TG4 Gradam Ceoil 2021: ‘I think people value music more now’

This year’s winners attest to the restorative power of music during a pandemic

Sorcha Costello. Photograph: Maurice Gunning

Tue Sept 07 2021 - 05:00

Reflection and restoration: both can be found in abundance in the experiences of this year's TG4 Gradam Ceoil recipients. While for the most part they've had no choice but to lay down their instruments for a sustained period, they've also used this period to savour the tunes and the songs that lured them to the music in the first place. For some, life and music have coalesced to follow unexpected trajectories.

Young Traditional Musician of the Year Sorcha Costello is an east Clare fiddle player and teacher who's steeped in the languid swing of her home place. The daughter of concertina player Mary McNamara, she graduates as a music therapist from the University of Limerick this year, having immersed herself in a very different kind of music education over the past two years.

“I’ve been very busy in music,” she says, “but in a different sense to what I’m used to. I use the fiddle in music therapy but this was about how you can use music in so many other ways, not just for enjoyment.”

Costello is sanguine about the blessing and curse that characterised the dramatic stop Covid put to live performance, in the context of her own life plans.

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“While most people would say that the pandemic was the worst thing that ever happened, and of course it is, actually it’s been a saving grace for me,” she admits. “I was living an extremely busy music life – teaching here, gigging there. I was all over the place. Then all that stopped, and I could focus on the music therapy, while still playing my own bit at home. Having the time to do that because I wasn’t teaching was very intense, but I’m so glad that I had the time to do it.”

Angelina Carberry. Photograph: Maurice Gunning

The banjo is an instrument that has frequently taken a back seat when it comes to being recognised for its role in the tradition. Not before time, Angelina Carberry’s quiet, unassuming but precise and heartful playing style is stepping into the limelight, as she is recognised as the Traditional Musician of the Year. A native of Manchester, resident in Ireland since 1997, Carberry’s lineage is steeped in the tradition. Her father, Peter, plays both accordion and banjo, and was a towering influence on her from an early age.

“My earliest memory is hearing my father playing,” Carberry offers. “He taught me. And I have so many memories of musicians coming and going, putting their instruments into the car and going off to a session. I started playing the banjo at 14. My father taught me. My grandfather played the banjo. It was open-backed and he wrote the names of sets of tunes on the inside of it to remind him.”

Resilience

Carberry’s unassuming demeanour belies a resilience that’s been put to the test over the past 18 months. She’s sanguine about the sudden halt that’s been put to her life as a performing musician.

“It’s been a challenge,” she notes. “I’ve done some online concerts and workshops. That’s all new to me and I really enjoyed it. But I’ve definitely been feeling it this year – no festivals, not meeting anybody. I just keep going and looking forward. We’ll definitely appreciate getting together when this is all over.”

Traditional singer Niall Hanna was also immersed in the tradition from an early age. He learned much from the singing of his grandfather Geordie Hanna, even though Geordie had passed away before he was born. He was nominated for an RTÉ Radio 1 folk award in 2018, has toured with The Rapparees and released his debut album, Autumn Winds, in 2018. Having qualified as a teacher, Hanna found himself returning to the classroom when the tunes stopped abruptly in March 2020.

“I’ve been lucky enough,” he admits. “I had been playing music full-time, but I was able to go back teaching, while still doing some recording in the background. It’s given me a bit of time – I’ve learned quite a lot of new songs and I’ve been writing songs as well. It let me catch my breath, focus a lot, instead of playing gigs all the time.”

Excitement

Music in all its forms has been sorely missing in so many people’s lives during the pandemic, and Costello anticipates its return with both excitement and apprehension.

“I definitely think that people who aren’t musicians, who mightn’t have valued music before, value it more now,” she muses, “because so many people turned to music during the pandemic and realised how important it can be. Hopefully that will continue.”

She feels an inevitable conflict between the time the pandemic has offered her to take stock and the driving desire for the camaraderie and buzz of a session.

“I still want to have time to work on new music, but I’d be very happy to just get back to how it was before,” she admits. “I did enjoy, for once, thinking about music for myself rather than teaching, because I do so much. It was really nice to think about what I want to do. I started to really enjoy playing at home again. I had stopped that because I used to be so tired from teaching all day.”

The power of the tradition lies in the intimacy of its transmission, from one musician to another, Carberry believes. Big band formations became very popular in the 1990s and 2000s but, for her, there is nothing that can come near the intimacy of playing with one or two other musicians.

“For me, it’s definitely duets that I love,” she says, “as well as playing in sessions. But it’s the friendships too: meeting musicians and picking up tunes from others. The tune carries the memory of the person you learned it from, I think.”