Playing a new tune to fight Traveller stereotypes

FREE Spirits – Irish Travellers and Irish Traditional Music is a new book written by Doolin’s Oliver O’Connell in collaboration with Armagh man Tommy Fegan.
The authors wanted to counteract some of the negative stereotypes around travellers.
“We felt it was a subject that just needed to be tackled because lots of Traveller families get awful bad publicity. Last Sunday night you had bare knuckle boxing on the TV and blood spilt all over the place, and you have My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and this kind of thing,” said Oliver O’Connell.
“What people don’t realise is that seven or eight families from the Travelling community safeguarded, preserved and promoted Irish culture and Irish music, people like the Dunnes, the Fureys, the Dorans, the Keenans, people like that and they never got any publicity out of it at all.  We felt there was something there to be tackled and when we went into the research over the past three and a half years, what we uncovered was just unbelievable.”
The book profiles a number of Traveller musicians and individuals, while it also has a section on musicians influenced by the Traveller style and transcriptions of tunes.
He said they traversed Ireland and also visited the UK in writing the book.
“Basically we had to go into the folklore commission and we had to go to the descendants of the families. We flew into Manchester and we interviewed the Dorans. We went to Carlow and met descendants of the Cash family.
“The Dunnes were close by and I went to the Fureys and the Keenans and my colleague went to the Dohertys in Donegal and the Raineys in Connemara. We tackled all the families and talked to the descendants.”
Traveller musicians were very well received by the settled community in Clare in previous generations, he says.
“The Dunnes were part and parcel of Munster final day in Thurles. The guys on the side of the street were nearly as important as the match itself and when they died and went away a bit of old Ireland left us. Take the likes of Martin Rochford, a guy over in East Clare who died years ago.
“He used to sit waiting until he’d see Doran’s caravan coming over the top of the hill in the 1930s and by the time Doran had got to the place where he’d park the caravan, Rochford and all the boys would be down there and they’d unharness the horses for him and have eggs and bread for them because they wanted the music. “Again, someone told Willie Clancy that Johnny Doran was playing music in the street in Newcastle West and he cycled from Miltown Malbay to Newcastle West to hear him playing.
“When Johnny Doran died after a wall fell on him in 1948, at the age of 42, he had £3,000 saved and he was going to use that money to buy a farm of land in Clare. It was his favourite county, this is where he got all the respect.”
None of the families or musicians documented in the book were cagey with the outsiders who were writing about them.
“We learned a lot through research and one of the things that stood out was the total honesty first of all and the generosity that they displayed to us.
“Normally they’re quite secretive, but the travelling people involved in Irish music are incredible people. They’re carrying on the music to another generation,” Mr O’Connell concluded.