Award nominations for The Blue Tar Road

RAG and Bone Productions based in East Clare has been nominated for a prestigious national radio award and has been shortlisted for an international award for a special music feature on Traveller singers.
The Blue Tar Road programme, which was commissioned and broadcast on Lyric FM, was produced by Scariff woman Paula Carroll and her production company has been nominated for a PPI award in the music special category and for the New York Festivals Radio Award.
The programme itself is presented by Traveller and actor, Michael Collins and includes up to 90 pieces of music collected from Travellers in counties Meath, Carlow and Waterford.
The recording for the programme took place from March this year and Paula told The Clare Champion how enjoyable the process was.
“I loved the process and I love that we made it. Michael Collins was an inspired choice; he is such a natural and brought the best out of the singers. As the producer, I stayed quiet and it was a joy to witness it all. The programme was made on Michael’s assertion that there are plenty of Traveller singers out there. There was a feeling that no Travellers were singing traditionally anymore but what we found was that no-one was collecting songs from Travellers and that there were plenty singing both traditional and contemporary songs. So we went around to record those Michael and I knew of. We started by recording singers in his home in Meath, where we recorded for about four hours. Out of that then we met up with Josie O’Leary’s family. She has 12 children and 11 of them are singers, so we met with them in Tullow, County Carlow and we recorded loads with them. Then we went on to Waterford later that day and recorded more there.
“The trip to Waterford was a complete accident. We had been talking about singers and one singer that we thought was actually dead but they were able to tell us she was still alive and well in Waterford. So we said how far is it to Waterford?” Paula recalled.
The singer they spoke about was Kitty Cassidy, who had been recorded once in 1960s, when she lived in a campsite in Ballyfermot.
“She has a stunning voice. We just landed up on the doorstep. She is in her 70s now but she still has the same fantastic singing voice. She rang her sons and four landed on to sing. They are just bursting with songs. She is a great traditional singer and there’s very few around like her. I will go back to her again and do more recordings to have stuff for the archives,” Paula explained.
The programme itself begins with a personal narration from Michael Collins, who takes the listener on a journey to a party in a house and then it goes from there.
Speaking about the nomination, Paula said, “I’m thrilled about it. This is a very neglected part of our music culture. Traditional music is in a minority enough but within that singing is a minority and within that Traveller music is even more so. It is a real thrill to be nominated and it is an added boost that the programme has been shortlisted for New York Festivals Radio Award, which is an international award for national broadcasters.”
The programme was produced by Paula Carroll and presented by Michael Collins, whose wife Catherine Joyce acted as researcher. Jenny Breen edited and Tracy Whelan was on sound recording for the Moynalty session, while Olga Buckley was the commissioning editor with Lyric FM.