Connie and Diarmuid ensure Múscraí makes its mark in TG4 Gradam Ceoil awards

Both natives of the Múscraí Gaeltacht are set to play at the upcoming awards show at the National Concert Hall

Tue, 29 Mar, 2022 - 09:10

Pet O’Connell

Half a century in experience but less than 10 miles in distance divide Cill na Martra composer and fiddle player Connie O’Connell and Cúil Aodha’s rising accordion and melodeon star Diarmuid Ó Meachair.

This year’s winners of TG4’s Gradam Ceoil awards for composer and young musician of the year respectively, both are Múscraí Gaeltacht natives who have drawn from the well of local tradition and looked west for musical inspiration.

Connie’s Bóithrín na Smaointe collection of 69 traditional compositions, a UCC online archive available free of charge, pays musical homage to his homeplace with tunes honouring the Toon Valley, Con Lynch’s Bridge, and Ard a Bhóna hill.

Forty years a university tutor, Connie himself was largely self-taught, his first influences coming from home where his mother played melodeon, his aunt bought him his first fiddle, and he picked up tunes by ear from the radio.

Heading west to Kerry, he sought out Sliabh Luachra masters including fiddle player Denis Murphy, who after Connie landed at his house in Lisheen in 1967 forecast: “I’m telling you that Connell is good, he’ll be heard of yet.” Murphy’s words were indeed prescient, Connie long since “heard of” and his Sliabh Luachra mastery widely acknowledged.

A composer who “could be outside in the yard and a bar of a tune would come into my head and I’d say ‘that’s a nice start for a tune’ and I’d work around it,” he said the process is born “out of curiosity to see where the tune would finish up” and comes simply from “the love of the music”.

Describing the Gradam Ceoil as “the Rolls Royce of awards”, he stressed: “I didn’t write even one tune for to get recognition or the purpose of getting awards and I never expected them.”

News of a gradam also came unexpectedly to Diarmuid Ó Meachair, while in London to play with musical contemporaries of one of his accordion heroes, the late Beara virtuoso Finbarr Dwyer. “I got the phonecall and it was a bit surreal. I didn’t know what to say,” said Diarmuid. “It’s amazing. To share the stage with people I’ve looked up to that have really set a high standard in the tradition and getting the chance to play in the National Concert Hall, I’m very honoured.”

Releasing recordings on YouTube during the pandemic allowed Diarmuid to connect with “the older generation that knew Finbarr. I play their music and they like to hear it, and they’ve gotten in touch, which is nice, especially over in London”.

Long before his attention turned to the West Cork maestro, those influencing Diarmuid’s playing included teachers Henry Cronin, Mary Tisdall, and Richard Lucey, and musicians of his own family.

His aunt Eibhlín Ní Riordáin, grandfather Tadhg Ó Riordáin, and great-grandfather Neilus Ó Muirthile all played accordion, his father Fiontán recording a mandolin and song album. “At home my two brothers, one plays the flute and the other plays the uilleann pipes, and my two sisters play the fiddle so I was always learning the tunes they were learning,” said Diarmuid, who has an all-Ireland melodeon title and Oireachtas sean-nós singing medals to his name.

“My parents would be very influential in terms of their taste in music. And if I was learning a tune when I was younger they put an emphasis on playing the tune right. If you were going to play the tune you wouldn’t leave notes out, the same as if you were singing a sean-nós song you emphasise every sound in every word - if you leave out a word you’re missing part of the story. I approach tunes the same way.”

The means of widening his music scope was also found close to home at an early age. “I remember winning an MP3 player from a local summer camp and any music we had on the computer I just put it on it and when we went on holidays, driving to France, the whole way down the family could hear through my earphones Joe Cooley and Jackie Daly.”

While Corkmen Daly and Dwyer became his “two main influences on the accordion”, along with Johnny Connolly on melodeon, by the time he was studying to become a teacher his tastes extended to early 20th century recordings of PJ Conlon and Bill Sullivan.

Diarmuid Ó Meachair: young musician of the year.

Their tunes will be in the mix next month when, along with collecting a gradam, Diarmuid records his first accordion and melodeon album for Raelach Records, with Paddy McEvoy (piano) and Ruairí McGorman (bouzouki). With another album planned, exploring techniques of John J Kimmel and Quebec musicians, Diarmuid’s style is one “you can’t label”, he said.

“My roots are here in Cúil Aodha in the style of West Cork but I’ve definitely looked elsewhere.”