VALUABLE BBC recordings of Irish traditional music will be available to the public for the first time later this year at the Irish Traditional Music Archive bin Dublin.
The BBC began an intensive collection of traditional music throughout Ireland from the summer of 1947, on the initiative of a radio producer, Mr Brian George.
Collectors and musicians such as Seamus Ennis in the Republic and Peter Kennedy and Sean O Baoill in the North recorded a wide range of rural and urban performers on disc and tape.
These included singers in Irish and English, pipers, fiddle, flute and accordion players, and small and large groups of players.
Some 1,500 performances were captured during over 70 hours of field recordings. Many of these recordings were last heard in public on the near legendary BBC radio series, As I Roved Out, broadcast during the 1950s.
They have now been deposited at the National Sound Archive in Britain which is giving the Irish Traditional Music Archive technical assistance in making digital copies of the entire collection.
The copies will be available for public reference at the offices of the archive in Merrion Square, Dublin. Initial material will become available from next month.