On the Town: The deep tones of the Loughnashade trumpa have healing qualities, said Simon O'Dwyer, author of the newly published Prehistoric Music of Ireland.
The musician and researcher, who has reconstructed a number of prehistoric instruments, played a tune to open the chakras of those who attended the book's launch in the National Museum, Kildare Street, Dublin, this week. Among the crowd were composers Michael Holohan and Brent Parker, from Achill Island, Rossa Ó Snodaigh of the group Kíla and Lady Rosse of Birr Castle.
Prof Daragh Smyth, the head of Irish Celtic Studies at DIT, whose book Cúchulainn, an Iron Age Hero will be published by Irish Academic Press next spring, said "music did play quite an important part" in prehistoric times.
The book was launched by Éamon Ó Cuív TD, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and a neighbour in Cornamona in Co Galway of the author and his wife, Maria O'Dwyer.
"There's a huge gap of time between when these were created and our own present day," said Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
"Their whole context has disappeared. Their social context . . . We don't know how they played them or what they played on them."O'Dwyer thanked above all Dr Ned Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Musuem, "who waved a horn under my nose in 1987 and said, 'What can you do with this?'" He explained he has been hooked ever since on discovering more about these ancient instruments.
Prehistoric Music of Ireland by Simon O'Dwyer is published by Tempus Publishing