The Paul Brock Interview – Part 8: The Influence of John McCormack and Life in Retirement from the day job

Athlone Miscellany

By Gearoid O’Brien

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 8: The Influence of John McCormack and Life in Retirement from the day job.

Before we finished our interview Paul Brock steered me back towards McCormack because he saw him as such a great influence. “When I was growing up I was always hearing about the houses he lived in or his appearances in the Fr Mathew Hall. Later, of course, I regretted that I never got around to meeting some of the great Athlone champions of John McCormack. I’m thinking about people such as Kitty Kilkelly and Gerald Dowling who once owned the house that John McCormack lived in at the time of his death”. Kitty Kilkelly was only a generation removed from McCormack as her father had been his choir-master in the old St Peter’s Church when McCormack sang in the choir there and indeed he is one of those credited with ‘discovering’ John McCormack. Paul continues talking about the influence of John McCormack on his own life “it was progressively, over time that I realised that McCormack was at the centre of a lot of my musical thought and musical development. I became more and more interested in McCormack and then about ten years ago a man called Ed Ward called here to see me in Ennis. Ed ran the Irish Fest in Milwaukee, one of the biggest Irish musical festivals in the world, attracting 130,000 participants and when he came here we got talking about McCormack. I had known Ed for years and our band had played at the Irish Fest but they also ran a School in the University there in the week leading up to the festival and Ed asked me to do a talk on McCormack for their Irish studies programme. I jumped at it – a rush of blood to the head – without realising what I had let myself in for. That was the starting point for the McCormack talk which I put together – I don’t consider myself an expert on McCormack but I am greatly indebted to him”.

Who will Perpetuate McCormack?

When we speak about the name and reputation of John McCormack and how he will be remembered in times to come Paul says “Years ago there were more great public figures who used to perpetuate the name of John McCormack. People such as John Skeehan, Ciaran MacMathuna and others but there are less and less playing McCormack on the radio today. Younger people are just not as connected with McCormack as the previous generation were”.

He tells me about his illustrated talk which he has delivered in both the United States and Ireland. “My talk looked at my father’s connection and what he passed on to me and I also took a close look at the music, and you were very helpful to me in particular with sourcing visual material and bit by bit I worked up ‘Impressions of the Great Irish Tenor’ which is my view of McCormack: his musicianship, his life, his family, his travels and anecdotes which I had gathered from various sources.

Originally I used both audio and visual clips and then I moved forward and used various tenors, live tenors – a combination of McCormack audio clips and live tenors. I used Anthony Kearns in the Concert Hall and in Limerick it was Kenneth Rice from the Irish Chamber Orchestra doing the role of Fritz Kreisler – I have also done the show with different tenors. I continue to listen to McCormack and to perpetuate his music and memory at every opportunity”.

Retirement from Shannon Development

Paul Brock took early retirement from Shannon Development six years ago and since that he has some free-lance work as an economic development consultant working for IDI Ireland in advising overseas governments on investment promotion programmes. He has worked in South America, in African countries and in Eastern Europe but he is doing less of that work now and concentrating more on the music. He now does some work with the University of Limerick as a visiting lecturer, both teaching music but also lecturing on the business side of the music industry.

So far Paul has had a very busy and fruitful retirement. Having studied French he then decided to take the Masters programme at the University of Limerick where his thesis and studies embraced both the music business and music itself. He managed to pull together the separate strings of his life bringing together his experience in business, in international marketing, in economic development and at the same time his work as a professional musician. His thesis involved writing a hand-book on making-it in the music business. He wrote about “all the different elements including: touring, promoting yourself, recording, working with professionals, negotiating, putting a price on yourself. In short all the things that come in to play for an emerging musician”.

“Humdinger” a by-product of his studies

It is very obvious from speaking to Paul Brock that he is a great advocate for the Academy in the University of Limerick. “The opportunity to take on the Masters arose after I left Shannon Development. I had already some connection with the University of Limerick having given lectures there. So I decided to put my head down and give it a go. It was a great decision. The Masters gave me a framework for a number of projects that I couldn’t otherwise have done. One interesting by-product of the Masters was the recording of the album “Humdinger” with the banjo player Enda Scahill. The background to this element of the project was that I had looked at the banjo and its emergence as an instrument and how it came from Africa and worked its way into popular American music; how it came to Ireland in the mid 1800s with the Virginia Minstrels and its emergence and evolution into Irish music in the early era of recording in America. There were so many original banjo / melodeon combinations because these instruments were loud and assertive and were suited to dances in an era before amplification. I did a lot of work on that era and on the origins of both instruments and that culminated in a very fruitful collaboration with Enda Scahill which looked back to the early twentieth century recordings and then we produced what has been described as “the first ever CD of Irish traditional music on the melodeon and tenor banjo” – it was voted ‘The Irish Times Traditional Album of the Year’ that year. My research also looked at the banjo playing of Enda Scahill, I took an in-depth look at his technique, style-analysis etc”.

Another project which he undertook during the course of the Masters programme involved a visit to France where he met a very famous French Canadian accordion player, Philippe Bruneau, who is now retired in the South of France. They spent some time together and learned from one another. “He’s from the French-Canadian tradition with a keen interest in Irish music as I have in the French-Canadian music – again this was a very fruitful project as far as I’m concerned”.

A Musical Household

Today Paul lives in Ennis in a very musical household. His wife, Aineis, who is a native of Gormanstown, Co Meath, is very interested in music and trained as a singer and dancer. They have three beautiful daughters: the eldest, Aimhirin, is, according to her father, a very good singer but modest about her talent and won’t sing in public. She works as an Accounts Manager with an advertising agency and is about to move to London to work in advertising. Their second daughter, Siomha, is a full-time musician and student. She’s at College in Cork and she is interested in pop-music from the 60s to date. She also composes her own material, is a very good guitar player and a talented jazz singer. When available she sings with Black Magic an 18 piece Jazz band which is Galway based. She’s kept busy with lots of gigs in Dublin, Galway, Ennis and Limerick. Their youngest daughter, Cadhla, is in her second year studying music in College in Cork and she is interested in voice and piano and also plays the fiddle.

For me it has been a great learning curve following Paul Brock’s career from his first interest in music in Athlone in the 50s to the present day when he is a greatly revered traditional musician both nationally and internationally. While he could very justifiably celebrate fifty years in the music business I get the feeling that his retirement from Shannon Development has just heralded a new beginning in his life and we can look forward to many more recordings from this great Athlone-born musician and like his great hero John McCormack hopefully his story will be an inspiration to many other young Irish musicians.

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 7: Irish Music on the World Stage

Athlone Miscellany

By Gearoid O’Brien

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 7: Irish Music on the World Stage.

In the course of our on-going discussion on Paul Brock’s career it was inevitable that we would touch on the new ‘Irish World Academy of Music and Dance’ in the University of Limerick, because Paul has been there both as student and lecturer. This Academy, which has a range of programmes including ethnic musicology; chant; classical string; Irish music performance and Irish dance, has already spawned many very talented musicians. “When you go into the University of Limerick and see what Michael O Suilleabhain has done for Irish music there and how it has become such a pivotal part of the University it gives you a great sense of pride. For someone like me to see that great acceptance of the importance of Irish music having had people laugh at me in the 50s for my interest in it and to see how young people are coming through the system there is wonderful”.

Bringing Irish Music to the World Stage

“In the places I have gone to play, and I have played all over the place – Central America, South America, all over Europe – there is a real hunger for Irish traditional music. Recently the Brock McGuire Band played in Colombia, you don’t associate Colombia with an appreciation of Irish music, and yet we did two concerts in the National Concert Hall in Bogota and both of them sold out. There was a phenomenal reaction from the people there to our music and a recognition that Ireland has a living folk-culture and that young people are very much engaged by it and attracted to it. We are invited back next year to Columbia so here you see the globalisation of Irish music and who would have thought that possible? This has come about thanks to groups such as The Chieftains and other bands who have brought Irish music to venues worldwide”.

“The sky is the limit today. China, you name it – this year for the first time there was a festival of Irish music in Cuba, called CeltFest Cuba and the artistic director is a chap called Cillin O Cinneide (Killian Kennedy) who is a teacher in Fairfield, Connecticut – and where is he from? Athlone! We hope to perform at this festival at a future date”.

A Recent Trip to America

Paul tells me that he sometimes finds the actual travelling tough but in more recent times they hand-pick their venues and take care not to put themselves under too much pressure. “We were away from October 16^th for two weeks appearing in Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina – we didn’t work to crazy schedules we’re too long in the business for that”. Together with his fellow band-leader, Manus McGuire, they work out the tour itineraries and as they record with a company called Compass Records in Nashville they leave time for recording sessions also. Paul is very happy with the recording company which is run by two musicians: “Alison Brown who is a very famous banjo player and a former banker and Harvard graduate and her husband Garry West who is a great bass player”. Compass Records took over The Green Linnet label in 2006 and the Mulligan Records label in 2008. “We get great support from Compass, for example on our recent tour they were publicising the tour through their wide network of media and other music industry contacts. The tour included concerts in Donelson, Chattanooga, Knoxville Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina, Lexington and Louisville Kentucky the home of Cassius Clay”.

The Brock Maguire Band

When Paul tells me about the evolution of The Brock McGuire Band which has been on the go since 2000 I am amazed by the fact that Paul Brock and Manus McGuire have known each other for so long. Paul explains: “Manus McGuire was born in Tullamore, his father Paddy McGuire was a friend of Frank Dolphin’s and Frank introduced Manus’s father and mother at a ceili in the Mansion House, Dublin in June 1947. I remember as a young boy that Paddy McGuire brought his sons, Manus and Seamus, to meet me and hear me playing at my home in O’Connell Street ”.

Of course many years elapsed between that first meeting and their collaboration as musicians. When Manus McGuire went down to Clare to work in June 1985 they became close friends. The other members of the band include Enda Scahill from Corofin, Co Galway who now lives in Galway city. Enda plays the banjo and mandolin. The fourth member is Denis Carey, the piano player and Irish music composer, from Newport in Tipperary. Denis now owns the Peter Dee Academy of Music in Limerick where he has about 700 students and also runs Steamboat Music also in Limerick.

Right now the Brock McGuire Band is working on a new album. “We have half of that recorded and it will be released in the first quarter of 2011” Paul tells me. “We tour as regularly as time allows, our recent tour included some time recording in Nashville. Our next tour will be to Texas and the US East Coast in late February early March – it is not connected with St Patrick’s Day or anything like that – we will be doing a series of concert performances.

At home we do as much as we can. One of the features of the scene around Ireland is that there is a lot of free traditional Irish music being played in pubs but we are more interested in playing in concert settings”. This year the band’s Irish concerts included: “Riches of Clare” concert series in May, the “Gathering Festival” in Killarney and the “Feakle Folk Festival” as well as a recent concert as part of the Ennis Trad Festival.

Paul Brock’s Ideal Show

I asked Paul “If you could bring your ideal music show to the Dean Crowe Theatre in Athlone what would it be?” and he tells me “I was in Boston late last year there was a John McCormack weekend because Boston College has a great John McCormack connection – they were the beneficiaries of some important McCormack collections including the Fred Manning Collection of McCormack memorabilia. So they have a huge collection in Boston College including one of his ‘black books’ which he carried on stage with him. I was fortunate to be invited out to that weekend and I gave my talk ‘Impressions of the Great Irish Tenor’ and that evening there was a concert in Boston College and it included a fantastic cross section of music. There was not just Irish music and not just McCormack – they had a wonderful tenor called Bryan Griffin who has an Irish background but has never been to Ireland. He trained as an opera singer in Chicago and he was superb. They also had a chap from Dublin who went to College in Limerick, Ciaran Sheehan, who has worked on Broadway most notably in “The Phantom of the Opera” where he has done over 1,000 lead performances. He was a young guy, very personable and very engaging with the audience and he performed some Broadway hits. They also had a violinist, Bonnie Bewick Brown, who plays with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and she did some Fritz Kreisler material and some Classical and Irish material. I played with Mick Moloney from Limerick, a former member of ‘The Johnstons’ and ‘Emmet Spiceland’ and a great musician and academic, a great lover of McCormack. Mick had given a talk earlier on ‘Tenors in early 20^th Century America’ including John McCormack. Also playing with us was Seamus Connolly who is the Director of Irish Studies at Boston College. Originally from Killaloe, Co Clare, Seamus is a great fiddle player who won the All Ireland title no fewer that ten times. The concert that evening showed me that you can match the traditional with the classical and with the popular and still get a great response – a number of us remarked afterwards that the audience had got a great cross-section of music on the night. I think it would be great to see that type of show in Athlone”.

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 6: Collaboration with Frankie Gavin

Athlone Miscellany

By Gearoid O’Brien

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 6: Collaboration with Frankie Gavin

Paul Brock is a fount of knowledge about the history of Irish traditional music. He tells me “There was a period up to about 1930 where Irish music was being recorded in the States but not here at home, it wasn’t until people like Seamus Ennis and Ciaran MacMathuna and others went on the road in the late 40s and early 50s recording traditional music that we got to hear the music of our musicians at home. In the 1970s and later we got reissues of recordings by the Flanagan Brothers, Michael Coleman, James Morrison and many others and these recordings influenced a whole lot of Irish musicians of that time including myself”.

While still holding down his job at Shannon Development Paul continued to tour and to play. In the 1970s he met Frankie Gavin with whom he had a long musical relationship that culminated in a recording which they made in 1986. This album on the Gael Linn label is still regarded as one of the modern classics of Irish traditional music, called ‘Omos do Joe Cooley – A Tribute to Joe Cooley’ it is a very genuine tribute to the great Joe Cooley by two of our leading traditional musicians. Paul met Frankie when he came down from Galway to hear Joe Cooley in Gort in the early 70s. Frankie Gavin was a young lad at the time and they wound up playing a session together. There was a musical chemistry straight away and both shared a great admiration for the playing of Cooley. When I ask how he feels about that recording today Paul smiles and tells me that the “recording has stood the test of time. Whatever feeling we managed to capture in that recording was the culmination of a lot of work by Frankie and I. Musicians liked the recording and it’s still selling and I’ve met so many people in so many places who told me they liked the recording. It is really nice when that sort of thing happens”. Paul met the great Joe Cooley on many occasions down through the years, but when Cooley came back to Ireland from San Francisco he was an ill man. Paul continued to see him and indeed he later attended his funeral. A very close friend who they held in common was Kieran Collins the East-Galway whistle player from outside Gort. Paul reminds me that “there is an annual Cooley- Collins Weekend held in Gort to commemorate both men”.

Joe Cooley’s Watch

As we chat about Joe Cooley Paul tells me “Kieran Collins was a great friend of mine, he had emigrated and come back from London and worked in Shannon and later in Dublin”. When Kieran Collins died young, in 1983, Paul Brock played at his funeral Mass in Gort. When Joe Cooley had died, ten years earlier in 1973 his wife, Nancy, had given Kieran Collins a gold watch that had been given to Joe. The watch was inscribed and presented to Joe by his friends in San Francisco before he left to come home to Ireland. Then in 1983, after Kieran Collins was buried, Paul’s God-daughter, Sharon Collins, came up to him in Glynn’s Hotel in Gort and said “Mum said to give you this” and she produced Joe Cooley’s watch. Paul remarks casually “I must say I was bothered about what might happen ten years later but that milestone has long since passed and I am delighted to have the watch as a memento of two great musicians”.

‘Moving Cloud’

In the 1980s apart from playing with Frankie Gavin Paul Brock was also doing his own solo thing but from there he went on to form ‘Moving Cloud’ in 1989 with fiddle player Manus McGuire. Apart from Brock and McGuire the line-up also included: Maeve Donnelly, fiddle player; Kevin Crawford, flute player (who is now with Lunasa) and Carl Hession from Galway. The name for the quintet came from a classic Irish reel. They played together up to 2000 and toured quite a lot and recorded for the Green Linnet record label in the U.S. Their first album ‘Moving Cloud’ was voted traditional album of the year in 1994 by Earle Hitchner, music critic of the Wall Street Journal and The Irish Echo. Hitchner writing of their later album, ‘Foxglove’ described it as “instrumental music at its pinnacle by an Irish band ranking among the best today”.

‘Mo Chairdin’

In 1992 Paul recorded his own solo album ‘Mo Chairdin’ and it was described in The Rough Guide to Irish Music “as a modern masterpiece of accordion playing”. This album was released on the Gael Linn label and includes a variety of reels, jigs and hornpipes as well as the slow air ‘Cailin Deas Cruite na mBo’ and the famous set-dance tune ‘The Blackbird’. This really is an album to be savoured and enjoyed and like ‘Omos do Joe Cooley’ it is, I’m sure, destined to stand the test of time.

Over recent months I have spoken to a number of young musicians about Paul Brock’s solo album. One tells me that what makes the album special for him is the eclectic selection of tunes: “he seems to veer away from the real classic tunes and instead picks tunes which are particularly suited to the accordion”. In the sleeve notes for ‘Mo Chairdin’ Brock says “I have always felt a particular affinity with the Irish fiddle-playing tradition and especially enjoy the close compatibility which I believe is possible between box and fiddle”. And at a local session here in Athlone I spoke to a young box player from County Mayo and when I commented on the quality of his playing and asked him did he know of Paul Brock I quickly realised that he did “Oh my God, Brock is savage” he replied using a modern superlative to convey his great admiration for the box playing of Paul Brock who is a legend among Irish box players.

The American Experience

I have been aware for many years that Paul Brock is a regular visitor to the United States and I wondered what kind of audiences he plays to. “I’ve done a lot of work overseas, particularly in America where I have performed in concert halls, colleges, art centres and museums, at music festivals – you name it – I’ve played all over America and Canada and I’ve done all sorts of prestigious venues. They love Irish music everywhere and appreciate the fact that we have a living folk-music tradition and that so many of our young people are attracted to it. There is a real appreciation out there because they realise the great influence that Irish music has had on American music. Our music has worked its way in all over the place, it has strongly influenced for example: country music, bluegrass, French Canadian music and Cape Breton music. I have met all sorts of people, all over North America, and they know about and greatly appreciate the influence of Irish music, I’m sure you have read ‘Bringing it All Back Home” by Nuala O’Connor which deals with the journey of Irish music to and from America. Well no matter where you go in places such as Kentucky, Carolina or Tennessee the Irish music influence is huge. I have a great interest in the journey of the music and how it worked its way around North America”.

We have played to all sorts of audiences but generally it wouldn’t be just to the Irish diaspora. America is a fantastic place to perform because the Americans are musically very well educated. They were brought up with music, they know their music and they have a total focus on the appreciation of the music. So you might be playing in a nice arts centre and they might have a coffee or a glass of wine at the break but after the show they are ready to go home. It’s not like it is here – it’s a different scene – here there is an expectation a lot of the time that Irish music has to be played in an atmosphere of drink but I think that too is changing.

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 5: Working with Shannon Development

Athlone Miscellany

By Gearoid O’Brien

The Paul Brock Interview – Part 5: Working with Shannon Development

The late 1950s and early 60s were exciting times for Paul Brock. He was getting plenty of engagements to perform both at home and abroad but he also had his eye on the things which were happening in Ireland. One of the big developments was “The [First] Programme for Economic Expansion” the brain child of T.K. Whittaker which was introduced as an attempt to modernise the Irish economy. This was also the era of Sean Lemass as Taoiseach, and his readiness to support Whitaker’s White Paper proposal on ‘Economic Development’ in November 1958 brought about the beginnings of a turn around in the Irish economy.

Whitaker’s aim was to “accelerate progress by strengthening public confidence after the stagnation of the 1950s, indicating the opportunities for development and encouraging a progressive and expansionist outlook”. Whitaker told the Government “we must be prepared to take risks under all headings – social, commercial and financial – if we are to succeed”. As a result of the adoption of his plan the value of exports in 1960 was the highest for thirty years. We could do with this same breadth of vision today.

Shannon Development

While Paul Brock was being kept busy with the music he realised that there was no money in music and certainly not enough to live on. So when Ireland was riding on the crest of the wave Paul left Athlone, but he did not leave the Shannon behind him. He journeyed to Shannon and joined Shannon Development in 1963. The company, an Irish Government economic development agency, was still in its infancy and Paul considered himself very lucky to be working for an exciting new company which had government support and which was being run at that time by Brendan O’Regan, whom he refers to as “a visionary”. Paul describes the dynamism of O’Regan who he says “had the vision to do a lot of things across a wide spectrum: economic development, tourism, attraction of inward development; building of local communities; infrastructural developments and maintaining the importance of Shannon as an international airport. Remember that from the late 1950s Shannon had been over-flown with the arrival of the modern jet aircraft. Up to that time, from the post-war years until the late 50s, all the air traffic between Europe and America had to stop at Shannon to refuel. So I joined the company with O’Regan as the driving force he had an attitude of ‘let’s do it’ and he didn’t want to know about bureaucracy or red tape. He managed to motivate a huge team of people who would do anything for him. There were no lines of demarcation these kinds of road-blocks just didn’t exist in his mind with the result that the company was responsible for an extraordinary number of innovations at that time. Shannon Development became the green-house for economic development not just in Ireland but in a lot of other countries who were seeing how things were beginning to turn around in Ireland”. Over the years Paul worked across lots of the company’s business activities: in tourism, in industrial development, in enterprise development and as Publicity Communications Manager. Eventually he was responsible for all of the company’s overseas operations. His work involved a great deal of overseas travel and so for over forty years he has been based in the Shannon region both in Limerick and in Ennis where he has lived for the past twenty-five years.

He has served on a variety of national and regional economic development committees including: the National Aerospace Task Force; The Mid-West Resource Committee; The National Grants Committee of the Youth Employment Agency. Paul is a former Chairman of the National Publicity Co-ordinating Committee that operated under the aegis of The Department of Foreign Affairs and which co-ordinated the worldwide publicity work of all the Irish State promotional agencies. In recent years he has worked as a Senior Consultant for IDI Ireland advising on investment promotion programmes in various countries in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.

A Career Choice

In going to Shannon Paul Brock had made an important career choice. The options facing him were either to pursue the music or concentrate on the job. He didn’t think the music was a real option as it might be today, and in truth it wasn’t so he opted on getting a secure job that was both permanent and pensionable. As he says himself “it was important to get your foot in the door and keep it there. The notion of mobility within jobs didn’t exist then so I took the decision to concentrate on my career in Shannon but of course I continued to be involved in various ways with the music”.

Once he established himself in Shannon he realised that his primary focus had to be on his day job but he continued to play music. He even developed an interest in the guitar and studied the classical guitar for a while. He continued to broaden his musical tastes by listening to as much music as possible. By the early 70s he was aware that the attitude to Irish music was changing The Chieftains, a group which had been founded in the early 60s, was getting very well established and was increasingly playing Irish music worldwide. This was in great contrast to the majority of Irish musicians who played simply for the love of it and seldom if ever got paid for their efforts. Paul recalls that when the big break came and Irish musicians started to seize the opportunity to travel they had to learn the hard way about the art of performance to live international audiences. He remembers one music critic in the States asking ‘Why do Irish musicians spend so much time admiring their own shoe laces?”

The traditional Irish musicians of the time were on a steep learning curve. Prior to this they weren’t into the business of communicating, performing in front of large audiences, engaging with their audience or introducing their own material. However as they acquired new skills and reached out to new audiences there was growing acceptance both at home and abroad of Irish traditional music and significantly more and more young people being were being drawn into it in a way that hadn’t happened previously. The whole Fleadh Cheoil business was flourishing and attracting more and more people and the recording industry was taking off in Ireland.

Going Back to his Roots

While we were talking about the changing scene in the 70s Paul tells me “I was continuing to play with various musicians but more and more I was going back to the Irish traditional material, going back to my roots as it were. I dispensed with the five-row accordion; I actually sold it and returned to my roots to the melodeon and the two-row accordion. Around that time there was a great reawakening of interest in what had gone before. There was a lot of research being done, through the 1970s in particular, on the early development of traditional music. There was interest in the early recordings and in what had happened in America especially through the nineteenth century the time of mass emigration from Ireland. There was an interest in how the music transported, what had happened to it when it got out there and particularly the development of the recording industry because that had happened in America”.

Lecture on the Golden Age of Irish Music

I learned a great deal about the Golden Age of Irish music from Paul Brock. One character he told me about was the Loughrea born piper, Patsy Tuohy, who in the early days of the recording business in the States set up a mail-order company. He invited his customers to nominate the pieces of music they wanted, say two favourite tunes such as ‘Bonnie Kate’ and ‘The Salamanca Reel’ – Patsy would then record them on to a wax cylinder on a one-off basis, autograph them and dispatch them by post.

Irish traditional music became a commercial commodity in the States. Various factors, including the recording industry, the dance halls and the birth of broadcasting all helped its growing popularity. Paul explains the importance of the early recordings “The American Library of Congress compiled a discography of all the ethnic recordings of Irish music from the beginnings until 1950 and we then knew for the first time what was there, what had been recorded, who was on the recordings, when they were recorded and where they were recorded – this amounted to an absolute goldmine shedding light on both the repertoire and style of these pioneer musicians”. Paul Brock has delivered an illustrated lecture in the States entitled “Irish Traditional Music in America – The Golden Age” of which Paul F Wells, the Director of the Centre for Popular Music at the Middle Tennessee State University said it was “concise, authoritative, and engagingly presented. It was a wonderful survey of a vastly important period in the history of Irish music”.