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World On Your Street: The Global Music Challenge
Padraigin Ni Uallachain
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Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!


Musician: Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin

Location: N.Ireland

Instruments: voice

Music: sean nos / Irish folk

HOW I CAME TO THIS MUSICÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýWHERE I PLAYÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýA FAVOURITE SONG Click here for Hande Domac's storyClick here for Mosi Conde's storyClick here for Rachel McLeod's story


Padraigin performed as part of Radio 3's World Music Day on 1st January 2003

ListenÌýÌýListen (19'48) to Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and Len Graham perform live from Belfast for Radio 3's World Music Day, introduced by Lucy Duran, Andrew McGregor and Dj Ritu.

ListenÌýÌýListen (4'34) to 'Is Fada an Lá' from the album, An DealgÓir (Gael Linn, 2002) sung by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and accompanied by Pat Crowley on piano

ListenÌýÌýListen (4'32) to 'Tá 'na Lá', from the album, An Dealg Óir (Gael Linn, 2002) sung by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and accompanied by Laoise Kelly on harp, Liam Ó Maonlaí on bodhrán and Steve Cooney on guitar.


'What draws me is the emotion of music and the feeling that's conveyed through performance.'

How I came to this music:

I've been singing all my life. My father, Pádraig Ó Uallacháin, was a renowned sean-nos singer. Sean-nos means 'old-style'. Some of the songs are unaccompanied, others are performed to harp or piano accompaniment, consistent with the way the songs originally evolved with na filí or poets and wandering musicians.

An Dealg Oir We spoke Irish as a family even though we grew up in English speaking areas in the Republic of Ireland. We were always different because of the Irish. I never listened to Radio Luxembourg or pop music. It was always traditional music which was performed at home or at parties. I remember hearing an old herring boat lament, 'Badaí na Scadáin', when I was about 7 years old and being deeply impressed by the power of song then.

Church music, primarily the Latin form, has also influenced my style, not least after years spent in a convent boarding school where I comforted myself in the corner of the chapel with the beautiful plain chant.

I've always been excited by melodic song but I'm no purist. What draws me is the emotion of music and the feeling that's conveyed through performance. That's why I work with people like Palle Mikkelborg, the Danish trumpeter/composer who weaves what I do into his music but we don't fuse, rather we reflect the varying patterns of our respective musical journeys in our performances. The integrity of the song is always central as is also the case with Steve Cooney who produced my last album.

The social context of a song is as important to me as the actual words and music. With the death of the Irish language came the loss of our collective memory yet that memory lives on through the oral tradition. I felt a responsibility to enliven the memory of those who sang thse songs in the past and to pass on the rich dúchas or heritage. I've just completed a book on my research, Songs of a Hidden Ulster, (Four Courts Press, 2002). Bringing together the work of earlier song writers and collectors like Larry Murray and John Hannon, it's the first major study in English of the south-east Ulster Gaelic song tradition. The album, An Dealg Óir, is a selection of these songs.

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