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Life
1930- ; b. Derry, ed. CBS, St Columb’s College, Derry, and QUB; lecturer in electrical engineering, UCC; member of Na Filí, an Irish traditional music trio; taught uileann pipes and worked as RTE radio presenter; issued Home to Derry (1985); also issued Traditional Music in Ireland (1978), a study; and A Lifetime of Notes (1966); and compiled Traditional Slow Airs ofIreland (1996). ORM
Works
Home to Derry (1985), autobiography; Dornán Dánta (BAC: Coiscéim 2004), 48pp., poems; also Traditional Music in Ireland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1978); A Lifetime of Notes (London: Collins Press 1966), 128pp.; ed., Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland (Ossian Books 1996), 102pp. [with 2 cassette tapes].
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Quotations
Trad. music: ‘For me, traditional music is so much more than the sum total of all the techniques, it involves the whole person and the complete situation’; who is to judge ‘what is basic to the tradition and therefore worth preserving, and what is merely of secondary importance?’ (Traditional Music, p.ix; cited in Gerry Smyth, ‘Amateurs and Textperts, Studying Irish Traditional Music’, in Irish Studies Review (Autumn 1995), pp.2-10; p.4, 8, &c. Smyth concludes that ‘the freedom Ó Canainn offers is not freedom at all, and far from a dialectical exchange, his model of the discourse represents an aggressive imposition of the past onto the present, and an attempt to restrict the possibilities of the music’ (p.4).
References
Frank Ormsby, ed., Northern Windows: An Anthology Of Ulster Autobiography (Blackstaff 1987), extract from Home to Derry (1985), pp.184-94.
Greagóir Ó Duill, Filíocht Uladh 1960-1985 (1986), gives “Ocras”, poem. Se bibl., Home to Derry (1986 [2n edn.]), úrscéal [novel]; no poetry collections noted.
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