The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
ITMA Artist Liaison Officer Alan Woods and Executive Assistant Kyle Macaulay travelled to Edinburgh this month to collect the second tranche of Cathal McConnell’s generous donation to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Cathal donated three large boxes, totalling 668 commercial & non-commercial cassettes for digitisation and cataloguing. This collection contains a wealth of significant private recordings that capture prominent figures in traditional music from the north of Ireland. A previous donation of 66 cassettes was received from McConnell in August 2022.
Alan and Kyle also captured the second of two short interviews featuring McConnell. The first interview took place in August 2022 on ITMA’s first visit to Scotland. This important set of field recordings give a glimpse into Cathal’s life, musical influences and his unique approach to flute playing, whistle playing and singing.
