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As a follow-up to my recent website post of the Seamus Ennis concert in Slattery’s, I now wish to share his playing (on tin whistle) along with fiddle player Michael Folan of Connemara. This music was recorded by Ralph Rinzler in the early 1960s in New York and held in the Smithsonian Institution. Ralph Rinzler (1934-1994) was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and was interested in music at an early age. He was given a collection of ethnographic recordings from the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress by his uncle, Harvard University ballad scholar George Lyman Kittredge, and they soon became his favorites. He became actively involved in the Folk Revival while attending Swarthmore College, organizing an annual festival on campus. He received his B.A. in 1956 and did graduate work at Middlebury College and the Sorbonne in French literature and language. Upon his return to the United States, he played mandolin for four years with the Greenbriar Boys, at times touring with singer Joan Baez. During the 1960s, he also studied, recorded, and worked with performers of traditional music, such as Doc Watson and Bill Monroe, both of whom gained international recognition in part through his efforts. In 1964, Rinzler accepted the position of Director of Field Programs at the Newport Folk Foundation, which involved the planning and programming of the Newport Folk Festival. Rinzler came to the Smithsonian in 1967 as co-founder of the Festival of American Folklife (now the Smithsonian Folklife Festival) with James Morris in what was then the Smithsonian's Division of Performing Arts. After the 1976 Bicentennial Festival, Rinzler became the founding director of the Office of Folklife Programs (now the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage) to establish a center for research, publication, and presentation of programs in American culture and tradition. As Director, he initiated Smithsonian Folklife Studies, a publication series, and did research for the Celebration exhibit, which opened at the Renwick Gallery in 1982. Rinzler was appointed Assistant Secretary for Public Service in 1983 and Assistant Secretary Emeritus in 1990. Ralph Rinzler died on July 2, 1994. Seamus Ennis travelled to America in the early 1960s, making several appearances throughout the country including New York, Chicago and Asti, California. While in New York, he met up with fiddle player Michael Folan (Micheál Ó Cualain), whom Ennis originally met back in Connemara in the early 1940s while collecting songs and music for the Irish Folklore Commission. On my recent visit to Ireland, I met with Sean McKiernan who kindly introduced me to the Folan family in Carna. We spent a wonderful afternoon in the good company of Ciaran (Michael Folan’s nephew), and his wife Sally, who shared photographs and family history. The Folan family were very musical, playing piano, fiddle and accordion and at one stage the children formed a ceili band, performing at local events and house parties in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Michael, along with his brother Ciaran, emigrated from Ireland to New York in 1947. My sincere thanks to Cecilia Peterson, Digital Projects Archivist at the Smithsonian Institution, for the digitized music and to Scott Krafft, Chief Curator of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Libraries Illinois, for the photographs of Seamus Ennis at the Asti Folk Music Festival in California in 1964. The review of the Bevier Hall, Chicago performance by Ennis, published in the Daily Illini by F. K. Plous Jr., paints a wonderful picture of Ennis in full command of his music, storytelling and his audience that evening. Before leaving Connemara last week, Sean McKiernan kindly presented me with a recording of three songs and part of a fourth, performed by Patrick (Pat) Clancy (son of Gilbert Clancy and Ellen Killeen* and brother of Willie Clancy). Sean recorded these 4 tracks on a visit to the Clancy home in Leagard North, Milltown Malbay on the 6th of May 1992. Present in the house that day with Sean were Pat Clancy and his sister Bridget (Baby). My sincere thanks to Sean McKiernan and to Isa Woulfe (grandniece of Willie Clancy) for permission to share this recording. *Ellen Killeen was born on Feb 4th, 1890, to Thomas Killeen (a farmer) and Bridget Coghlin at Ardnacullia South townland (now spelt locally as Ardnaculla), south-east of Ennistymon. Ellen was a concertina player and singer, and she married Gilbert Clancy in Ennis Cathedral on Dec. 1st, 1911. Gilbert, who played flute and concertina and was a nice singer, was the son of John Clancy and Molly O’Dea, who married in 1847. Molly, the daughter of Gilbert O’Dea and Catherine Lillis, was a wonderful concertina player and a very good friend of the blind piper Garrett Barry, who often spent weeks at a time in the Clancy home in Illaunbaun, as he was very fond of the family. The second episode of my podcast, Irish Music Memories, is out now – an interview with musician, singer and broadcaster Mary Conroy.
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