Musician, lecturer and writer on Irish traditional music Fintan Vallely has published Beating Time - The Story of the Irish Bodhrán on Cork University Press and will appear at Belfast Trad Festival. We asked him the BIG questions . . .
Fintan has played throughout the world at festivals and concerts and has taught flute annually at the Co. Clare Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy since 1986.
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He has performed and recorded with Berklee professor and guitarist Mark Simos, singer Tim Lyons, fiddle-players Gerry O'Connor and Liz Doherty, piper Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn, and the poet Dermot Healy.
His last album, Merrijig Creek, was of his own compositions, was recorded with his sister Sheena, also on flute. Fintan has been a music critic and commentator with The Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune and has written numerous book and album reviews for newspapers, journals and magazines.
He has lectured in universities in Ireland and abroad and his books include the first ever tutor for the Irish wooden flute, all editions of the Encyclopaedia Companion to Irish Traditional Music, and several biographies.
Fintan is now an Adjunct Professor with the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at University College Dublin. In 2023 he was awarded the national TG4 lifetime achievement award, Gradam Saol, for his work.
Tell us three things about yourself . . .
I am self-taught in playing Irish music which I have been engaged with since the age of thirteen.
I have a deep concern for national and international social justice, triggered by growing up in pre-Civil Rights Co. Armagh, and which tempered my engagement with Irish traditional music as a one-time artistic expression of the dispossessed and the intellectually marginalised, this leading me to do a Masters in ethnomusicology at Queens’ University, Belfast (Tuned Out - traditional music and Protestant identity in Northern Ireland, 1991), and a PhD on the flute in Irish music at UCD, 2004.
I had a fascination for printing since childhood, this leading to my moving to train and work at screen-printing and print design in 1972, and which led me to self-produce my first publication, a flute tutor book, in 1986, and, thence, to writing about music
How would you describe your music?
Irish-traditional in style, but presumably subliminally informed by experiencing other nationalities’ musics live while travelling and playing in the 1980s and '90s.
Who are your musical inspirations?
All older players who I encountered from the mid-1960s until the 1990s, including Peter Horan in Co. Sligo, Willie Clancy and Paddy Canny in Clare, Lucy Farr in London, Tim Lyons, Tommy Hayes, Matt Molloy and Liz Carroll.
What was the first gig you ever went to?
Before the gig was invented, a few concerts, but the first gig as such was Frankie Gavin playing at Kenmare circa 1978.
What was the first record you ever bought?
First actual disc was a 78 of Leo Rowsome playing reels including The Ships are Sailing, my aural learning of which tunes began my engagement with writing down music notes.
What’s your favourite song right now?
Liz Carroll’s reel titled The Chandelier.
Favourite lyric of all time?
Moorlough Mary.
If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
The Rights of Man.
Where can people find your music/more information?
My website.
Alan Corr
