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Music At Maddens Podcast
Music at Maddens podcast from the snug upstairs in Belfast’s home of trad. Yarns, pints and laughs with well known faces from the trad music scene. Locals, visitors are all welcome to join in the chat - with Lynette Fay.
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Music At Maddens Podcast
Music At Maddens Podcast #005 - Ancient Traditions, Modern Expressions: The Evolution of Irish Music with Conor Caldwell and Ryan Molloy
Welcome to a new episode of Music At Maddens Podcast with me, Lynette Fay.
This week we welcome Irish Artists, Conor Caldwell and Ryan Molloy to the podcast.
Conor Caldwell and Ryan Molloy share their journey through traditional music from North Belfast and Tyrone, exploring how they navigate between classical and traditional worlds while bringing archival treasures to life.
• Belfast has transformed from a city where traditional music was hidden to one where it thrives on every street corner
• Growing up in different musical environments – Conor in classical music with Donegal connections, Ryan immersed in trad music in Tyrone
• Traditional and classical music worlds are becoming less boxed-off with more permission to experiment
• The 1920s jazz influence on Irish music and how partition affected musical culture in north and south
• The importance of academic recognition for traditional music through dedicated university programmes
• Their collaborative album "Oh, Listen to the Band" resurrects jazz-influenced trad music from the 1920s
• Belfast's unique musical energy now places it alongside Ennis as top destinations for traditional music
• Advice for learners: purposeful practice, setting realistic goals, and most importantly – listening
New episodes every Monday.
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Well, falche, Welcome to this week's Music at Madden's with me, Lynette Faye. We are coming to you as usual from the snub upstairs here in the pub, widely referred to as Belfast's home of traditional music, and you can also watch on YouTube. Thanks for listening on Spotify and Apple, and please do leave a review and subscribe while you're here. Now we have so many musicians and stories to include in the podcast, and thanks for all the suggestions so far as well. By the way, Today it's North Belfast and Tyrone uniting here on the far side of me here, the snug of Conor Caldwell and Ryan Malloy here, Good friends in life and in music, both highly respected academics and well, there was so much to learn from their latest collaborative work. Oh, Listen to the Band. We'll find out why about that as well in a little while, but it's great to have you here. How are you?
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining me in the middle of the madness of Belfast Tradfest, because that's what we're doing here. There's a bit of a haven in here. It's crazy on the streets.
Speaker 3:It is. Yeah, the streets are thronged the whole week. It's just monumental what's been achieved by the organisers, by the committee. It started off and it was big enough and now there's nearly a thousand students just fiddles and flutes and borons and dancers everywhere you turn Like it's, it's been a real, it's been inspirational actually, like you know, because think back to when you were younger and there wasn't much traditional music in the city.
Speaker 2:You know it was hidden away in places and that's just on the streets. You know, like everywhere, everywhere that was my next question to you was particularly you, connor. You know, growing up in North Belfast when you had the interest in the music, and now fast forward, you see what's happening now. You know what does that feel like as someone from the city?
Speaker 3:It's quite hard to take in sometimes, to be honest, like you know, especially just the scale to which it's grown over the last two to three years, because there was a feeling, just before COVID, that there was an energy in the city, that something was developing.
Speaker 3:And you, before COVID, that there was an energy in the city that something was developing. And you know, like, obviously COVID did a lot of um, there were a lot of things happened during COVID which made communities sort of fall away and uh, maybe not have the same energy that they had before. But in Belfast everything just came back stronger and uh, so yeah, I mean like when I was growing up in North Belfast it was predominantly classical music, was that was the, that was what people learned in school and you played in the orchestra and you did your bit. But I was lucky I had this avenue into Donegal, then, through my family and um, particularly in southwest of Donegal, into Glencail and Kill. So I almost kind of like existed in two different worlds. It was like the classical music world with the penguin suit in the city and then, you know, sitting in the bar at four in the morning, like you know. But never the twins should meet, never the twins should meet like yeah, yeah so it's interesting.
Speaker 2:And then you came at it from a different way, did you? We into the traditional music first, and then I will.
Speaker 1:Growing up in pomeroy, you know it's just like living in a permanent belfast trad fest. You know constant sessions and concerts and streets throwing this would be.
Speaker 2:This would be pomeroy in County Tyrone, which is a one street village absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Highest village in Ulster. Yeah, I started playing fiddle when I was seven. Kind of everyone learnt a bit of music at school. All started in the Timmisle and then we we were chosen one week to you know they obviously had to assess people and how good they could play a few tunes and was brought down to assembly hall to meet bridge harper and handed a fiddle and she taught me for the next 10 years really and uh, but there was always tribe music about you know, there's a lot of fantastic musicians that live in the area.
Speaker 1:My mom and dad were big into trad music.
Speaker 1:They're big KLE goers, and you know so the sound of traditional music was always never far away and actually funny I was just saying this the other day people call into the house was such a regular thing too, you know, and they might have a fiddle in the car or an accordion and they will bring it in and they'll have a few tunes and it was and it was just constantly there kind of fun on the slow burn. So I'm very fortunate that that's the case. Um, then classical kind of took over. Then when I was in my teens I always had an interest in the piano, um, and then I went through the whole geeky classical period. Connor seems to have survived the geeky period intact.
Speaker 2:But when you said there about primary school and just been handed the fiddle and then told right away you go to classes with bridge harper, so that took extraordinary vision from the teacher or the principal to put that in place as well, because they clearly at that stage identified the value of this music and the value of learning it and keeping the tradition going absolutely, and I think it's something that we have done quite well in the north, just recognizing the potential of music and the arts in the general primary education.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've been living in the republic now for 12 years and you know my kids have gone through the primary school system and that same push for music is just not there. It really isn't um, and it makes me feel all the more privileged to have had that experience where, you know, music was just in the primary school yeah um, you know, even if it was only in a very primitive kind of level, I mean the tunes we were learning.
Speaker 1:the fellow that was teaching us was a a big, burly piano accordion player called john convery, who was from armagh, I think. Katie, possibly he would put the fear of God into anyone, and I don't know if John's still alive, but if you're listening, john, that fear is still there.
Speaker 1:And he. You know we did stuff like Puff, the Magic Dragon and Dawn of the Day and very, very simple kind of thing. So no one would ever have gone to a very high level, but the fact is that everyone did it yeah and everyone had the chance to do it yeah you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, very fortunate to have had that, I mean. And then also I was very lucky in that bridge had married into her own. You know, she married a local fella, frankie rafting, so she had moved into the area and was obviously looking to teach. So it was quite serendipitous that she just was my local fiddle maestro.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:Cal Cal's there as well. I don't think Cal ever taught in the primary school.
Speaker 2:That'd be Cal Hayden, just in case anybody doesn't know who we're talking about.
Speaker 2:No, just in case. But it is interesting there, because teachers sometimes aren't appreciated for what they do, and particularly the extra things like that that they do, because this isn't part of the curriculum you're talking about here. It's an extra thing that somebody's bringing on because they've got a platform and they can use it and they think that a child's got a talent and it's just so special because look what's happened. But like you were saying there, conor, about living between the worlds and when I was thinking about the two of you coming in to talk today on the podcast, that was exactly what I've written here is the two of you exist between the two worlds or do you? Do you know, because you seem to be able to marry classical and traditional music so beautifully and so well and bring it in such a way to audiences where it's so accessible and you feel welcome with your knowledge and the academic knowledge that both of you have? There's two encyclopaedic brains sitting in front of me here. I'm very, very aware of that.
Speaker 1:That one there, not this one.
Speaker 2:But the thing is you never get that sense from either of you. But that between two worlds. Do you think that the words are? Have they collided or are they coexisting a wee bit better these days now, conor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I suppose there's a lot to be taken from the structure that learning Western art music when you're younger gives you, like I mean, it gives you an idea of a theory and a means to understand music and a language actually to discuss it through, like. So that's. I think that was really important for me. But quite a lot of what I've been doing over the last five or ten years is trying to find a way to get away from that as well and, like, maybe try to move towards having a lexicon that you can talk about Irish music that's free from the kind of shackles of all of that you know. And there I mean, could there loads of people that have gone before us, that that have very successfully navigated those spaces? And I was just thinking there after I was chatting to you a second ago just I sort of undersold some of what was going on in Belfast when I was younger because of course, sean Maguire was teaching lessons here and he's someone who existed between those two spaces. I went to Sean for a couple of lessons when I was eight or nine when I was more interested in kicking football Probably still am more interested in kicking football now, those days, more interested in kicking football, probably still am more interested in kicking football now, but now, um, those days are nearly over, but uh, yeah. So I went to sean and experienced a wee bit of that, and you know there's people, like martin dowling as well, who've been teaching fiddle, who come from from boothoos, but of course, you know, maybe more relevant, the rands music, like miho sulawain, um, and there are, there are countless people that have found a way to channel those two, two energies, you know. So, um, but I think I think we're getting to a point in time now where people are less boxed off.
Speaker 3:I think there was a period around the time of the revival especially, where people got this idea of something being really purely traditional, and if you didn't do exactly what, um, you know three generations before had done it, then it wasn't worth doing, whereas now there's a lot more permission and especially a look at younger musicians, like just heard, uh, mia lewin, uh nico on the radio earlier and jack warnock, and like they're just mixing, you know, dance music and electronic music and trad and music coming from gallic scotland and pop music, and just doing entirely their own thing.
Speaker 3:So, um, I think there, I think there is something really particular in belfast at the minute. And even look at people like, say, patty mccune and joshua burnside and these types of artists who don't come from any type of there's no baggage with the traditional music uh, it's something they picked up along the way, their primary art form is maybe something slightly different and so they don't feel burdened, I don't think, by feeling well, my grandfather did it this way and my grandmother sang it that way and they can just do it. You know, do it whatever way. Kind of feels, feels good that day.
Speaker 2:I find that really interesting because years ago, particularly when I was growing up, if you didn't have the pedigree in the house for music, then you felt that maybe you weren't part of that world and that world wasn't for you and it was very difficult to to even try to, you know, to get into it at all. I'm so glad that that has changed and everybody feels that it's a welcome space for them. And what about you, ryan? I will speak about both of your academic working away well, but working as an academic in Maynooth, the classical music and the traditional music coming together. Do you feel the same thing with connor, that it's not as connor, that it's not as boxed off anymore?
Speaker 1:it definitely isn't, and I think I mean it's just, it's been quite a natural progression and something that's been happening over the course of this past 50 years really and we are the beneficiaries of a lot of hard work and graft by some of our musical ancestors, the big names and Conor's already alluded to some of them the likes of Ursula Vine, who was such an innovator in both musically but also from an educational perspective, and the way that he brought traditional music into the degree courses in UCC initially, and then the establishment of the Irish World Academy in in Limerick, where Conor now works.
Speaker 1:Um, all these things were really pivotal in just changing the narrative around a traditional music's place in society and in education, but also, then, its accessibility to everyone and, I suppose, giving it a newfound respect, which, again, people who you know composers like O'Sullivan, you know Oreda, fleischmann and all before them were kind of trying to find this middle ground between classical and traditional music that respected both domains. And I think we've kind of this is going to sound unkind, but I think we've passed all that. Now that's kind of been done. We live in a much more pluralist society and the thing I find fascinating about the youngsters now coming up playing is that, yes, they have all these extra opportunities, but their frame of reference is so different to our frame of reference, you know, um maybe were they referencing in your opinion or what from you know, from what you're hearing or experiencing it starts more recently it
Speaker 1:starts a lot more recently and we find it like when you're out teaching, and if you're teaching fiddling, you start to talk about older musicians have you heard of Johnny Doherty or Sean Maguire? Or, even more recently, I've had experiences where I'm like, oh, have you heard of Frankie Gavin? And they haven't heard of Frankie Gavin. You're like, where have you been and what are you listening to? Interesting, and I ask that quite genuinely because they still find themselves essentially in the same place that I found myself in X number of years ago. I won't say but wanting to learn traditional music, wanting to engage with this thing, but from a totally different angle.
Speaker 2:So do you think they've, or could there be a perception that they're losing out on something that that's not their point of reference?
Speaker 1:Quite, possibly, possibly, but that's not for us to say yeah, yeah, you know the tradition is a living thing, it's an evolving thing. It will, you know. Look at the stuff that's been produced now. Yeah, you know, by people from 12 to 82 yeah and, and you know, even older musicians that I, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to kind of reference people like Martin Hayes, who isn't necessarily old, you know, or.
Speaker 2:But he's been playing a long time and very prominent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and is constantly kind of exploring different things. Now there's a around how kind of martin places himself in different contexts. Martin doesn't necessarily change, but the context he plays in changes kind of yeah and rejuvenates that whole sound.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so, uh, I've forgotten my train of thought in this now, basically, that innovation. Innovation used to be a dirty word but it's not. It isn't so much anymore, because the tradition is just constantly evolving, constantly doing new things, responding to the very, very fast paced, you know world and music industry that we, that we live in. Yeah, and that's an exciting thing. Does that mean the traditional stuff will go away? Absolutely not, because that's still. That's still the social aspect of, of of the music.
Speaker 1:People still like to get together and play a tune and share tunes and in that kind of predominantly melodic uh environment the old tunes still have a place and therefore the tradition will always be present. A lot of the innovation in where the commas is happening in performance spaces yeah you know it's not like that we're getting together in a in a in a pub and rattling out fully formed arrangements and stuff that just you know that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:No and you know it's interesting. Something else you picked up on there was, um, that often the sophistication of traditional music can be underplayed and there seems to be a turning point in that currently and that's been happening for a while now where there's an appreciation of just how sophisticated this music is and how skillful the players are, that you know they're not necessarily reading music, they're learning from ear, they're carrying hundreds, thousands of them in some cases in their heads and the oral tradition. Just how special that is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's a global debate too about countries that are in some sort of post-colonial state, about how we go about reappraising the value of oral culture. For so long it's been. If it's not written on a piece of paper, it's not really worth anything, and I think we are finding new ways to to put a strong value on that sort of folk memory that's retained, you know. But of course it's hybrid now too, because most people read music of some description, whether it's stave, manuscript or whether it's abcs or um, and like with the tools you have um, you know, say, like with youtube, even the way you can slow down recording so you can access a wide variety of material and you're sort of learning it from the oral tradition. But you're cheating a little bit because you use the tools at your disposal. So I think it's yeah, it's an interesting thing. It's definitely like there's a wider context to it, but I think we have a road to go as well.
Speaker 3:You know, and this is probably something that I try to speak to my students about in ul and try to speak to myself about too but you know, or just your dedication to practice, and I think like you can reach a certain level in traditional music by, yeah, working hard.
Speaker 3:But if you look at, say, what a classical musician might do like a touring classical musician to become a solo player, like it's an entire life dedication, your food, your sleep, your family life you know it's like a high performing athlete. You know all of those things are centered around you doing the best version of your performance on stage. So I think there is like a space where some of the top performers and some some of the top performers in irish music are already doing this. But I think we need to explore those spaces a little bit more. You know, I think there's there's obviously arguments there around funding and how how well our, our professional artists are supported compared to other genres and disciplines, and I think we have to keep making those arguments at governmental level and and explain that, yeah, if, if we are going to make that next step, um, that that the infrastructure has to be there to support us.
Speaker 2:You know Thank you for answering my next question and on that after that, party political broadcast from Conor on behalf of all the traditional musicians in the world.
Speaker 2:No, it's a great point and very well made. Let's take a break and we'll have a message from our sponsors on music at Madden's. I'd like to thank you for your time and your support and we'll have a message from our sponsors on music at Maddins. And now I want to say a few words about our very kind sponsors, rí Rá, irish Lager, now Rí Rá, if you haven't heard about it, it kind of sums up the unpredictable development that Irish people are so very good at, particularly here in Maddins, in the heart of Belfast. So Rí Rá celebrates the best bits of being Irish by creating reasons to talk, to meet, to grá, to bant, to hear, to be heard, to be le chéile just that little more often. So music at Maddens dig it and dig in tóise Agus an ish scúpla Because. Now a couple of words for you For 18s and over, and please drink responsibly. A couple of words now for you in a hurry and in a hurry. Music at Madden's. Music at Madden's is sponsored by McIlroy Guitars Perfectly balanced, superb craftsmanship, wonderful clarity in tone, a truly unique sound. It's only natural to want one MichaelRoyGuitarscouk for more details. Fáil comhaith go an ish o ar a hóirí an fáil críil to seo. A few words now from the sponsors of this podcast, music at Madden's.
Speaker 2:Dunvill's Irish Whiskey, proudly connected to its past and enthusiastically embracing its future. The spirit of Belfast is back and it's even better than ever. And I should tell you, dunvill's also sponsors Belfast Tradfest as well, and this Irish Whisky story is one of fame, fortune, tragedy and revival. It does sound epic, doesn't it? Now restored to its rightful place amongst the world's best whiskeys, dunville's award winning single malt and vintage blend. Irish whiskeys are synonymous with premium quality, exquisite taste and rich heritage, and for over 18s only, and please drink responsibly. Sláinte they truly deserve. Along with working in partnership with market-leading global brands, they're committed to personal service, competitive pricing and long-term customer relationships. Anzac Drinks are trusted by independent businesses across Northern Ireland for their reliability and expertise, and they are passionate about helping customers discover both retailer favourites and unique finds over 18s only, and please drink responsibly. So, connor caldwell and ryan maloy, dr connor caldwell and dr maloy, but you're both associate professors, so do I call you professor.
Speaker 2:Does that mean, I have to genuflect?
Speaker 1:absolutely, but we can dispense with those kind of things. Oh, ok, I mean there's not a lot of room. So, the snug is snugger than usual.
Speaker 2:I know the writer didn't really specify anything about the you didn't get my dimensions that I sent.
Speaker 2:The robes and all didn't arrive in time. I was hoping for that just for, you know, for visual effect, no, but you know it's great to have both of you, um, you know, here today and so prominent in the trad scene. You know the two of you could walk in, sit down, play tunes at a session. You know you're on stages, ryan, you're gonna be on stage later on tonight at the festival club rocking it out with north by northwest connor. You've been teaching wayne's all week, you know. But yet here you are in your companion, your professional capacity, associate professor of arla in the irish world academy of music and dance and ul, and that's my phone going off. Uh, you're specializing in composition. Uh, down in minnouth, do you know? I just love the fact that you mix that, those two worlds as well, the, in a social context yeah, well, actually it was funny.
Speaker 1:Just when you were talking about us there, I was thinking there are loads of other tab musicians that have PhDs and that inhabit the academic world and it's directly linked to what we were talking about earlier on, where they, you know, open up these conversations where tab music can be studied. You know, as a social, as a musical thing, and um, people are interested in it because, surprisingly, they're interested in our culture and you know where they come from, um, and that too has led to so much new stuff, new knowledge being generated, whether it's connor looking at kind of archival stuff or me looking at, you know, I mean, as a composer, I mix a lot of kind of trad stuff into my contemporary world. You know I've spent most of this week writing variations on jackets green.
Speaker 3:You know, for a german violinist, do you want to lilt us a bit there? Huh, lilt us a bit there see if I could.
Speaker 1:I'm a bit croaky today but yeah, and like, even when I'm writing something that is for somebody in the other side of the world who has no kind of connection with traditional music, it's always there. It's there in how I think, and so I try not to get in the way of letting that come out, and sometimes it comes out in very overt ways and other times it's only in very small kind of inflections. But yeah, what was your question?
Speaker 2:I suppose it's just about the, I suppose the perception we would have of academia, whereas you're, you know, you're mixing again. It's in other two worlds that you're mixing again. It's in other two worlds that you're mixing very well that academic world with the social world, the world of performance as well, and bringing the music to the people and not keeping it locked away. And I think you know, in terms of the work, particularly that you've done, bringing archive to life and breathing, you know, that new life into treasures that you find as well. Connor, you know when did that start? You know, know, was it something that just happened?
Speaker 3:it probably happened very gradually, to be honest. So, um, I think, probably like a lot of people, when I started off playing the fiddle, I only started when I was about 12, so I was quite a late starter in comparison to, you know, people of my own age. Um, I was probably more interested in the contemporary sort of things or the things that were very easily accessible, but it was a gradual thing. So I went to Queen's after I finished, uh, did my A-levels here and I was lucky I mentioned Martin Dowling earlier he was appointed lecturer of Irish traditional music in Queen's, the first ever lecturer in Irish traditional music at the university there when I was in second year. So I had him for a year and a half putting some sort of framework around the stuff that I kind of knew socially and again, it was this sort of thing of like realizing it was valuable, okay. So now this is something I can do an exam in in an academic context and that led to me doing a master's where I really focused on the music of John Doherty and yeah, I just I don't know what it was around that age that John Doherty's music in particularly really spoke to me.
Speaker 3:But I had also been lucky that, uh, throughout my late teenage years I'd spent a lot of time in southwest, on Eagol and Teelan, and I had seen some people who were very old at that time, like the legendary uh Kitty Shanley Cynigain from Bonglass, who you know had been born in like felt like 200 years ago, you know, and she had. She had lived in a very different Ireland. Like uh and like I would have met this other fella, sean con johnny burn, who was a guitar player, who would have been in his 50s, and we would cycle up bum glass cliffs to kitty's house and she would play me tapes of old fiddle players and he, sean sean con johnny, would sit and do the like.
Speaker 3:Um, ireland's own crossword or whatever like you know, and then we would cycle back down and maybe head for a session later later that evening. So I felt you know someone from the middle of the city that I got an insight into a world that I had otherwise only read about in books. You know seamus ennis doing that sort of stuff in the 1940s, like so. Then there's a lot of archive of john daugherty, so I spent a lot of time going through that and that then leads you in all sorts of directions. But I'm just fascinated by the past. I can't understand how anyone isn't excited by history, but not just the stuff you can find in books, but what's not there and music gives you an opportunity and an avenue to fill in the blanks.
Speaker 3:And that's where probably a lot of my music comes in, where, um, yeah, there's a page missing in this book of tunes. Well, what was on that page? You know? How can you try and create it? And uh, yeah, yeah, I suppose, like the more and more I gained confidence as a fiddle player in my 20s and I felt I was better able to express that on the fiddle than by writing, writing about it, you know.
Speaker 1:So, uh, connor's memoirs will be available in all good at the end of next year from north belfast to talon um.
Speaker 2:But you know, that brings us to the the album the two of you worked on together there um a couple of years ago. Or us to the album the two of you worked on together there a couple of years ago. O Listen to the Band. It was last year. O Listen to the Band. So focusing on the jazz music of the 1920s which sent shockwaves through society the album or jazz. I think I mean the music at the time and the album of course both but that again, it was Of course both.
Speaker 2:But again, what you say about the periods that are overlooked, that period of history was completely overlooked and I wondered, in a historical context was that because of partition? Was that because of everything else that was going on around us, that people were just really preoccupied with it? That we don't care about music at the moment?
Speaker 3:Not quite. It was probably just the extent to which jazz music, or what they called jazz at the time, useful to the state or to both states. So you get this thing that emerges where the state in the north follows takes its lead from London. So early in the 1920s the British royal family start to adapt jazz bands into their royal music for their garden parties and for their tours. So people in Belfast, the government here, said oh, said oh, this is polite music.
Speaker 3:This is something that we should be doing. Crucially, it also wasn't irish. What's helped in that sort of state state building, whereas in the south there's a push to identify purely as irish. We don't want uh, one of the quotes I read about was you know, we don't. We don't want any of that class of music that comes from the Daventry radio station on Radio Erin, from the early BBC, because it has such a chilling effect on the Irish Colleen that she's not able to handle the frenzy that would whip her up into and all this. It's hilarious reading these things now. But yeah, so basically you've got one state in the South that says we need to comely maidens dancing at the crossroads and a state in the north that wants to not be irish, and so you get these these different um patterns that that that emerge at that stage in terms of taste and so the dog put him in some crack then with the two words matt yeah, still is and you know, with the two of you were then working on this to get together.
Speaker 2:Um, why was it? A perfect opportunity for you is to to come together with you and to play music like I mean connor had done a lot of the leg work um on this.
Speaker 1:I mean it was very much his brainchild and he knew kind of what he wanted to do and the stuff he wanted to research and went away and spent a lot of time doing all that um and then kind of I was sent a splurge of material at one point you know, I think that's the technical there and um, because connor was doing a residency in, uh, the irish cultural center in paris and um, I think there may have been the pretext of, you know, a visit to paris to do some recording and uh, and to just take in paris off of a late summer's evening, um, so, uh, he sent me all the stuff and uh, it was really just madly different, like I mean quite obviously very jazzy, but also it was very enigmatic because some of it was really just madly different, like I mean quite obviously very jazzy, but also it was very enigmatic because some of it was in bits.
Speaker 1:You know, there were bits of tunes that Conor had either got from Johnny Doherty, who had tagged on kind of random bits of other stuff onto these jazzy numbers to make a tune out of it, and it was just for me as an accompanist it was an interesting kind of a journey trying to navigate these nooks and crannies. But yeah, so we went to Paris then and did a first bunch of recording and then eventually took it back home when we had to come back to the real world and we did some extra work up with danburne mccullough yeah, and then I love the north belfast connection with the the cover as well.
Speaker 2:They use the the floral hall that was up at um used to be up just at the foot of the cave hill yeah, in north belfast.
Speaker 3:Lovely connection for yourself as well connor, that was, uh, chris ellis who designed that. He also does a lot of the design for madden's here. Oh lovely, yeah, so, um, it's a buddy of mine from school, but, yeah, is that that idea? So a lot of it is about imagining what the music sounded like from fragments, so we can also imagine them, what it would have been like to dance this in in floral hall like and, as you say, on the the slopes of North Belfast but the whole idea that music as well was that traditional musicians were consuming it and they didn't even realize they were yeah, well, sometimes deliberately and some sometimes not, but again it goes back to this idea of like, like the word traditional didn't exist in the 1920s, there was just music, yeah, and maybe they might have referred to some stuff as being like old time or or Irish or country or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but, there was no idea that this is like a traditional thing which is passed on generation to generation, although that was the case with some families, but they were so open a tune, a good tune, was a good tune and it didn't matter where it came from. And then, like the magic is in, how you like irish size it, how you galasize it, how do you make it into that irish rhythm that we all know and love so?
Speaker 2:it was a brilliant project and I think that so much fun as well when these were playing the tunes, because these tunes were just so full of crack and charismatic and the the energy that they had they really are.
Speaker 1:Like there's a couple of numbers on it that are like the title, the, the title tune, oh, oh, listen to the Band. It's just such a. It's such a really unhelpfully joyous tune. You can't. You just have to smile when you listen to it and I was wondering what I was trying to work out. What is it in that? What makes it joyous? And I just think it's in, as you said, it's in the way these tunes have been taken and turned into kind of trad type numbers. It's in the way these tunes have been taken and turned into kind of trad-type numbers. It's also the way Conor plays it.
Speaker 2:And yourself as well, I'd say what was it? The funkiest piano this side of Dr John.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's a dated quote.
Speaker 2:I know it is, but I love it.
Speaker 1:But also the other things that kind of bring out the joy in that album are the stuff that Conor's added to it. The joy in that album are the stuff that we, you know that connor's added to it the percussion, the absolutely phenomenal wind playing of ben castles, who's an extraordinary musician and who just knows that swing era so intimately and really makes some of those tracks just pop, you know, with that kind of both style and whimsy.
Speaker 2:And it kind of brings you back to the start of the conversation, where you can't be boxed. You can't box the music up at all, because try to define the music on this album. One minute you're listening to jazz, the next minute you're listening to what would be defined as Irish traditional music, and then you're listening to something that's maybe indefinable, I don't know. So it's just class. But the thing about the two of you, though, and the synergy between you, is that comes so naturally because you're such good friends. But how did you meet? Where were the, where were the seeds of the friendship zone?
Speaker 3:it's in queens, wasn't it? Yeah, we were both doing our phds together in queens around the same time. We didn't didn't know each other. You obviously were from different parts of the north and then you'd been away in england for a few years and I think, at some stage maybe someone asked us to play a concert together in queens because we were the only two trad students. I think that's something like that.
Speaker 1:I mean, like you, you were on my radar because of the trad thing and and I mean I had, like I, that whole donegal tradition that you are so versed in, despite being taught by donegal woman, you know, I wasn't really party to that whole kind of west, southwest donegal kind of sound, uh, and you know, didn't really wouldn't have gone much to to glen, um, or to any of the festivals up there, maybe occasionally when I was kind of in my older teens, um, but again because I suppose maybe geographically it was close, it was tangentially on my, on my musical radar, um, and then, yeah, when we met in queens, um, well, you also living in North Belfast at the time.
Speaker 1:That's right, I was living in North Belfast.
Speaker 3:We have the North Belfast-Taroon connection on both sides, because my grandfather was from Fintana and then he lived in North Belfast for a while. So there's a lot of synergy going on there. It sounds like it was just meant to be Brothers from another mother.
Speaker 2:Just meant to be in so many ways. We've ways, um, we've talked about a lot of, covered a lot of ground and we're talking there about um, about belfast at the start as well, about how things have changed here. Even when you're speaking about, uh, meeting each other at queens, that idea of I and me I knew because you were the only other player that played trad music.
Speaker 2:But now you look at queens and the trad socks, going from strength to strength and even, I suppose, martin dowling's appointment at that time as a professor of music. That meant something and has only built since then as well. You know, I'm thinking then Gradham Coyle. Tg Carr was here for a number of years. Ryanne, you won Commodore Nablena Composer of the Year in 2024. Conor, you were heavily involved with Gradham Coyle, with the Folk Awards for Radio 2, with Tradfest, the FLA's coming here next year. You know something's happening here.
Speaker 1:It's really.
Speaker 2:It's really just all kind of coming to a head, I think for 2026, as it feels like it.
Speaker 1:It's all people, you know it's people that are kind of facilitating this and driving it, and there are a couple of. You know that they haven't. They haven't been working in a vacuum. These things have been kind of building steadily over the years through kind of larger organizations you know, like cultists and stuff. You know that have given the framework for a lot of these events. And, like you know, flas used to be a small kind of a thing but, you know, ever from throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, all there in Flas became a bigger and bigger and bigger kind of thing, which then led to the whole kind of what's the word I'm looking for? The event that is the Trad Music Festival.
Speaker 3:Now there's loads of them you know, it seems to be more added every single year.
Speaker 2:Now, like it's hard to find a weekend in the year where there's nothing on? Yeah I think that's the difficult if you were to start a festival. It's really difficult to find a weekend where you don't have any competition, which is only a really healthy thing, I think. And but I think that whenever we were growing up, though, there was the idea that you had to put the foot in the car to go and find the music and to go and find the festival, whereas that's not happening any well.
Speaker 3:You can push, you can still do that, but it's also here as well, which wasn't, and people are coming here, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah it's incredible, just in my class this week, you know, the people that have traveled from germany, who come from, even just coming from england and scotland, which I don't think many people would have come to belfast from, you know, from know from Britain to to to play traditional music, like and there, like there are, there are regular faces you see around the city over the last 10 or 10 or 15 years of the people who always, you know, are coming back a couple of times a year to play music. But, like then, I just can't get over the growth and the explosion of people coming from from outside of Ireland to enjoy the Tradfest. And yeah, as Ryan says, it is all people and there are people who've been just like putting in a serious shift for you know, looking at the Glenn Gormey School of Traditional Music out there.
Speaker 3:It's coming up on 25 years and Ray Morgan is the chair of Belfast Tradfest, who has just been. You know the guy literally driving the kids on the bus to the flat in Cushendal or wherever, or making a connection with Matt Molloy's or taking the sitches and spying and just the, the amount, the level of energy the guy has like. And and then you know you can't really talk about Tradfest without mentioning our friend Donald O'Connor, like who, and Patricia and Chloe and all the team there, like they just they've gone. I think what's really special, they obviously had a vision and the vision was a bit mad but it is manifest, like I think it's a, it's a, it's a great lesson to anyone who's thinking about, you know, trying to to do something like that. You just you have a goal and you just build the team and you yeah, do you think you watched blades of glory way back in the day?
Speaker 2:there's a mental vision.
Speaker 1:Now I can't unsee we don't know if you can dream it manifest, manifest, manifest.
Speaker 2:You never know. And then you know. At a festival like this, we're sitting in Madden's and I know that the two of you have played a lot of tunes in here over the years. Memories, any memories from this place, this particular establishment, that you actually could verbalise and retell again yeah, I'll tell you one time for a break cue music where is it?
Speaker 3:well, there was. I felt that there was a real turning point year for music in the city. There was a Fila Anari and it must be 15 plus years ago and Bamber had just taken over the bar here and there was a whole crowd of musicians come up from Ennis, anne-marie McCormick and siobhan peoples and blackie and all those, uh, and this place was bummed and there was an energy in the bar that I've never really experienced before or since and there was for years.
Speaker 3:In the corner downstairs there were a lot of like polaroid photos just up on the wall in the corner and they were of that weekend and I think that's when a lot of people in belfast who played a bit of music but didn't really go out much, kind of all came together and this ennis belfast connection has been very enduring and, like I genuinely say, people say like, oh, where's good music in in ireland? Well, there's belfast and ennis and everything else is on a different level and no harm to any other city or group of people that are doing good work, but the amount of music, the high standard of musicians, the festivals, the infrastructure, they just stand apart. So I think that was really important. It was just after Bamber took over the bar here, and then I mean there's many things.
Speaker 3:There was a night Tommy Peoples played a concert in here actually downstairs, which was really special. I was still in school, I was about maybe 17, and he played downstairs. Donal organised that as well actually solo gig. Well, it was supposed to be solo and then you know, Tommy would sometimes get a bit panicky before he would play.
Speaker 1:So Rowan Young a Boron player from West.
Speaker 3:Belfast had been playing support and literally Tommy was walking to the stage. And Tommy was walking to the stage and he kind of grabbed Rowan by the collar and just like you're coming with me, and Rowan had to go up and just accompany Tommy. Peoples with no rehearsals, like, and it was, he did a great job, you know. So they're being having really special nights here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm wondering is Ryan going to offer anything here?
Speaker 1:No, I thought that was the. You were chatting there. You were talking about Belfast and Ennis. I think the thing about Belfast is its energy and I don't know, does that come from the people? But there's something very special about the energy in Belfast and that sounds very wishy-washy thing to say, but there is a buzz about the place, there's an edge to it and I think that is what gives that particular flavour to to Belfast Tradfest and sets it apart from other festivals and places in the country. And the fact now that I mean well, it's over over 12, 13 years since I was living here but there's tunes every night of the week here oh yeah, in multiple places.
Speaker 2:You know which is crazy? Yeah, because the session trail at the minute is just insane.
Speaker 1:That's not happening in Dublin.
Speaker 2:No, it's just crazy. And the amount of musicians here are taking part in it as well, from all over, and they're all coming just to sit down and make friends, reacquaint themselves with people, meet up, it's just like you say the energy is just palpable at the minute. We could talk all day, but I know I have to let you go Before you do that. You mentioned something out there, conor, at the start of the chat or during the chat, about practice and about really taking your music seriously. You know that's what classical performers do. Now you know we went on to discuss funding and perceptions and all the rest of it, but so many learners of music will be listening to this podcast. What is the best way to learn? What's the best way to finesse to become a better musician?
Speaker 3:I think it depends what you want to achieve like. So, if you, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to go to your weekly session uh, you know and learn, learn the tunes that allow you to participate in that as best you can, and then there's nothing wrong with wanting to push on a bit and do something else with your music. So I think that's the first conversation you have to have with yourself and say, well, and it doesn't have to be a forever decision, but it can be for the next 18 months or two years.
Speaker 3:What do I want to get out of this? And then you see how much time you have. And whatever amount of time you have you have you have to be selfish about it and make a plan. And, like in sports and in classical music, they only talk about purposeful practice. So you know, if you've got 25 minutes, that can still be really really useful as long as you use it well. So you know, think of the things you want to fix and work on them really hard. And what I say to my students often is if you're having difficulty with one particular part of a tune, your attitude should be to make that bit the best thing that you do in the tune. Make that the most musical, the most intricate, the most precise, and if you can do that, everything else will follow. Like so that's, that's what I would say. But you just, yeah, the first thing is to be realistic about what you want to achieve and how much time you have. And everything also flew from there. You know ryan very wise words.
Speaker 1:Um, all I would say is listen, be. You know, it's not always in doing that you can learn and advance. Sometimes you just gotta listen and, um, if you don't know the tune, you're not going to learn it by constantly trying to play on top of it. You, you have to listen, and I think in listening there's a kind of a built-in process of analysis and reflection that's good for all of us to do. So I think that's a good thing to do. Yeah, and what else Like? There's so much trad music out there now and I think, depending on your own journey into it, it's impossible to say what kind of a style you want to have. But if you can get lessons with a really good person, I mean, I wouldn't be where I am today without that kind of tutelage. So I think that's really important, that pedagogical aspect to what we do as traditional musicians If you can latch on to someone, do, but listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, listen, and we can. All mentors are just such a. It's such a powerful relationship to have in your life, isn't it? Is there a particular tune? To this day, when you play it, you think that was the one that I couldn't. I just couldn't get round it. I couldn't get round this part of it, and then when you do, when? You do play it. There's a sense of satisfaction that you eventually got there in some way.
Speaker 3:I had many as a long struggle with, uh, poor rory o'kane trying to bring me through the mountain road and uh, when I was just starting off like, and it took a long time, but uh, fair play to rory the patience of a saint and uh, you felt like you were going down the connor pass, did you?
Speaker 3:yeah, pretty much like yeah, and then, uh, when I, when I'd mastered it and went to play in it playing as well, when I'd learned it, I it maybe not mastered it, but went to play in a session, I found out that everyone really only plays it once, each part, and not twice each part, so I had to readjust again. But yeah, that one has a big that's a hard question.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think there are lots of hard tunes, I mean anything on the piano. For me, I mean because as a fiddle player first and foremost, kind of translating tunes to the piano has never been a successful, uh, endeavor. So if I'm ever, if I'm able to get from start to finish on the piano in a tune, I feel, yes, I've that's, I've done something. That sounds really stupid for someone kind of who plays regularly, but honestly it's, it's an achievement. Um, there are lots of kind of tunes that le botte and suriant play that are in funny timings, and so nailing those is always a bit of a a nice feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that comes if you're around malay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, mere mortals might be thinking good luck it's lovely to listen to, but I'll just be leaving it at that. Yeah, will this be out before the north by northwest gig tonight? Because that? That'll be a success if I manage to count everything that I need to count tonight.
Speaker 2:So oh no, you'll nail it as usual. There'll be absolutely no bother with that here. Great to talk to both of you. Thank you very much for joining us in the snug on music at madden's connor caldwell and my amalai girmagith.