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The grand old icon of the style is John Doherty (1895-1980). He was a travelling tinsmith, and made all sorts of household items. He travelled around Donegal selling his wares and in that way spread his tunes and style through the county. For a description of his style, see my review of The Floating Bow.
Though his recordings can be difficult to track down if you don't know where to find them, in fact they are all, or almost all, still available. In a previous version of this page, I said the only easily available recording was Bundle and Go -- and while that may still be the cheapest and a great recording, it is also, in my opinion, clearly the worst of the John Doherty recordings available. In my opinion, the best is the self-titled CCE recording, closely followed by The Star of Donegal and Pedlar's Pack on Folktracks; The Floating Bow is also wonderful.
Some Irish musicians have the mistaken impression that John Doherty's style of playing is, somehow, the standard or most representative of Donegal styles. This is simply not so. It is not even representative of the Doherty family style. It is said that his brother Mickey's style is more in keeping with the style that characterized the Doherty family; Mickey's style was more swingy or danceable than John's, and Mickey employed more rolls mixed in with his bowed triplets, whereas John used triplets and hardly any rolls. Some people choose favorites, John or Mickey; there was a friendly, brotherly rivalry between them. Sadly, Mickey was not recorded nearly as much as John.
Some of the greatest Donegal fiddlers, such as Neillidh Boyle, Frank Cassidy, and Francie Byrne, had styles quite different from the Dohertys. My own opinion is that a large part of the reason why John Doherty is as famous as he is, whereas fiddlers who were his equals or almost his equals were (or are) not, is simply the fact that those other fiddlers made very few recordings -- or none at all -- and John Doherty made seven excellent traditional records (including his latest CDs). If, for example, the tracks from Vincent Campbell and James Byrne on The Brass Fiddle show them to be, in most respects, John Doherty's equal, and the only reason they are not as well known is simply that they have not recorded as much!
The same can be said of Neillidh Boyle (1889-1961), who deserves a short discussion. Only one tape is still available from him (which for better or worse consists as much of talk and singing as it does of fiddling), though he made some 78's. His playing was very fast, highly ornamented, with more of a slurring, swinging bowing style than some other Donegal fiddlers. But his style was definitely a Donegal style and not southern-sounding, I think. On fast tunes, overall his style was very exciting, almost frantic at times; though he played three or four slow airs on the above-mentioned tape, called The Moving Clouds. He had very strong opinions about how to play, and about the state of Irish music.
It's hard to say what Boyle would say about the state of Donegal fiddling today, but being the curmudgeon that he was, he probably wouldn't like it. That is not my (or many others') opinion; I think the young generation has easily as much talent as older generations. The only difference that appears to my ears, at least, is that the playing of the older generation, the likes of the Dohertys, Con Cassidy, Francie Byrne, and all the rest, was more raw and unpolished, and often with more seeming depth. But even that is a generalization with exceptions (e.g., the case of Vincent Campbell, if he can be counted in the "younger generation"!).
What follows is my own list of Donegal fiddlers. Most who know about these things would agree that these are all really quite excellent fiddlers in the Donegal tradition. It is not offered as a "hall of fame" or anything like that.
In older generations:
In more recent generations:
Again, these lists are certainly incomplete.
For much more on all of the above, see the excellent book by Caoimhín MacAoidh, Between the Jigs and the Reels: The Donegal Fiddle Tradition, in which the author devotes no fewer than 189 pages to detailing the histories and styles of dozens and dozens of different Donegal fiddlers. It covers various aspects of the tradition -- its history, influences, folklore, fiddle collections, dancing, and the fiddlers themselves. It is published by Drumlin Publications (Nure, Manohamilton, Co. Leitrim, Ireland) and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the tradition; ordering information is available here.
Here's another personal list. Be forewarned: most of these are just plain unaccompanied fiddle.
Again, this is an incomplete and personal list, though I have no doubt that most Donegal fiddlers would agree that every recording listed is excellent. And again, a more complete discography can be found in the appendix to Mac Aoidh's Between the Jigs and the Reels -- indispensible for further searching.
As to where to find this music: please see my links page for a few suggestions, and I would call particular attention to Ulstersongs if you are interested in hard-to-find classic Donegal fiddling. This page (which I wrote) lists Ulstersongs' available fiddle recordings and has extensive track listings.
Here is a slightly outdated discography of Donegal fiddle music. This is copied from the Appendix to Mac Aoidh's book, with his permission (in fact, with his request that I add it to this site) -- together with additions of more recent recordings.
Here are a bunch of reviews of Donegal fiddle recordings, by myself and some other folks. Some of these releases are truly excellent introductions to the music.
There are only a few good sources of written-out Donegal tunes. The best-known is The Northern Fiddler by Allen Feldman and Eamonn O'Doherty, an American and an Irishman who went to Donegal and Tyrone in the 70's to record some old fiddlers. It is in my opinion an excellent source of both information about the Donegal fiddle tradition and personalities (it is not just a tunebook, as Feldman himself points out), and the tunes themselves. The tunes are transcribed from field recordings; since John Doherty's Bundle and Go is taken from these field recordings, if one has both the book and that recording, the two together serve as a nice little Doherty tutor. Unfortunately the book is out of print and hard to get. It has been controversial. Here's a mini-site about The Northern Fiddler.
Another excellent source is the tunebooks used by the Donegal Fiddlers' Summer School, An Ceol. As in The Northern Fiddler, the tunes are transcriptions of playing -- but from a wider variety of Donegal sources, not as much ornamentation noted, with most of the tunes' common names given, and with notes about each tune. I have reviewed this excellent set of tunebooks separately. Ordering information is available on this page from Cairdeas na bhFidléirí.
The folks at "Roger Millington Publishing have finally finished the interesting project of compiling "a bunch of tunes that Packie Manus Byrne taped for me years back on the whistle. ... The tunes are mostly totally unknown and the majority seem to be jigs and highlands that Packie remembers being played in his home townland in the 1920s. Most of them are charming and many are real gems." The book is called A Dossan of Heather and has been published by the ubiquitous Mel Bay. Roger Millington Publishing also has some other books from Packie which I found very enjoyable. Here is a brief review of Packie's Recollections of a Donegal Man.
Quite a few Donegal tunes can be found in Bernie Stocks' The Microphone's Rambles, an online set of tutor books with many tunes transcribed from Tommy Peoples, James Byrne, and other northern fiddlers. I am generally impressed with the effort and care Bernie put into his tunebooks. For the relevant software and other tunebooks, see the abc home page.
All the other sources are weaker in Donegal material:
I have posted some of my transcriptions of Donegal tunes (or Donegal fiddlers' performances of Irish tunes): most recent additions include a jig and a reel (all six times through a two part tune, allegedly "The Ballykett," transcribed) from Dermot McLaughlin. These are in abc format. If you would like more of the same, consider sending me some archive, field, session, and radio recordings of Donegal fiddle music. Contact me at lsanger at nupedia dot com. I might be able to return the favor, in spite of the fact that it's been so long since I've been to Donegal!
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