Most Popular Articles, Reviews and News of 2021

Christy Moore at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards last month, where he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Photo: Tony Kinlan).

Most Popular Articles, Reviews and News of 2021

The top ten most read opinion pieces, reviews and news items of the year on the Journal of Music.

What is the impact of the pandemic on the music scene? How do we transform the Irish music industry? How can RTÉ restore its leadership role in music? This year’s most read articles focused on these issues and more. The most read reviews covered the New Music Dublin festival, hip hop at the NCH, the Goodman Trio, and Donnacha Dennehy’s new opera among others. Popular news items focused on the RTÉ Folk Awards, the basic income for artists, and supports for the live music industry during the pandemic. And in a year in which the music scene lost a number of significant artists, we published our tributes to Tony MacMahon, Paddy Moloney, Cara O’Sullivan, Seán Corcoran, Joe Burke, Veronica Dunne and more

See below the full list of most read articles, reviews and news of 2021. 

Opinion

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Fontaines D.C.

1. 2021: The Music Boom is Coming
2. We Need to Talk about Creativity in the Post-Pandemic Era
3. How to Transform Ireland’s Music Business
4. We Have Celebrated Ó Riada Enough
5. Why Isn’t Irish Traditional Music ‘Curated’ Too?
6. Music in Ireland has a Glass Ceiling and it’s Called Nationalism
7. No One is Talking About What Musicians Get Paid
8. Ways of Talking and Thinking About Irish Traditional Music
9. How RTÉ Can Restore Its Leadership Role in Music
10. ‘Artists who are at their wits’ end can’t afford another glitzy policy announcement’: Basic Income for Artists Needs More Scrutiny 

Reviews

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Sarah Shine in Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s ‘The First Child’ (Photo: Ste Murray)

1. Exciting Scene Let Down by Stagnant Staging (hip hop and poetry at the NCH)
2. A Modern Tour of Ancient Music (Galway Early Music Festival)
3. Tunes from Famine Times (The Goodman Trio)
4. Is Music Timeless? (Joe Heaney Was a Time Traveller at MusicTown)
5. A European Tour Under Lockdown (Sligo International Chamber Music Festival)
6. Music Worth Making (New Music Dublin)
7. Hollowed Out by Her Past (Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s The First Child)
8. The Weight That Cultural Spaces Hold (In The Echo: Field Recordings from Earlsfort Terrace – Ergodos) 
9. Our Predicament in Sharp Focus (Nick Roth’s Crann)
10. Healing and the Music of Damien Dempsey (Love Yourself Today film review)

News

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Tony MacMahon

1. ‘We have lost the most loved musician’ – Remembering Joe Burke
2. RIP Tony MacMahon
3. RIP Singer and Collector Seán Corcoran
4. RIP Soprano Cara O’Sullivan
5. ‘It’s a macho scene’: Irish Traditional Music Continues to ‘privilege the contribution of men’, says New Research
6. Basic Income Pilot for 2,000 Artists and Arts Workers to Begin in Spring 2022
7. Plaque Unveiled for Uilleann Piper Leo Rowsome
8. 2021 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Award Winners Announced
9. RIP Paddy Moloney
10. ‘Ronnie defined opera in Ireland throughout her long life’: RIP Veronica Dunne

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Published on 15 December 2021

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