The once-remote rural peninsula of Inishowen in north-east Co Donegal has a rich living tradition of English-language song. Singing for family and friends at convivial gatherings in homes and pubs was and still is a major form of entertainment there. Fine local singers are valued, and certain families are noted for their singing talents and large repertories of song.
Songs: Audio & Words
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Videos
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Book
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Photographs
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Audio playlist
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Video playlist
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Full collection of over 100 items
But in the 1980s, conscious that older singers were passing away unrecorded and that Inishowen songs were dying with them, local teacher and singer Jimmy McBride (originally from Gaoth Dóbhair in north-west Donegal) and singer Jim MacFarland from Derry city began an ongoing voluntary project of recording these singers and preserving their songs. In 1985 they published their first book of song lyrics My Parents Reared Me Tenderly, and in 1988 formally established the Inishowen Traditional Singers' Circle. In 1990 Jimmy McBride initiated an annual festival of traditional singing that continues strongly to this day and attracts local, national and international singers. It is now organised by the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle, which also holds monthly singing sessions and workshops.
From 1988 to date Jimmy McBride has been generously donating the many sound recordings, photographs and video recordings he made in Inishowen over the years to the Irish Traditional Music Archive for public access (some 750 items comprising 4,000 individually recorded songs from 100 singers), and these form the basis of the Inishowen Song Project.
Sponsored by Inishowen Development Partnership, this project is a collaboration between the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle (ITSC) and the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in Dublin to host song material collected in Inishowen on the Archive’s website. This state-of-the-art digital facility provides local, national and international access to Inishowen song material in a professional archival and web-based environment.
Web visitors can hear digitally remastered recordings of songs while seeing the words and photographs of the singers. They can also read a facsimile of the book My Parents Reared Me Tenderly on the site, courtesy of the collectors, and view photographs and videos of the singers, courtesy of Jimmy McBride, Ken Garland and other photographers. As ITMA has attended the Festival since 2007 to record contemporary singers, a selection of its recent videos are also available on the site.
Through its presence on the ITMA website, the material will also sit on the international European Digital Library, a project funded by the European Commission to explore the digital resources of Europe’s museums, libraries and archives. This present tranche of material will be followed by others, and the project will create the most comprehensive database available of digital material relating to the song tradition of Inishowen. It will also provide a template for providing maximum public access on the Internet to local and regional traditional music materials collected anywhere in Ireland or in the Irish diaspora.
