Above the cacophony that surrounds Irish traditional music – the endless debates about the “tradition”, the politics of it all, what purpose it serves, is it any good – one voice, it seems to me, rises above all the din: that of Toner Quinn.
Son of film-maker Bob Quinn, Toner is editor of the Journal of Music which was in print for 10 years and online for the past 14 but the Journal also publishes books including its latest, Toner’s own What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music.
As part of the Belfast International Arts Festival, the Conamara resident gave a talk on the book and what he has learnt since its publication last December and as usual, like all his articles, it raised many issues.
One of the reasons Toner started writing about music 25 years ago was because of the way music, particularly traditional Irish music, is often used in society.
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“I don’t see myself as a music journalist, or a critic. I’m more a musician who just writes about music,” he says.
“Everything that I think and write about music is really informed by just playing music, just sitting in an environment with musicians, watching, listening, experiencing what’s going on on the ground.
“I think we, as members of a music community, we need to be at least part of the conversation about how music is used in our society because how music is talked about, how it’s thought about, actually shapes our lives as musicians and shapes the opportunities available to us.”
Quinn isn’t comfortable with the public conversation surrounding music, and by that he means the “noise” in the media and in social media. This can be really interesting sometimes but other times it’s just noise, and he believes the actual music is often completely overwhelmed by the political discussions around it.
He mentions the Kneecap-inspired boycott of the South by Southwest festival in Texas and whether or not Ireland should have been in the Eurovision because of Israel’s involvement and whether or not music and arts organisations should be even taking a stance on the war in Gaza.
Quinn himself often writes and speaks about these issues too, but it seems to him that these conversations about the political aspect of our musical life are the only public conversations around music; the actual music rarely becomes part of the public conversation.
I don’t see myself as a music journalist, or a critic. I’m more a musician who just writes about music
— Toner Quinn
He mentions a recent hour-long interview with Christy Moore he heard on RTÉ radio, because he has a new album out.
“The album is called A Terrible Beauty. Okay, it could refer to the Yeats poem about Easter 1916. But Moore says right at the beginning of this long interview that it doesn’t relate to the Yeats poem, that it relates to a painting of a country rural scene by a schoolfriend of his,” says Quinn.
“And if you actually listen to the album, which I had done before that interview, it’s actually really, really powerful.
“You’ll hear that musically and lyrically in this new album by Christy Moore, it is probably one of his best albums in years.
“The songs are stronger, the songwriting is tighter, the lyrics are more distilled, there’s more variety in the textures, and as a result, the performance from Christy on the album has more intensity. It’s just a whole other level of an album.
“The songs are about relationships, humanity, family, frailty, fathers and sons and of course there are political and social themes too. But when it came to the discussion about the album, and I was watching the clock as I listened to this, it was four minutes before the interviewer started to steer it towards politics.
“And every time Christy Moore would hint towards his creative process, or his voice, how it has developed, or his love of traditional music, or how he works with the songwriters to develop the songs, the songs that are sent on to him, the interviewer steered it back to politics by dragging up YouTube clips from the past 50 years.
“It was incredible. The entire conversation could have taken place 30 years ago.”
Another example is the way Irish music is used in anti-immigrant protests. Crowds marching, banging a bodhrán in Wicklow in April or playing Sinead O’Connor and the Chieftains at a protest in Dublin in May.
“The irony is that so much of traditional Irish music and song documents the migrant experience for people who left this island,” says Quinn.
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Folk songs like Spancil Hill and Skibbereen, modern songs like City of Chicago, Back Home in Derry, even the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, which you are going to hear 1,000 times over the next month, these songs are about the immigrant experience for people who left this island.
“So these are songs that tell of desperation, isolation, poverty, marginalisation, rejection, suspicion, discrimination. And now people are using Irish music to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. It’s a complete disassembling of our public discourse,” says Quinn,
But as for the music itself, today in Ireland, Toner rightly believes we actually have something remarkable going on, a multi-faceted contemporary musical life across all genres, but with an incredibly continuous folk music and song tradition. Tradition is right at the heart of it all.
“It’s pretty extraordinary,” he says.
“Not every country has this. So, the question I want to ask, about this remarkable musical life that we have but which is only talked about in political terms a lot of the time, is how did we actually get here, musically speaking?
“We have a general idea of the historical reasons and the modern development of music, the history of popular music and rock and traditional and folk and showbands. So we have an idea of the modern history.
“But I think there would not be enough of those historical reasons on their own to produce the vibrancy that we are witness to today.
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“My suggestion, and this is drawn from playing this music and from sitting among musicians and watching them and listening to them and hearing the generations speak, is that there is something else at work. And I want to suggest, and this is why I call the book How Ireland Thinks About Music, I want to suggest that along with the repertoire that have been handed down through the generations and combined with the styles and techniques that we’ve all inherited, a way of thinking that values spontaneity, adaptability, community, passing it on, education, transmission, has emerged.
“And that this way of thinking is more responsible for the dynamism of Irish music than any symbolic or political value it might have. So I don’t want to imply that every one of the island thinks this way. Obviously, they don’t. But it is a way of thinking that informs our relationship to music. I think we could even call it a musical philosophy.”
What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music by Toner Quinn is published by the Journal of Music.
