My first deep involvement with music was through singing…

In this I consider myself extremely lucky in that in the Belfast of the early 1970s I had access to so many iconic singers.

Consider…there were very few recordings of traditional music available at the time, less of traditional singing, so for those interested in traditional song it really was a case of seeking out the old singers and learning directly from them.

In my case I was able to constantly listen to and learn from the likes of Cathal McConnell, Len Graham, Joe Holmes, and Geordie Hanna, to name but a few.

Later on, by the time I was involved in music full time (mainly through flutemaking) I began to be aware of a strange dichotomy in the way instrumental music was perceived and treated in comparison to song, and I think this tells us something very important about the way Irish traditional music has evolved, particularly since the availability of sound recording.
I’ve written about this before, and hope to again, but for the more academically inclined, you find something of my work on the sound recording aspect HERE.