Cork's Greatest Records: Conal Ó Gráda and his influential 1990 album, The Top of Coom
Conal Ó Gráda recorded The Top of Coom over five days at Tadhg Kelleher’s Sulán Studios in Baile Mhúirne.
Irish traditional musicians take many winding roads to learning, but picking up tunes from a whistle-player who is steering a car with his elbows is a route less travelled now than it might have been in the 1970s.
To what extent the multi-tasking Clare musician Séamus Mac Mathúna influenced the percussive, driving rhythms that characterise Conal Ó Gráda’s high-octane flute-playing is a subject for debate. But the tune he taught the 14-year-old while driving to Cúil Aodha would later make an appearance on Ó Gráda’s 1990 album The Top of Coom.
