We are now delighted to announce that the Inishowen Song Project is live!
Sponsored by Inishowen Development Partnership, this ground breaking project is a collaboration between the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle (ITSC) and the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in Dublin, to host recordings, videos, photographs & song lyrics, collected in Inishowen, on the Archive’s website. This state-of-the-art digital facility provides local, national and international access to Inishowen song material in a professional archival and web-based environment.
The first publishing of local songs was done in 1985 – My parents reared me tenderly – songs collected by Jimmy McBride & Jim MacFarland. We have received permission from both collectors to digitally republish this book as part of this ITSC/ITMA project. Web visitors can hear a digitally remastered recording of the song, view the words from the original book and see photographs & videos of the singers. Also included are a selection of contemporary recordings made by ITMA at the annual Inishowen International Folk Song & Ballad Seminar.
We intend to follow this first tranche with other material collected by Jimmy McBride and other collectors in Inishowen. As ITMA has attended the Festival since 2007, recording contemporary singers, a selection of modern recordings has also been included. This project has created the most comprehensive database available of digital material relating to the song tradition of Inishowen.
The material also sits in the European Digital Library – www.europeana.org a project funded by the European Commission to explore the digital resources of Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.
Nicholas Carolan, Director of ITMA, formally launched the project along with Anthony Duggan, Chairman of IDP, at the opening of the 2012 Festival.
If you have recordings, photographs or videos of Inishowen singers which you would like to include in this project, we would love to hear from you.
