Sliabh Luachra: Stan goes online to bring local musicians to a global audience

Live events may be curtailed in the Munster hotbed of traditional music, but Eoin ‘Stan’ O’Sullivan is helping the region's smaller festivals ensure they can still have a presence this year

Mon, 26 Apr, 2021 - 20:30

Pet O’Connell

The Covid-19 pandemic has silenced live music performance and forced festivals online, but out of adversity has come opportunity for Irish traditional music. While the cancellation of Glastonbury, Live at the Marquee, or Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann makes headlines, smaller music festivals have been quietly adapting to their new virtual reality and taking the chance to bring their respective strands of Irish musical heritage to new online audiences.

“Look at what’s around you” has become something of a mantra for Eoin ‘Stan’ O’Sullivan, who as Sliabh Luachra musician in residence is engaged by the county councils of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick to support and promote the region’s traditional music.

This philosophy, which served him well in pre-pandemic attempts to foster an appreciation for the area’s music, particularly among young people, is now being applied in an online context to festivals and concerts, and to the launch of Sliabh Luachra’s own record label.

A series of online festivals, replacing the usual annual gatherings in the likes of Abbeyfeale, Brosna, and Newmarket, will feature newly-recorded performances by local musicians of all ages, turning the spotlight on the handing-down of traditional music from generation to generation.

“I wanted to make a virtue out of the lockdown and to show off the fact that there is such a rich culture of music in the area,” says O’Sullivan.

Across the Cork-Kerry-Limerick hinterland, he said, there are “brilliant musicians in the parishes themselves but they often get overlooked”.

“When you’re running a festival you’ll normally bring someone famous in to headline it and their names will be the big ones on the posters, but people overlook the fact that the vast majority of the musicians who turn up to [these events] are often from the parish.”

Covid-19 travel restrictions provide the perfect opportunity to turn the tables and put the local tradition-bearers centre stage, exposing them to an international online audience among the Irish diaspora and beyond.

Eoin 'Stan' O'Sullivan, Sliabh Luachra musician in residence.

“The online thing is growing so much and it’s a perfect time to show off the fact that there’s such an amount of musicians in the area,” says O’Sullivan. “There are people abroad who won’t get chance to come home, so you’re breaking into new territories online.”

For those living in the area, the goal is for “people to believe in what they have”, he adds.

“That was my mission as musician in residence – to go and shout to people ‘look at what’s around you’. To make kids aware they’re growing up in an area where there’s this massive culture of music.” Hand-in-hand with online festival promotion has been the recording of a video series, which due to the necessities of lockdown has given a welcome platform to solo musicians and intergenerational family groups, also providing an online launch-pad for the Sliabh Luachra record label’s new releases.

The first solo accordion recording of self-composed tunes by Bryan O’Leary, ‘Tranquility in Tureencahill’, was followed last month by a debut concertina EP from Abbeyfeale’s Maura O’Connor, ‘It’s Handed Down’, and an archive collection from the late Kiskeam fiddle player Maurice O’Keeffe.

Supported by Arts Council and Creative Ireland funding and utilising O’Sullivan’s recording experience, further mini albums are planned for release this year.

“The idea is to open the door for projects,” he says. “I have another four or five people who’ve said they’ll do it and I’m hoping it will inspire other people to approach me with ideas.”

At the heart of the recordings, like the videos and festivals, is the symbiotic relationship between older and younger generations of musicians in passing on local tunes and techniques.

“I want to refresh what people think Sliabh Luachra is, because there’s an endless amount of really great musicians here and they all have albums in them but still people only recognise Sliabh Luachra music, in terms of its commercial output, through albums put out in the '60s and '70s,” says O’Sullivan.

“I really want to get away from that - not waving fists at the past - but it [the music] is flourishing. It’s not like it died somewhere along the line - it’s a living thing.

“The whole DNA of traditional music travels because the young people invigorate the older people and they in turn inspire the young people in a beautiful circle and we just want to keep that rolling.”