Before the resurgence of traditional music, and in a time when women of a certain age did not frequent pubs, some of Clare’s best players and singers were hidden from public view.
Rare footage of some of these people will be shown at the Lahinch Traditional Music Festival this weekend.
Back in the 1980s, adopted Clare man, Eugene Lamb, had the idea of recording some of these pioneering performers and saving their sound and style for future generations.
Many of these musicians were women, who may have given up playing when they had families, and then didn’t frequent pub sessions in their older years.
“I had a realisation some night in O’Connor’s pub [in Doolin] that there were some lads playing who wouldn’t be around indefinitely and something should be done. So myself and a good friend of mine, Dick Grant from Lahinch, came up with the idea of recording some of the lads.
“I knew Pascal Brooks [Ennis photographer] who did weddings at the time and I asked Pascal could he come along and record some videos for me.
“I would set everything up and I would call him [Pascal] when I had everything prepped and ready to go. We would set up the musicians, usually in their own houses, and record about two or three hours of footage.
“We probably recorded about 15 people in this way. We didn’t think a lot of it at the time but over the years people are astounded that nobody else had thought of it.
“We did it to give them [the older musicians] a bit of exposure because they weren’t getting any at the time.
“We recorded women who never played in pubs, they would have stayed at home raising families. One woman who we recorded had given up playing when she was raising her family, her concertina was broken.
“When she was 80 years of age the kids got together and got her a new one. They were probably the ones who broke it on her in the first place. She hit the road again and started playing at 80 and we have footage of her and Micho Russell playing together in O’Connor’s Pub.
“Her name was Mary Ellen Curtin. She had a good few years of playing before she died and she was back playing as well as ever, in a short period of time.
“It was very interesting meeting people like that. We recorded a couple of singers and a storyteller called Blood Betty from Ballyreen. He was an extraordinary storyteller. Women [of that age] didn’t go into pubs. I remember even back in my time, and I was brought up in north County Dublin, and I remember one pub in Finglas which had a big sign outside saying ‘no women allowed’. It is unbelievable now. I was showing the videos one time in Tubber and a girl in the audience got all excited. ‘That’s my grandad’ she said. She had heard about him, but she never actually saw him. It’s about little moments like that.”
The Lahinch Traditional Music Festival is organised each year in memory of local traditional musician Susan O’Sullivan. Eugene met and played with Susan in the 1970s, but unfortunately he was unable to record her before she passed away.
“I met Susan back in 1977, we played a bit of music together. Another man called Eddie Stack [author and relation of Susan O’Sullivan] was with us. Myself and Eddie had great fun with Susan that day, it’s going back a long time,” said Eugene.
“That was during the old Merriman Summer School, I was in the college [University of Galway] at the time and I was down giving a talk on the Burren. Back when nobody knew anything about the Burren, I was the expert.
“I was showing some stuff there [in Lahinch] and I had a bit of time to spare so myself and Eddie called in to say hello to Susan before I did the talk.
“We played an impromptu few tunes together that day and had a lot of fun. I didn’t know her very well but that is how I met her.
“She was a great player, a lovely player. It was what always happens when musicians get together, we were swapping tunes and talking about other musicians, all that kind of stuff.
“I don’t know how but Siobhan [Susan’s granddaughter] heard that I had done some sort of collecting of traditional musicians in the 1980s. It’s a shame that I didn’t record Susan, I met her before I started on with the idea of recording people.”
Eugene will present some of these recordings in Flanagans Pub in Lahinch on Friday, April 11 at 8pm.
“I won’t be able to show them all at the Lahinch Trad Festival, I’ll have little snips of them,” said Eugene.
“All of them are being stored by Cuimhneamh an Chláir wo are doing a great job. I think, because of that collection that I did, people began to realise that there are a lot of older people out there who are valuable informants. They have links to the past that are really worth recording.”
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and podcaster who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.