The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
Denis Cox (Donnchadh Mac Coiligh, c. 1882—1962) first came to public notice as a prizewinner in the Feis Ceoil platform competitions of the 1920s, specialising in songs in Irish, and he enjoyed success also at feiseanna throughout Ireland in the same decade. Born in Trim, Co Meath, he spent most of his life in Dublin where he established a successful recital career. A natural baritone sometimes billed as a tenor, he went on to study classical singing and undertake concert tours in Britain, Germany and Italy. He made a short singing film for the Pathé Company and in 1934 represented Ireland at the World Fair in Chicago. Cox taught ‘Gaelic’ singing in the Municipal College of Music in Dublin from 1945, and performed songs in Irish and national songs in English frequently on Radio Éireann until the late 1950s.
From 1928 Denis Cox recorded extensively in London for the Parlophone Record Company, in Irish and English, and some of these recordings continued to be issued into the 1950s. About 1936 he recorded also in English for the Beltona Company. His songs in Irish were the subject of a special Parlophone marketing drive in 1933, when the company published a booklet of the texts of the songs in Irish he had recorded (see related material below).
Cox was generally described by newspapers as an ‘Irish traditional singer’ at a time when sean-nós Gaeltacht singers rarely got a public hearing, and he was even accepted as a traditional singer by the organisers of 1950s fleadhanna ceoil concerts. He was in fact a classically trained singer of traditional songs with a well developed stagecraft and a winning personality, who performed normally with piano or orchestral accompaniment. In his singing in Irish he belonged to a Gaelic League concert tradition of accompanied singing that had grown up since the 1890s.
See also Denis Cox, Songs in Irish in Print, 1933 below.
Do you have other Denis Cox recordings or less worn copies of the Irish Traditional Music Archive recordings presented here? ITMA would welcome their donation or the opportunity to copy them.
With thanks to record donors Vincent Duffe, Reg Hall, John Loesberg, Bernard Sexton, Áine Sotscheck, Geoffrey C. White, & the Franciscan Order, St Clare’s Convent, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, per Sr Mairéad Ní Fhearáin.
Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2009
