We are delighted to announce our release of this fine archive CD.

Tuning The Radio
Early traditional music recordings from the RTÉ Libraries and Archives.
RTE 285
Various Artists



TUNING THE RADIO:

Some of the finest recordings of irish traditional music in the RTÉ Sound Archive are made available for the first time with this release.

Capturing the sound of traditional music as it was played in the four provinces of Ireland some two generations ago, the twenty five tracks on this CD are a selection of priceless recordings held by the archive of RTÉ Radio.

The recordings, which have never been issued before, were made by the storied collectors of Radio Éireann’s first Mobile Recording Unit in the 1940s and early 1950s, when disc cutting machinery was first transported around the country in the quest to create a representative archive of Irish traditional music.

Now some of the best of these recordings have been digitally restored and re-mastered, and are proudly presented by RTÉ Radio as treasures from the early history of sound archiving in Ireland.

Press Reviews

Irish Music Magazine April 2011

FROM DISC TO DIGITAL A WIRELESS WORLD IS PAINSTAKINGLY PRESERVED
Tuning the Radio - Early traditional music recordings from the RTE Libraries and Archives, a new CD from RTE. Aidan O'Hara takes a nostalgic trip into the past.

You may recall my opening remarks in last month's Story Behind the Song section where I looked at the new CD from RTE, Tuning the Radio, and recalled a chat I had with Paul Brady in 1977. He said he had a lot of regard for the ceilf bands heard on Irish radio in the early days, and observed, "The people who played in those bands right through the thirties, forties and fifties were the ones who kept the music alive." I mention this because there are three such bands on this new disc from RTE.

Irish traditional music was part of the landscape of radio right from its inception as 2RN in 1926. However the first ten years of the service are lost to us because the shows were all live' broadcasts and nothing was recorded. Then in 1936 the acetate disc arrived. These discs made from aluminium were about a foot across and were coated with acetate. During WWII when aluminium was in short supply glass discs were commonly used and as you can imagine these were extremely fragile.

The lacquer coating on the acetate discs was rather thin and each time a disc was played a small section of the surface wore off. Those that survive are prized for their rarity and for the material they contain. In the world of Rock music some acetates can command high prices at auction. An acetate from The Velvet Underground, containing music that would later appear on their first album, The Velvet Underground & JMico, sold on eBay in 2006 for $25,200. The traditional music acetates in the RTE collection are priceless and their transfer to a digitised format was a necessary step in maintaining the integrity of this national treasure.

The earliest broadcast acetate recordings of Irish traditional music extant date only from 1940. Three from that year are on the CD: The Kincora Ceilf Band, Seamus Ennis (uilleann pipes), and The Dublin Metropolitan Garda Ceili Band. These tracks and the rest of the recordings on the CD come with notes that are full of information and interesting detail. If there was golden age of recording music in the field it began during The Emergency, as WW11 was called in Ireland.

The 17-page booklet accompanying the CD is largely the work of Peter Browne, uilleann piper and RTE radio producer, and with his insider knowledge of the music and musicians, coupled with his ready access to RTE's Sound Archives, he was well placed to produce this historic compilation. It succeeds in capturing something of the wonder and excitement of the early days of recording and broadcasting, and through photo and sound we meet with some of the people recorded for radio from the 1940's and the years following. Peter acknowledges the team effort involved in such a huge undertaking that is Tuning the Radio. They include, Malachy Moran, Manager of RTE Radio Audio Services and Archive, his colleague, Brian Rice, Harry Bradshaw, restoration and master, and Breeda Brennan, production co-ordinator.

"It represents a year's work," Malachy says, "most of it by Peter Brown, but with important input from Brian Rice. There is a lot of work in preparing the material, and we are fortunate here to have someone like Brian who is not only a trained archivist but a musician, as well." I put it to Malachy that considering the extent of material in Sound Archives, perhaps this CD might be followed by more of the same. "Yes, we're considering the possibility of a second one. There is material there, but it depends on the availability of people like Peter Brown. Times are tough everywhere,and RTE like everyone else is constrained by tight budgets, hence Behind the Song section where I looked at new CD the problem of getting people to work on projects." After my from RTE, Tuning the Radio, and recalled a chat I had with chat with Malachy I was left with the impression that there's a story there for another day down the road.

"Of course, I'm really only qualified to speak about this from an archivist's perspective," says a rather unassuming Brian Rice. "The significance of this recording for me is the extent to which this production relied on instantaneous disc recordings. We have put quite some effort into physically arranging and securing this collection over the last number of years, and this production is evidence that archival first principals work just as well with sound as they do with traditional archive collections. Our focus is a holistic one that prizes the completeness and context of collections above the prestige of individual recordings. This approach allows people like Peter Browne, who are the creative force behind these productions, greater access and a wider breadth of material to work with."

But there is still a lot of work to do, Brian emphasised. "We continue to be reliant on the original card index for this collection and the dark arts of re-mastering as practiced by Harry Bradshaw. Our ambition is to digitise the entire collection and make it available as best we can under the limits of technology and copyright law.
as best we can under the limits of technology and copyright law. In short, to make it a proper research resource." Harry Bradshaw said of his contribution to the project: "It was a great honour to work on it because I've long been an admirer of those radio collectors who did such great things during that 'golden age'."
Over the years a certain amount of RTE's recorded material was lost, wiped or simply dumped. And why? In the early days of recording when the tapes were relatively expensive and RTE's budget from the government was less than generous, tapes were wiped and reused, over and over again. Sadly, many acetate recordings were deemed surplus to requirements and were thrown out.

All this was long before Brian Rice's time, and however painful it might be to look into what happened at that time and to find out what has gone missing, it must be done. "This would have to include a full and frank account of all the recordings that were lost," Brian said. "Only in this way can the proper context of the recordings we still have be established."

The CD booklet tells not only the story of the featured musicians and how the recordings were done, but also how Raidio Eireann began to plan for bigger and better things after WWII, hiring extra staff and acquiring new equipment in 1 947. Those appointed included two outside broadcast officers, Sean Mac Reamoinn and Seamus Ennis, to work the new MRU (Mobile Recording Unit), travelling the country recording 'suitable material for broadcasts'. One other who was hired at the same time was Proinsias 6 Conluain (happily still with us) and designated 'scriptwriter' to write up the material recorded 'in the field' for broadcast. Within a short time the two jobs merged and Proinsias spent most of his long broadcast life recording in the field. Ciaran Mac Mathuna arrived on the scene in the mid-1950's and for the first time incorporated the presenter's personality as a featured element of the broadcast.

When I started out as an announcer/presenter with RTE Radio 41 years ago, I had the luxury of not only having a sound operator and a producer, but also a disc man. Much later it was all very different: presenters were largely on their own in what was called a Comp Op (compere operated) studio, where one did it all oneself, aided of course, by sophisticated and user-friendly - well, most of the time - digital equipment. So it's worth quoting Peter's account of the 1930's and '40's scenario where the station announcer used speech and music that were pre-recorded on acetate discs as inserts in live 'on air'. "In these live broadcasts, it was necessary for the announcer, while speaking, to drop the needle on the correct groove on the disc which was already spinning at 78rpm - no mean feat!" It was an early form of Comp Op - just a bit more hair-raising.

One of the very first excursions of the MRU in 1947 was to record a full-length programme on Co. Leitrim. Among those featured was Thomas Moran from near Mohill, an outgoing entertaining man with a lot of songs and stories who was later recorded for the BBC in the 1 950's. On the CD he sings Sheemore Fair near Carrick Town, a local song that praises the beauties of the surrounding landscape. Among those Irish musical families that got an early exposure on radio through the work of the MRU were the Russells of Doolin in West Clare who eventually gained an international reputation for their music. It's been said that there are trad music enthusiasts from other countries "who may know little about Dublin but everything about Doolin"! Packie Russell is heard playing a reel and a jig on the concertina that was recorded on 5th November 1949.

Another such musical family were the Rowsomes of Dublin. Uilleann piper Leo Rowsome, one of the most important figures of the twentieth century in Irish traditional music, broadcast regularly on Radio Eireann as a solo player and as leader of the Leo Rowsome Pipes Quartette. On the CD he plays two reels, The Sligo Maid and Miss McLeod's. Almost all of his broadcasts were live, and these reels were recorded for a music insert for a programme called Music Stand. Among those recorded in the 1950s were Donegal singer Cait Ni Ghallchoir, fiddler Denis Murphy and singer Art O'Keeffe, both from Co. Kerry, Conamara sean-nos singer Sean'ac Dhonncha, and The Tulla
Ceili Band.

Tuning the Radio provides those of us who grew up in the time of those early acetates with nostalgic memories of the wonder of 'steam radio', and for a younger generation a corpus of information and music that "were part of the cultural landscape of Ireland in an earlier era and which contributed so much and so vitally to the music-making and singing of later generations".Aidan O'Hara