The Irish Traditional Music Archive (or ITMA; ga, Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann), operating as a charity, is a "national reference archive and resource centre for the traditional song, instrumental music and dance of Ireland". Focusing on

Irish traditional music Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. In ''A History of Irish Music'' (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there we ...

Irish dance Irish dance refers to a group of traditional dance forms that originate in Ireland, encompassing dancing both solo and in groups, and dancing for social, competitive, and performance purposes. Irish dance in its current form developed from vari ...

and their history, the archive covers the performance traditions of the island of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, within the Irish diaspora, and other performers of Irish traditional music globally. The archive, described by some sources as the "largest collection of its kind in the world", contains thousands of sound recordings, as well as books and serials, photographs, sheet music, DVDs, posters and catalogues. Founded with the Breandán Breathnach Collection, the collection has been expanded through donations by radio, television, libraries and private collectors. Founded in 1987, the archive has been housed in a Georgian house in central Dublin since 2006.

History

ITMA was co-founded in 1987 by Nicholas Carolan and Harry Bradshaw. Nicholas Carolan, who first found a space for the archive in the Temple Bar area of Dublin, served as director for 28 years until he was succeeded by Grace Toland in 2015. Carolan continued in a voluntary role as director emeritus. The organisation receives some funding from the

Arts Council of Ireland The Arts Council (sometimes called the Arts Council of Ireland; legally ga, An Chomhairle Ealaíon) is the independent "Irish government agency for developing the arts." About It was established in 1951 by the Government of Ireland, to encour ...

Publications

Nicholas Carolan-Irish Traditional Music Archive-364-0045-hinnerk-ruemenapf

The archive has published two major printed publications deriving from historical manuscript collections of Irish traditional music: ''Tunes of the Munster Pipers: Irish Traditional Music from the James Goodman Manuscripts'', 500 pre-Famine melodies edited by Dr Hugh Shields from a

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

collection; and ''The Irish Music Manuscripts of Edward Bunting (1773–1843): An Introduction and Catalogue'' by Dr Colette Moloney, a guide to 1,000 18th- and early 19th-century melodies and 500 song texts held in Queen's University Belfast. The archive began a programme of publishing historical and archival sound recordings with the release of the EP-CD ''Adam in Paradise'' by the County Londonderry singer

Eddie Butcher Eddie Butcher (8 May 1900 – 8 September 1980) was an Irish traditional singer, folk-song collector and songwriter from Magilligan, County Londonderry. He had an extensive repertoire of songs that he performed in a sturdy, earthy style. ...

(in conjunction with the

Ulster Folk & Transport Museum The Ulster Folk Museum and the Ulster Transport Museum are situated in Cultra, Northern Ireland, about east of the city of Belfast. The Folk Museum endeavours to illustrate the way of life and traditions of the people in Northern Ireland, past ...

). In 2011, ITMA released an extensive biography of Butcher, with 67 previously unpublished songs and an accompanying boxset of three CDs.

Broadcasting

The archive has cooperated with

RTÉ Radio RTÉ Radio is a division of the Irish national broadcasting organisation Raidió Teilifís Éireann. RTÉ Radio broadcasts four analogue channels and five digital channels nationwide. Founded in January 1926 as 2RN, the first broadcaster in t ...

and

RTÉ Television RTÉ Television is a department of Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), the Republic of Ireland's state controlled national broadcaster. Its first channel was Teilifís Éireann, which began broadcasting on 31 December 1961. Since the 1960s, RT ...

in two projects. In a radio project, some of the archives of Irish traditional music of RTÉ Radio, dating back to the 1940s, were remastered, copied and catalogued for public access in the archive. Over 15,000 items were processed to date, and several radio programmes drawn from them. In a television project, archive staff researched the traditional music holdings of the early decades of RTÉ Television (1961–1991) and other television and film archives such as those of

Ulster Television UTV (formerly Ulster Television, branded on air as ITV1) is the ITV region covering Northern Ireland, ITV subsidiary and the former on-air name of the free-to-air public broadcast television channel serving the area. It is run by ITV plc an ...

in Belfast. The director of the archive presented a traditional music TV programme ''Come West along the Road'' derived from this archival footage. In twelve series on RTÉ, and in nine series of a related Irish-language series ''Siar an Bóthar'' on TG4, more than 900 historic performers of Irish traditional music were brought to the screen in TV broadcast programmes, and in RTÉ-published videos and DVDs.

References

External links

* {{official, https://www.itma.ie/ Irish folk music history Music organisations based in the Republic of Ireland

History

Publications

Broadcasting

See also

References

External links