March 2017 Martin Reilly Lecture Series at NUI Galway

NUI Galway’s Centre for Irish Studies and Comhrá Ceoil are delighted to announce details of the second talk in this year’s Martin Reilly Lecture Series, which will be given by Gerry Clarke, at 6.30pm on Tuesday, 28 March 2017, at Galway City Library.  

The lecture,‘Irish traditional and hillbilly music in the era of the 78 rpm: Finding ‘Old Familiar Tunes’, will introduce the shared sources of Irish traditional musicians and the emerging genre of hillbilly (or country as it became known) recorded on 78 rpms during the first half of the twentieth century.

Much of the repertoire of songs and tunes which Gerry will focus on are known to listeners from current practice of Irish traditional music,  but he will also focus on the less known early versions of traditional music recordings made in the 1920s and 1930s.

An engineer by profession, Gerry Clarke has been collecting 78 rpm recordings for almost fifty years. He co-founded Oldtime Records with piper Emmett Gill in 2005, and since then Oldtime Records have produced six volumes of Irish traditional music from the 1920s and 1930s. 

This series of free talks is dedicated to Martin Reilly, the celebrated Galway uilleann piper, and gives an opportunity to researcher-practitioners in Irish traditional music and dance to present their work in a public forum.  The success of the series thus far confirms the interest in research of this kind in Galway, where traditional music and dance are part of the cultural fabric of the city.

For further information on the Martin Reilly Lecture Series email martinreillylectureseries@gmail.com or visit Facebook at Martin-Reilly-Lecture-Series.

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