Joe Heaney is a widely renowned sean-nós singer who was born in raised in Connemara, a region in County Galway. His album, titled “’Say a Song’: Joe Heaney in the Pacific Northwest,” is composed of nineteen songs written in either English or Irish and performed by Joe Heaney. This music would fall under the genre of traditional Irish music or, more specifically, sean-nós singing. Upon an initial listen through of this album, it is easy to find the unrefined or raw quality of the music, both in its performance and its recording, to be distracting. However, once the listener becomes comfortable with the casual but composed manner in which the music is performed, they can begin to uncover details in the songs which had gone unnoticed before. These details, such as Joe Heaney’s utilization of ornamentation to build up to and sustain emotional peaks, lead to a great admiration for the authenticity and individual skill with which the music is performed. Joe Heaney, or Seo
A collection of various papers written by Nicholas Harding Bradley on a variety of topics within Irish traditional music, history, and literature.