician who had so often recorded at His Master's Voice, now responded to her heavenly Master's Call and the appointment she had to fill at the Seisiún in Birr, was kept in Heaven.

By Michael Harrison

Browne, Peter

IE ITMA P00069
Person

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.

Shields, Hugh, 1929-2008

IE ITMA P00015
Person
1929-2008

Shields, Hugh, (1929–2008). Singer, collector, researcher, writer and publisher, leading authority on Irish traditional song with an international reputation. Born in Belfast, he spent most of his life in Dublin, where he studied at Trinity College and became a senior lecturer in French there. He was an emeritus fellow of the college. A specialist in medieval French and other European languages, he had a particular interest in questions of orality and dialect which were common to his professional studies and to his lifelong and highly productive interest in Irish and other traditional song.

From 1982 to 2002 he also lectured on Irish traditional music in the School of Music, TCD, with Breandán Breathnach, Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh and Nicholas Carolan, and in 1985 spent a period lecturing in the Department of Ethnomusicology in the University of California, Los Angeles. He also lectured widely at traditional music festivals and summer schools.

Song:
Shields’s parents gave him his initial interest in singing. As a young graduate teaching in north Co. Derry in 1953 and beginning his work of collection, he first met with the road-worker Eddie Butcher, his main source-singer and friend. Butcher was central to his publishing of traditional song in print and on sound recordings for the next five decades. With his wife Lisa, Shields also collected in Donegal, Down, Wexford and Wicklow, in France, and elsewhere, and he collaborated with the Dublin collector Tom Munnelly.

He edited selections from his field recordings – among them Adam in Paradise; Shamrock, Rose and Thistle 1–3; Old British Ballads of Donegal and Derry; and Chants Corréziens: French Folk Songs from Corrèze – for the record companies Topic and Leader Sound, for the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, and for his own cassette label European Ethnic Oral Traditions.

Publications:
His many seminal published studies of Irish traditional song, which were complex and detailed, appear in leading national and international journals including Ceol, Ulster Folklife, Hermathena, Long Room, Folklife, Folklore, and the Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council.

His books include Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (1981), Ballad Research (1986), Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs (1993), all standard works.

Shields had a particular involvement with the Folk Music Society of Ireland – of which he was a founding member in 1971 – and was the editor for it of its newsletter Ceol Tíre (1973–89), its journal Éigse Cheol Tíre – Irish Folk Music Studies (1973–2001), and other publications. He was also a founding board member of the ITMA from 1987. His varied contributions to its development included the donation to it of his large collection of field recordings, and the editing of its publication Tunes of the Munster Pipers: Irish Traditional Music from the James Goodman Manuscripts (1998).

The 2011 book – All the Days of His Life: Eddie Butcher in his own words: songs, stories and memories of Magilligan, Co Derry – was his final work, jointly edited by him and his wife Lisa. [NIC]

Seery, Jim