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.
In 2023, Pádraic Mac Mathúna began work cataloguing hundreds of hours of recordings from a variety of older collections in the Archive. Each month, he’ll pick out a special selection of tunes he’s discovered from these recordings.
Larry Redican (1908-1975) was a central figure in the traditional music scene of New York City from the 1930s to 1970s. Originally from Dublin, his parents were from Roscommon and steeped in music. Larry himself learnt fiddle from the famous Frank O’Higgins before emigrating to the US in 1929. Over the following decades Larry helped form the New York Ceili band with many musical friends Andy McGann, Jack Coen, Felix Dolan and Paddy O’Brien when Paddy lived in New York City. Luckily Larry made recordings of musical sessions with his friends in New York in the 1950s and 60s as well as sending and receiving private recordings with personal greetings and music from the Pipers Club in Dublin. He also was a close friend of Ciarán Mac Mathána, who privately made some of the recordings below for him, and a vital link to facilitating Ciarán’s recordings in the US for Radió Éireann in the early 1960s.
Larry’s grandson, Larry Jr, has kindly donated his grandfather’s tape collection to ITMA and this playlist represents a selection of those recordings capturing both the vibrant music scene in New York at the time and also recordings made in Ireland and sent on to Larry. Hope you enjoy the music.
Pádraic Mac Mathúna, July 2023
Larry Redican and Ciarán Mac Mathúna / [unidentified photographer]
