Come West Along the Road
Presented and researched by Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, Come West along the Road is now in its 14th series. It began broadcasting in 1994, and is the longest-running television series ever on Irish traditional music.
The series consists of 13 half-hour programmes drawn from the early years of RTÉ television (1961-1993), with additional material from other television stations, newsreels, feature films, and private film footage. Some material is being shown for the first time, and most of the material in the series has not been seen since its first transmission up to 40 years ago.
Leading exponents of traditional music, song and dance, some long-dead, some in their youth, mingle with wrenboys, set dancers and unknown performers captured in studio or at fleadh cheoil or festivals, to present an entertaining and unique documentation of Irish traditional music in the last half-century. To date, over 2,000 performers have appeared on over 180 programmes of Come West along the Road, and also on ten series of Siar an Bóthar, the Irish-language version of the series on TG4. Three DVDs of highlights from earlier series have been published and are available from the RTÉ shop.
The primary focus of the series is on music, but there is also a fascinating dimension of social history to this early material: townscapes and country-side, dress and hairstyles, houses and furniture, and the development of the medium of television itself.
The new series will feature for the first time footage from BBC Northern Ireland: a special programme drawing on the 1977 BBCNI series As I Roved Out and a documentary on the Co Armagh singer Sarah Makem. Also featured will be classic performances from the early 1990s RTÉ series The Pure Drop, which had moved for the first time to the Pearse Museum in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin.
Episodes
Episode One
This week's programme features Paddy Glackin a fiddle player from Co. Dublin; Carna Ceili band from Co. Galway; a Tipperary banjo player called Gerry O'Connor; Martyn Bennett who plays Irish music on the Scottish Lowland pipes and the Chicago fiddle player and traditional composer Liz Carroll.
Episode Two
This week Con Greaney from Co Limerick sings 'My Trousers Turned Back'; Tony Smith from Cavan plays the fiddle while Paudeen O'Rafferty dances an unusual jig and Dessie Wilkinson from Belfast plays the flute.
Episode Three
This week we bring you the first of two special programmes drawn from a particular run of RTÉ's traditional music series THE PURE DROP.
After three seasons in the Cultúrlann in Monkstown, Co Dublin, headquarters of CCÉ, THE PURE DROP had moved in 1991 to a new venue in St Enda's in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Featuring Co. Westmeath fiddle player Seamus Creagh, Dublin flute player Mícheál Ó hAlmhain, Clatre concertina player Yvonne Griffin and Kerry fiddler Paddy Cronin.
Episode Four
This week's programme features 'The New-Mown Meadow' reel with Dublin fiddle player Paddy Glackin and Roscommon flute player Patsy Hanley plus mystery accordion player Joe Burke of Kilnadeema, Loughrea, Co. Galway.
Joe has been a wonder of Irish traditional music since he first came to national attention in the 1950s and recorded for Gael Linn what may have been the last Irish traditional 78.
He's still going strong as a popular player and as a teacher, and recently he brought out, with his wife Anne Conroy Burke, a new tutor book and demonstration CDs for learners.
Episode Five
This week we bring you the first of two special programmes drawn from a particular run of RTÉ's traditional music series THE PURE DROP.
After three seasons in the Cultúrlann in Monkstown, Co Dublin, headquarters of CCÉ, THE PURE DROP had moved in 1991 to a new venue in St Enda's in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Featuring Co. Westmeath fiddle player Seamus Creagh, Dublin flute player Mícheál Ó hAlmhain, Clatre concertina player Yvonne Griffin and Kerry fiddler Paddy Cronin.
Episode Six
For the first time ever in fourteen series to date, Come West Along The Road features television footage of Irish traditional music from BBC Northern Ireland.
Highlights include the Sands family from County Down performing on the BBC's As I Roved Out from June 1977 plus traditional singer Geordie Hanna, an eel fisherman from Derrylaughlan, Co Tyrone, singing on the same programme.
Episode Seven
Featuring Peg McGrath on flute, originally from Roscommon but living in Dundalk, Co Louth, when she played on THE PURE DROP in September 1989.
Also from THE PURE DROP, this time 1991, singer Packie Manus Byrne from Ardara, Donegal with an emigration song of his own composition.
Plus two musicians Liz Carroll and John Williams with two hornpipes from the New World recorded for THE PURE DROP in 1993. They were both born in the city of Chicago of Irish parentage, and learned their traditional music there.