Irish Traditional Music Archive

Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann

Images from the ITMA-JMI Publishing Project

Since 2006 the Archive has been in a productive partnership with The Journal of Music in Ireland (JMI) in publishing in each issue of the journal a black-and-white archival image from its collections on some aspect of Irish traditional music (as well as extensive listings of recent publications). Each image has accompanying text by Nicholas Carolan.

In 2007 the JMI became an online journal as well as continuing to publish in hard copy, and the Archive’s images are now available on the JMI site www.thejmi.com. The following links,courtesy of the JMI, will bring you to a selection of the images to date.

In 2008 the JMI became the Journal of Music with which the project continues.

With thanks to editor Toner Quinn and JM Staff. With thanks also for the donation of photographs and other facilitation to the Breathnach Family, Luke Cheevers, Ken Garland, the Irish Examiner, Antain Mac Lochlainn, Liam McNulty, Pat McNulty, the National Library of Ireland, O'Donoghue's public house, Merrion Row, Dublin, the Gerard O'Grady Family, J.B. Vallely, and the directors of the Willie Clancy Summer School. The ITMA always welcomes such donations or the opportunity to copy such materials.

ITMA Refno.	Image title
Strawboys-EXT	‘From time immemorial a strange wedding custom has been observed in the West of Ireland, young men – known as the Straw-Boys – who have not been invited to the ceremony, and who care to present themselves in the disguise shown in our picture, being allowed to join in the festivities and control all the arrangements for a couple of hours’ – caption to drawing by the British illustrator E.A. Morrow published in the magazine The Graphic, London, 8 June 1911
Boer War-EXT	Drummer Kelly and Private O’Leary of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and a melodeon player entertain the troops at Ladysmith, South Africa, 17 March 1900, with ‘a typical Irish step dance… after many an Irish song was sung’. Drawn by Sidney Paget from a sketch by Ernest Prater and published in the Sphere, London, 28 April 1900
777-DI	Tommy and Siobhán Peoples at the Willie Clancy Summer School Fiddle Recital, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare, 9 July 2007
30177-SR	Front cover (recto and verso) of the first issue of The Irish Musical Monthly, an early twentieth-century Dublin periodical
999-DI	An Irish harper on the continent: portrait of Cork merchant William Archdeacon with his family (c. 1750), from painting in private collection, Ghent.
11255-PH	Traditional singer Maggie Murphy (second from left) at Slieve Gullion Festival of Traditional Singing, Mullaghbawn, Co Armagh, October 1993: from colour photo by Ken Garland, London. Photo © Ken Garland, courtesy Ken Garland & Irish Traditional Music Archive
1843-EXT	The Irish harp as national symbol at Daniel O’Connell’s Monster Repeal Meeting on Tara Hill, Co. Meath, 15 August 1843: engraving from The Illustrated London News (26 August 1843)
13914-LP	Ronnie Drew (right), Luke Kelly (seated), Ciarán Burke, & Barney McKenna on the cover of the first of some fifty original long-playing records (and hundreds of reissues) by the Dubliners group, Transatlantic TRA 116, issued 1964. Photo and design Brian Shuel
11165-PH	Meeting of Uilleann Pipers, Neptune Hotel, Bettystown, Co Meath, 7 April 1968. Photographer unknown
332-PH	Harry Bradshaw, recipient of the ‘Gradam na gCeoltóirí’ award of the TG4 Television Gradaim Ceoil 2008, in an RTÉ radio studio 1992. Photo by RTÉ photographer John Rowe
1718-PH	Black Raven Pipe and Drum Band, Lusk, Co Dublin, at Killarney Oireachtas, July 1914. Photo by Irish Examiner photographer
888-DI	Galway traditional singer Seosamh Ó hÉanaí (centre) with, possibly, a relative (first right); Tom Clancy of the Clancy Brothers singing group (?) (first left); and, possibly, a neighbour of Ó hÉanaí’s. Photograph seemingly taken in Connemara in the 1970s, photographer unknown
3145-PH	Seamus Ennis, uilleann pipes (second from right), with Peadar Mercier, bodhrán; Dan O’Dowd, uilleann pipes; and (?) Proinnsias Ní Dhorchaí, flute; by the river Liffey, c. late 1970s, photographer unknown
1691-PH	Publicity photo of Armagh professional singer, instrumentalist and songwriter Tommy Makem with American five-string banjo, c. 1969
3226-PH	Traditional-song collector Tom Munnelly (second, left) with Clare traditional singers Tom Lenihan, Miltown Malbay; Kate Droney, Ballyvaughan; Martin Reidy, Connolly; and Michael ‘Straighty’ Flanagan, Inagh, at the Willie Clancy Summer School, Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, 11 July 1980
10734-PH	Sean-nós dancer Máire Áine Ní hIarnáin from Leitir Caladh, Conamara, dancing a reel to the playing of Irish Traditional Music Archive Board members Dermot McLaughlin from Derry and Paddy Glackin from Dublin, at Merrion Square, Dublin, 15 November 2006
8639-BK	The Irish Music Club of Chicago fl. c. 1901–09, a semi-formal association of Irish traditional musicians which included many source-players for The Dance Music of Ireland. 1001 Gems…, the bible of Irish dance tunes compiled and published by Francis O’Neill in Chicago in 1907
3285-PH	Dublin singer Siobhán Ní Laoire at an event of the Sean-Nós Cois Life traditional singing festival on 2 April 1993 in the Góilín Club at the Ferryman, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, with fellow-singers Clíona Ní Shúilleabháin, Áine Uí Cheallaigh, and Frank Harte. Photograph by Dublin singer Luke Cheevers
10941-PH	A musically unreliable nineteenth-century mezzotint depicting the Longford poet, novelist and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) on the Continent. The engraving, by W. Greatbach, is of a painting by the noted English artist Edward Matthew Ward (1816–79)