Life
1930- ; b. Derry, ed. CBS, St Columb’s College, Derry, and QUB; lecturer
in electrical engineering, UCC; member of Na Filí, an Irish traditional
music trio; taught uileann pipes and worked as RTE radio presenter; issued Home to Derry (1985); also issued Traditional
Music in Ireland (1978), a study;
and A Lifetime of Notes (q.d.), 128pp.; and compiled Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland (1996). ORM
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Works
Home to Derry (1985), autobiography; Dornán Dánta (BAC: Coiscéim 2004), 48pp., poems; also Traditional Music in Ireland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1978); A Lifetime of Notes (London: Collins Press [q.d.]), 128pp.; ed., Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland (Ossian Books 1996), 102pp. [with 2 cassette tapes].
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Quotations
Trad. music: ‘For me, traditional music is so much more than the sum total of
all the techniques, it involves the whole person and the complete situation’;
who is to judge ‘what is basic to the tradition and therefore worth
preserving, and what is merely of secondary importance?’ (Traditional
Music, p.ix; cited in Gerry Smyth, ‘Amateurs and Textperts, Studying
Irish Traditional Music’, in Irish Studies Review (Autumn
1995), pp.2-10; p.4, 8, &c. Smyth concludes that ‘the freedom
Ó Canainn offers is not freedom at all, and far from a dialectical
exchange, his model of the discourse represents an aggressive imposition
of the past onto the present, and an attempt to restrict the possibilities
of the music’ (p.4).
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References
Frank Ormsby, ed., Northern Windows: An Anthology Of Ulster Autobiography (Blackstaff 1987), extract from Home to Derry (1985), pp.184-94.
Greagóir Ó Duill, Filíocht Uladh 1960-1985 (1986), gives “Ocras”, poem. Se bibl., Home to Derry (1986 [2n edn.]), úrscéal [novel]; no poetry collections noted.
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