RADIO DAYS

Source: http://kieranhanrahanbanjo.com/

Source: Speak Up

Language level: Advanced

Standard Justin Ratcliffe British accent

RADIO DAYS

Kieran Hanrahan is a musician who won the All-Ireland Banjo Championship at the age of 18. Since then he has also becomes a radio presenter and his show, Céilli House, is broadcast every week on the national network, RTE Radio 1. The programme concentrates on traditional Irish music and, for this reason, we asked him about the state of traditional music in Ireland today.

Kieran Hanrahan

(Irish accent):

Yeah, it is great, I mean, I travel the country, and what really I find sweet sometimes is that you might get three generations of one family playing together, you know, you get a…a grandfather, a father and a daughter and a son, those combinations. I always find that they’re very special moments when we come across that, and you do come across them in certain parts of the country and it’s just lovely to see the handing down of the tradition. I suppose one great example of that is Chris Droney, a famous Clare concertina player. There’s a recording in the archives in RTE, of Chris and his father, from 1956, two concertina layers. Now, Chris’ father was 70 at the time, so he would have been born in 1886, and he learned the music from his own father, so you’re heading back sort of towards famine times. But, 40 years after that recording was made in ’56, I recorded Chris and his son. And last year, on the music competition on TV here. Chris’ grandson was playing in it. So there’s all these kind of generations, going almost back to the Famine, from today’s generation, playing traditional music, so it’s just lovely to unearth that solid tradition you know.