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In October 2019, Catriona Gribben from Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal, joined ITMA as an Intern from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Her ambition to learn more about field recording and archiving took a much more local twist than she first anticipated.
My name is Catriona Gribben, I am 21 years old and come from Gaoth Dobhair in County Donegal. As a final year BA Hons Music & Audio Production student at Queen’s University Belfast, I had the opportunity to undertake a part-time placement as one of my modules.
I was looking for somewhere I could use my skills in both music and audio, as well as my other passion, the Irish language. A fellow Donegal musician suggested ITMA and I knew it would be the perfect match. Not only would it offer me the ideal opportunity to be immersed in Irish music and song, but the fact there is a Recording Studio in the building meant that I would be able to put some of the audio production skills I had been learning into action. Keen to make contact with ITMA, I sent my CV and was thrilled to be invited to Dublin to discuss projects and areas of work that would be suitable for me as an intern. This visit was invaluable as it allowed both parties to prepare a structure for the internship which would be mutually beneficial. I was motivated to make the most of my experience at the ITMA but at the same time offer something concrete and worthwhile in return.
Since a very young age, I have always been passionate about Irish traditional music and its preservation. I was delighted and inspired to be in 73 Merrion Square which is such a treasure trove of Irish heritage. My weekly visits reminded me of my rural Donegal roots. I have always felt privileged to have been brought up in a place steeped in Irish culture, music and heritage where the Irish language is so vibrant. I feel particularly grateful to have been raised in Gaoth Dobhair because, although neither of my parents are originally from there, it has hugely influenced the person I am today. I know that my upbringing there gave me opportunities and gifts that I would not have gained elsewhere, like my fluency in the Irish language and my love of traditional music.
As a young child, I attended singing and tin whistle lessons in An Chrannóg and went to the summer camps all through the medium of Gaeilge. Although many people initially got involved because their school friends were going, I was enamored from the start and knew it was where I wanted to be.
The classes were, and remain, very popular and most young people locally can say that they went along to these lessons at some point in their childhood. In retrospect, we just accepted it as part of our childhood without thinking about what we were singing or playing, how rare the airs we were singing were, or how important it was that we were learning them. Most of the time the songs were learned phonetically by ear, and it was only later as we grew up that we realised what the lyrics were actually about.
Learning other instruments came naturally to those of us who persevered with the singing and tin whistle lessons. I tried out most of the instruments for a term or two and decided somewhere along the way that I would focus on the piano accordion. In 2008, after long hours of practise and years of being told ‘na bí ag labhairt i mBéarla!’, a group of young musicians, under the direction of Caitlín Joe Jack, emerged called An Crann Óg. Ever since, we have been collaborating, performing and touring together across Ireland, Scotland, Germany and even the Catskills in New York state. Our ongoing role as a group is to promote and encourage the Irish singing tradition as well as to entertain.
One of the first projects I worked on in the Archive was the Gráinne Yeats Collection. Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013) was a harpist, singer and researcher from Dublin. The material in this collection was donated to ITMA by the Yeats Family.
My first task was to sort through and broadly sort the published books and journals in the collection into English language, Irish language/other Celtic languages. After this, I began checking the ITMA online catalogue to see if any of these titles were already in ITMA. I created metadata for the new material and isolated the copies.
I was also given the opportunity to do some filming and improve my Adobe Premiere Pro film editing skills. Brian Doyle and Alan Woods invited me to join them on a couple of ITMA field recording trips. The first outing was in October 2019 to the Glenties Fiddle Weekend. This was a brilliant night for Donegal fiddle music and I was able to film performers like Roisin and Ella McGrory from Culdaff on the Inishowen Peninsula. I also assisted Alan Woods with the filming of two fantastic gigs in the Amharclann Ghaoth Dobhair over the course of the Scoil Gheimhridh festival in December 2019. These were performances by FIDIL and Julie Fowlis.