The pipes are calling the tune in trad

THE EVENINGS are lengthening and the mornings are inching brighter so the annual calendar beckons our traditional musicians out from under cover of darkness for the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Awards. This year’s recipient list is a colourful and eclectic one, drawing deep from the well to honour fiddlers, pipers, singers, composers and lifelong champions of the music in all its shapes and forms.

This year’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year is Waterford piper Caoimhín Ó Feargháil. The southeast isn’t known as a piping stronghold, being more readily associated with traditional singing, but Ó Fearghail didn’t want for mentors during his childhood or teen years. He was born outside Chicago but moved back to the southeast at the age of seven. Waterford piper David Power was one of his earliest teachers and inspirations, but Ó Feargháil can’t help but acknowledge the defining influence of Seamus Ennis on the development of his ear and his piping style.

“I suppose I’ve been influenced by David [Power] and Jimmy O’Brien Moran,” he offers, somewhat reluctantly, clearly unused to the limelight. “I love all the old pipers as well. There’s nothing like listening to Seamus Ennis or Tommy Reck or Willie Clancy.”

Waterford is more closely associated with big singers such as Nioclás Tóibín and Áine Uí Cheallaigh, and, more recently, Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, among others. This song tradition has served Ó Feargháil well, as years of listening to singers have yielded a rich understanding of the interplay between the lyric of a slow air, for example, and the way a piper might approach it. Seamus Ennis was always adamant that a piper must understand this fundamental relationship if he or she is to truly go beneath the skin of a tune.

“I usually only play airs that I know the song of,” Ó Feargháil says. “I find I think of the words of the song as I’m playing, and whatever feeling is supposed to be in the song, I try to imitate that on the pipes.”

It’s the second year in a row that a piper has bagged the Young Musician award (with piper Pádraig Keane passing on the laurels to Ó Feargháil this year): surely a sign that the pipes have gone mainstream, if not quite viral. Time was when you could count the number of pipers in the country on the fingers of one hand. These days, such is the demand for pipes that Na Píobairí Uilleann has pioneered a pipe-making course in an effort to begin to meet the demand. It seems that the uilleann pipes are, finally, to traditional music what banjo is to bluegrass: central to the sound, and gaining acceptance among traditional music’s diverse audiences.

At 22, Nell Ní Chróinín is the youngest ever recipient of the Traditional Singer Of The Year award. A native of Ballingeary in the belly of Cork's Muskerry Gaeltacht, she's a singer who readily tackles the so-called "big songs" of the tradition, such as Cath Chéim An Fhiath, with the same vigorous enthusiasm with which she tackles the more humorous songs, such as Na Táilliúirí.

“A lot of our songs are sung really from the heart,” Ní Chróinín says, in attempting to describe the distinguishing features of Muskerry singing. “You can really pick up people’s emotions when they’re singing. That goes for the sad songs, but it goes for the songs with a bit of devilment in them too. The emotion is there for sure, but there’s fierce energy and drive there too. I think it’s very important as a singer that you have a real understanding of the story you’re telling, and the only way to get that across is be able to portray the mood of the story to the best of your ability, as the writer intended it.”

Ní Chróinín has benefited from a vibrant singing support network called Scéim Amhránaíochta Aisling Gheal, founded following the premature death of Cúl Aodha singer Diarmuidín Ó Suilleabháin in 1991. It supports and promotes singers and local songs. Ní Chróinín found herself in the tutelage of Máire Ní Cheilleachar, one of the foremost sean-nós singers of the region.

“Without those classes, I wouldn’t be singing at all,” Ní Chróinín insists. “You got the songs, the words, technique and breathing – and all from great teachers. I was really lucky to have all of that growing up. I know that I’m still learning, still finding out how to get to the heart of a song, and put my own stamp on it.”

Brian and Eithne Vallely from Armagh are the recipients of this year’s Gradam Aitheantais/Contribution Award. Lifelong champions of traditional music in a myriad of ways, they have played and taught music, founded the Armagh Pipers Club and the William Kennedy Piping Festival. Brian is also an artist whose work frequently takes traditional musicians at play as its theme. On the brink of publishing a history of the Armagh Pipers Club on the occasion of its 45th anniversary, the Vallelys have focused much of their energy in recent years on nurturing young musicians, eschewing the competition focus that they would have had in their earlier years. For both, it’s all about building the confidence and musicianship of the player.

“We arrived at what we do now by a process of trial and error,” Brian says, with trademark pragmatism. “We were very competition-oriented at one stage, but the negative things, such as rivalries between parents, rivalries between children, pressure on children, led us to re-think what we were doing.

“I came across a similar thing in athletics. It’s what they call ‘exploitation of precocious talent’, so we moved out of competition. At the same time, people still had Slógadh, which was much more performance oriented and it hadn’t a big emphasis on who the winners of the competitions were.”

Brian and Eithne have had a long association with the National Festival of Music For Youth, which led to groups performing in London’s South Bank Centre and in the Schools Youth Proms in the Royal Albert Hall.

They founded the William Kennedy Piping Festival, now in its 18th year, a festival that is epitomised by their willingness to cast their gaze outwards, embracing diverse music traditions along the way. With three of their children, Niall, Cillian and Caoimhín, professional musicians (with Buille, Lúnasa and North Cregg, among others), Brian and Eithne have been energised by the new friendships and musical discoveries of the next generation.

“We’re all Gaels at the end of the day,” Brian muses, “and for us it’s all about bringing together all the strands of Gaelic culture.

“The truth is that we never had a grand plan. We basically learned by our mistakes. I would have been a fairly unreconstructed tunnel-visioned person with regard to what I thought Irish music was, but luckily enough, between Eithne and myself, we’ve learned a lot over the years, and through our children, we’ve become aware of things we hadn’t been aware of, because they started travelling, bringing back ideas and contributing to our understanding. I feel very lucky and privileged that it happened like that.”

TG4 Gradam Ceoil winners

Gradam Ceoil/ Traditional Musician of the Year

Brian Rooneyfiddler

Ceoltóir Óg/Young Traditional Musician of the Year

Caoimhín Ó Feargháilpiper

Amhránaí/Traditional Singer of the Year

Nell Ní Chróinín

Gradam Saoil/Lifetime Achievement Award

Danny Meehan

Gradam Aitheantais/Contribution

Eithne and Brian Vallely

Gradam an Chumadóra/ Traditional Composer

Paddy O’Brien

* The TG4 Gradam Ceoil Concert and Awards ceremony will take place at UCH, UL Limerick on Saturday, March 24th. Tickets from uch.ieor 061-331549.

* The concert will be broadcast on TG4 at 9:30pm, April 8th, Easter Sunday. gradam.ie