Cork University Press has announced that a major new book on Fleadh Cheoil na Éireann will be published this autumn.

Heading to the Fleadh – Festival, cultural revival and Irish traditional music 1951–1969 by Méabh Ní Fhuartháin of the University of Galway is the first in-depth academic study of the festival.

The inaugural Fleadh was organised by the newly formed Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann in Mullingar in 1951 and was structured as a competition-festival. Over the following decades, it became a key driver in the revival of Irish traditional music.

Using a combination of fieldwork, archive research, and theoretical frameworks of festival and revival, Heading to the Fleadh explores the Fleadh Cheoil during its first two decades, from 1951 to 1969. 


According to the book description, ‘Concerts, competition and its adjudication, céilithe and sessions formed the bedrock of that essential festival life, in a delicate and sometimes fraught balance of formal and informal Fleadh objects ….’ The description adds:

During the 1960s, tensions arose when (it was believed) the common interest of Irish traditional music was not shared by all Fleadh goers, challenging the authority of the Fleadh structure and Comhaltas in the process.

The book presents a critical study of the Fleadh as a cultural phenomenon and will be of interest to those with an interest in Irish musical, social and cultural history.

Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin is Head of Irish Studies at the University of Galway’s Centre for Irish Studies. She has contributed to numerous journals and served as Popular Music subject editor for the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2012). She also co-edited special issues of Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies (2019) and Ethnomusicology Ireland (2021), focusing on women and traditional/folk music.

Heading to the Fleadh – Festival, cultural revival and Irish traditional music 1951–1969 is priced at €49/£45/$55 and available to order from www.corkuniversitypress.com.

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