What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music

This is a new book by Toner Quinn, founder and editor of the award-winning Journal of Music, is now available.

What can folk music tell us about our society? How do we create a deeper public discussion around music? How do we support music in our villages, towns and cities? And what can Ireland teach the world about music? For over two decades, Quinn has been writing about these questions and more in the multi-faceted world of Irish music. In this book, he gathers a selection of his essays and articles.

From Martin Hayes to Jennifer Walshe, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin to Sinéad O’Connor, and from the impact of the economic crash to the fallout from the pandemic, this collection provides a unique insight into Irish music in the twenty-first century.

Rich in ideas, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music explores what makes this culture unique, and the challenges it faces into the future. What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music is available to purchase now.

Purchase here

A History of Irish Music

by Larry Kirwan

From Medieval Wexford to Midtown Manhattan Larry Kirwan tells the story of Irish music to a backdrop of war, social upheaval and revolution. From Viking invader to Sean O’Riada, Oliver Cromwell to Rory Gallagher, James Connolly to Van Morrison in a clash of uilleann pipes, armalites and electric guitars. The story moves with the Diaspora to The Pogues’ London, Dropkick Murphys’ Boston and Black 47’s New York City. Pulsing, passionate, occasionally tragic – through the eyes of an insider.

https://www.amazon.com/History-Irish-Music-Larry-Kirwan/dp/0963960113

Last Night’s Fun’s is a sparking celebration of music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Carson’s inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. Last Night’s Fun is remarkable for its liveliness, honesty, scholarship, and spontaneous joy; certainly there has never been a book about Irish music like this one, and few books ever written anywhere about the experience of music can compare with it.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Nights-Fun-About-Traditional/dp/0865475318

Shared Notes: A Musical Journey

By Martin Hayes

Martin Hayes spent his childhood on a farm in County Clare, in a household steeped in musical tradition. After a free-spirited youth, he headed to the United States where he built a career that led to a life of musical performance on stages all over the world. Shared Notes traces this remarkable journey.

Picking up his first fiddle at the age of seven, Hayes learned that music must express feeling. No amount of technical prowess can compensate for an absence of soulfulness. His interpretations of traditional Irish music are recognized the world over for their exquisite musicality and irresistible rhythm.

Hayes has toured and recorded with guitarist Dennis Cahill for over twenty years, founded the Irish-American band The Gloaming, The Martin Hayes Quartet and The Common Ground Ensemble, and here, for the first time, tells his story of getting to the heart of the music.

https://www.amazon.com/Shared-Notes-Musical-Martin-Hayes/dp/1848272642/

Crazy Dreams

by Paul Brady

Crazy Dreams is the compelling and highly anticipated autobiography from Paul Brady, a musician whose remarkable career has spanned six decades and who is indisputably one of Ireland’s greatest living songwriters.

This evocative memoir chronicles Paul’s many years at the forefront of the Irish folk scene, from The Johnstons and Planxty through to his seminal work with Andy Irvine and onwards to his own vaunted solo career. Along the way are the many encounters and collaborations with such musical luminaries as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Carole King, Tina Turner, Mark Knopfler and Bonnie Raitt to name but a glittering few.

From such celebrated tracks as ‘The Island’, ‘Nobody Knows’ and ‘The World is What You Make It’ to his interpretations of traditional folk songs like ‘Arthur McBride’ and ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’, Paul has carved out his own unique place in Irish musical history. In Crazy Dreams he tells how it was done and regales the reader with remarkable stories of life on the road and the journey from small-town Tyrone to the world’s stage.