TONY MCAULEY: Tony McAuley, who has died aged 63, played a vital role in the renewed appreciation of the traditional arts, especially music, in the North of Ireland over the past three decades.
A broadcaster and documentary film-maker of distinction, he introduced Irish music as it is made today to new audiences, and in his later career broadened perspectives by tracing the legacy in music of the emigrant Ulster Irish in the poor hill country of the eastern US.
He was a key influence in the careers of many folk music performers: he listened, enthused and encouraged - the last being a particular gift. And he was himself a talented and distinctive singer, guitarist and pianist.
Much of his career was grounded in his intimate knowledge of two areas: the mid-Ulster countryside near his home town of Cookstown, overlooked by Slieve Gallion; and the Glens of Antrim, his father's home country, which he walked for decades and wrote about with great affection, and where he was buried last Monday in Cushendall. These places were like two gable-ends to his life, he once said. It was fitting that his coffin was carried from the church to the tune of Slieve Gallion Braes.
Educated at St Patrick's College, Armagh, and Queen's University Belfast, he taught English in St Patrick's Secondary School, Bearnageeha, in north Belfast, before joining the Schools department of BBC Northern Ireland.
His career in the BBC began at a time when its Belfast outpost was still self-consciously "British". Tony McAuley brought his unselfconscious Irishness to the gradual widening and transformation of local broadcasting.
He first made programmes under the wing of the legendary producer, folklorist and writer Sam Hanna Bell, working with the skilful and subtle Douglas Carson and the now-renowned film-maker and musician David Hammond. A man repelled by religious and political bigotry, Hanna Bell gave endless encouragement to the young McAuley, as to many others, and helped the young broadcaster develop his own style and interests without inhibition.
McAuley's radio programmes for children showed a natural ability to communicate with the very young. His talent for simple, understated, vivid statement translated easily into his later broadcasts and films on a wide range of subjects. These were marked by a seeming effortlessness and, above all, intimacy.
A man with the keenest sense of place, he was instantly at home with those he liked - the broadcaster's best tool except, perhaps, for a memorable voice. Tony McAuley had that, too: a warm tone, with a classless, mid-Ulster accent, rich and musical, persuasive.
Maeve Ó Catháin, a BBC senior producer who worked with him for two decades, picks out the Today and Yesterday series among his studies of writers and actors on air and for television. Today and Yesterday, geared towards school audiences, featured Tony McAuley's university contemporary and friend Seamus Heaney, and among others John McGahern, John Hewitt, Harold Goldblatt and Liam Neeson.
The famously shy McGahern needed coaxing by McAuley but provided the perfect final moment to one programme when he looked into the camera and declared: "The best adventures in your life happen among the familiar." McAuley's ability to win trust and draw vivid responses did not work only with famous writers, musicians and artists. He was just as much at ease with a hill farmer in the Mournes or the Sperrins.
His own musical talent gave a particular resonance to his production work on his popular series As I Roved Out, as well as Ulster In Focus and The Celts. Jazz and skiffle were early enthusiasms. He played piano for a time in a showband, the Grafton, and started the Glee Club at Queen's with Phil Coulter and Seamus Heaney, before finding his lifelong love: the traditional music of his own country.
He recognised no borders - a characteristic valued by colleagues, audiences, and more academic observers. David Hammond said on radio last weekend: "If there were more people like Tony, this would be a better place." McAuley's contribution to the promotion of Celtic music and culture through the years is enormous, Hammond believes.
A major part of that contribution was his unselfish encouragement of others: Tony McAuley helped launch or relaunch a string of careers. He showcased performers such as Enya and Paul Brady, among others, giving them their first television outings. He also worked with groups such as Clannad, the Bothy Band, the Dubliners and with influential figures such as Donal Lunny and Christy Moore. It was he who linked the Chieftains and Van Morrison for their first joint performances.
At the suggestion of the then US vice-consul in Belfast, Doug Archard, Tony McAuley and the writer and actress Annie McCartney helped establish the organisation Atlantic Bridges to explore Ulster's links with the southern American states, reaching past the Northern Protestant suspicion of modern Irish-America to uncover the history of pre-Famine emigration, the story of Presbyterian farming stock relocated in the New World, with their fiddles, Scottish laments and reels.
This rekindled McAuley's love of bluegrass, cajun and country-and-western music. His performing ability and knack of charming new audiences was vital in the first contacts with American groups.
His last Folk Club programme on Radio Ulster was broadcast, with his family's approval, only hours after his death last Saturday. Though grievously ill, he had gone into the BBC Belfast studio a week before he died to finish recording. His last words on air were: "Good night, God bless, sorry about the voice. These things happen."
He is survived by his wife, Anne, his sons, Brian and Ciaran, his mother, Ita, sisters Mary, Clare, Una, Róisín and Anne, and brother, Liam.
Tony McAuley: born October 24th, 1939; died June 7th, 2003