A History Of The Concertina In Ireland, 1834-1930

[Dan Worrall]

Friends,

 

My latest article, 'Notes on the Beginnings of the Concertina in Ireland, 1834-1930', is now available at the Concertina Library, at this link:

http://www.concertina.com/worrall/beginnin...ina-in-ireland/

 

The article, although complete, is not yet fully released, and you can't click to get there except on the link above in this posting. I am notifying Forum folks early for their potential interest; it will be released to the general public in coming weeks.

 

It covers the little known period from the arrival of both the English and German system concertinas in Ireland to the end of the anglo's heyday, about 1930; I avoided the following years leading up to and including the current revival, as those stories are well told elsewhere. There has never been much firm information written on how the concertina came to be so strongly associated with County Clare; it has often been said but never documented that mariners may originally have brought them up the Shannon estuary. What I found, and what you can read in the article, is that the Anglo-German concertina was enormously popular in all the counties of Ireland from the 1860s through the 1920s, and was played in those years not only by those who were involved in traditional Irish music, but by many other social groups in Ireland as well. There is some discussion on why the concertina was dropped nearly everywhere in Ireland by 1930, and why the only remaining active players prior to the traditional music revival of the 1970s were nearly all in County Clare. There are many, many references gleaned from period newspapers, journals and books.

 

I'll be interested to see what you all think. By the way, it is a pre-release version...so if anything seems amiss, please let me know via email. One problem relative to my earlier history of the anglo in the US (http://www.concertina.com/worrall/anglo-in-united-states/ ) is the dearth of pictures of Irish players before 1930, especially in the late nineteenth century. If you have any that you could see placing in the article (with full credit, of course), please let me know!

 

Thanks are due to several people who helped in getting this out. Allan Atlas, Noel Hill, Randall Merris, and Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin all gave me helpful suggestions on the first draft. Special thanks are due to Robert Gaskins, who made space available in the Concertina Library and skillfully and laboriously prepared the document for placement there.

 

Cheers,

Dan

[wntrmute]

I enjoyed it.