Note to self: when a journal editor asks you to review a book exceeding nine hundred pages, one which has close to a million words, with articles ranging from brief to lengthy, collectively penned by two hundred and nineteen author contributors, and hundreds of images, consider your options carefully. If that isn’t enough to give you pause, think about the fact that this is a third edition, at least one of which, terrestrial or virtual, sits in countless national and international libraries, and on the bookshelves of most Irish traditional musicians and aficionados. If all of that doesn’t dissuade you from accepting the editor’s invitation, ask yourself does the world really need another review to add to the numerous already published of the newest Companion to Irish Traditional Music (2024) edited by Fintan Vallely. Undeterred, here it is.

The Companion trio (1999, 2011 and now, 2024) spans a period of extraordinary change in Irish traditional music, but simultaneously a time where the stability of the tradition is evident. Not coincidentally, it is also a quarter century in which archive and academic resources for Irish traditional music have burgeoned, as noted by Ciaran Carson in a reflection on the second Companion, which won the 2012 US-based CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2012. The editor’s initial choice in 1999 of ‘companion’ rather than encyclopaedia for the title is significant. One reviewer of the first Companion wrote ‘an encyclopaedia would be four or five times the length’ and instead, the reviewer advocated that the reader consider Vallely’s tome as ‘informative without being opinionated, warm as a friend should be’. That first 1999 edition, published in the afterglow of Riverdance and in the middle of Ireland’s late twentieth century transformation, economically and culturally, provided an abundance of information, becoming in effect a roll call of the traditional music community of practice, both past and present. Much of this was already in disparate sources, but the 1999 Companion functioned as an ambitious landmark collation, responding to the expansion of Irish traditional music globally and nationally. Despite his initial reservations, Vallely recalls that, as Cork University Press suggested, an encyclopaedic structure ‘working in an A-Z format’ was the only effective strategy. Reflecting on the first edition, and application to editions since, he notes ‘the field was simply too vast to do it any other way’.

First edition of the Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999).

Changes and additions
For publishers, sustained demand drives new editions. To date, Companion sales exceed 10,000 copies, a remarkable record considering the publishing environment and the topic. However, the nature of any new edition is that most things actually remain the same from the previous edition. A new edition provides the opportunity to make corrections and, sometimes, there are additions. In the case of the Companion trilogy, the most obvious material content change occurred in the 2011 edition, which was vastly expanded moving much closer to a ‘voluminous encyclopaedia’ as described in a contemporary review by Rónán Galvin. Vallely’s introductions, surprisingly brief in all three editions given the substantiality of the publications, are understandably repetitious too, including in the edition under review here. The new edition does not mirror the content augmentation of the 2011 Companion. With digital, archive and other academic sources made available in the interim, including the online publication of the 2011 Companion in 2013, doing so would be redundant. So, what, if anything, is different in Companion 2024? Doing an entry-by-entry comparison of the new edition with the previous edition(s) is certainly possible, but how useful? Like previous editions, this edition stands on its own merits and like the others, as a reference text in this field of interest, it is unparalleled with few comparators in other folk and traditional musics.

The 2024 Introduction (the first to have helpful subheadings) explicitly identifies some of the changes in the new edition: restructured entries, new additions, and deletions. Among the latter for example, ‘necessarily brief contributions on other “Celtic” countries’ in previous editions, deemed ‘superfluous’ in a review of the original by Ann Buckley, have been abandoned in this latest Companion, ‘as this information is easily obtainable elsewhere’, Vallely writes (p. viii). Use patterns of the Companion, or any encyclopaedia, occur at individual reader level, prompted by that reader’s own interests and motivations. A case in point for this reader is the entry on Boston. It has increased in length, with a welcome reflection on Séamus Connolly’s legacy in Boston now included (Connolly also gets his own separate entry), but in the revised 2024 entry, other individual names of musicians and organisers from the previous edition were excised, for instance, Larry Reynolds, who warrants retention in any Boston entry. Identifying these micro-editorial changes, however, should only be considered in the context of what must have been thousands of editorial decisions to be taken, an unenviable task and one that unavoidably will yield joy and frustration for any given reader. The Index also fell afoul of rationalisation and space requirements in this edition, which is mildly irritating, but the accompanying comitm.com website assures that a full index will follow online.

Second edition of the Companion to Irish Traditional Music (2011). 

Fleadh Cheoil detail
Other new inclusions in the third edition are noteworthy and a number are identified as such in the Introduction. Fintan Farrell’s ‘immense privately compiled database of fleadh statistics’ (p. 183) was made accessible for this edition and the resulting compressed survey of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann winner lists is tantalising in detail (you can find it under ‘competition’). Acknowledging the difficulty in accuracy posed by ‘discrepancies in how competitor names are recorded’, ‘variation in grading systems’, and ‘missing and/or corrupted data’ (p. 184), nonetheless the dense graphics published offer statistical analysis and afford initial reflections on ‘the uptake transmission and growth of individual instrumental traditions in Ireland since 1951’ (p. 184). It makes for fascinating reading and regional representation is one of two organising principles in the analysis. Some conclusions are entirely predictable: Clare céilí bands have won 18% of all first place prizes up to 2023; others less obviously so: 14% of senior accordion winners (1st, 2nd and 3rd place) are identified as regionally from the UK. This is raw number analysis, bringing with it any number of additional caveats. For example, regional/county affiliation in a Fleadh winner list cannot always assume where that musician learned their music or to where they align in musical style (this is further complicated in ensemble categories). A named data set of all 1,814 first place winners at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann from 1951 to 2023 is appended at the end of Companion 2024, for those who are interested.

Related to the above, the second important organising principle in the Fleadh winners’ analysis is gender. This sits in the broader context of Vallely’s assertion in the Introduction that ‘the issue of male/female gender balance is more extensively explored’ in this new edition (p. viii). Certainly, it is explored more extensively than in previous editions, but that’s a relative comparison. There is an expanded entry on ‘gender’ that now includes a new (one sentence) introduction preceding facsimile content from the 2011 Companion organised under the subheadings, ‘gender in Irish traditional music’, ‘gender and instrument’ and the only subheading carried over from 2011, ‘legislation’. Material in a final subsection added, titled ‘gender and canon’, is new for the 2024 Companion. Issues of canon and canon-making processes, while long debated in other areas of cultural production and practice, have only recently been voiced in Irish traditional music quarters. Inclusion here reflects contemporary concerns. As was the case in the previous edition, in a twist of alphabetical coincidence, the next entry directly after ‘gender’ is ‘gentlemen pipers’. That might have usefully been situated as a subsection of ‘gender’.

FairPlé and Mise Fosta
FairPlé, the organisation founded in 2018 with a remit to advance gender balance in ‘the production, performance, promotion and development of Irish traditional and folk music’ (p. 301), also has its own new entry. The extent of FairPlé’s work is difficult to cover within the confines of the word count, but the article deftly summarises actions and outputs to date, and gives recognition to Mise Fosta, its sister initiative. Mise Fosta, an organisation that exposed ‘overt and casual sexual abuse’ in the world of Irish traditional music is also mentioned in another new entry, ‘Women in Irish traditional music’ (p. 880). Written by the editor, Vallely describes Mise Fosta as ‘the Irish expression of the American MeToo movement’ and notes that ‘among musicians, the subject can be divisive’, an understatement given some of the responses on social media at the time. Previous material from the 2011 ‘gender’ entry migrates here, and is bolstered by additional analysis drawn from the Fleadh winner lists unearthed since. Broad brush strokes, the only possibility in this model of publication, conclude that there is ‘a levelling out of music opportunity and talent across the genders’ (p. 881). One might suggest it is opportunity rather than talent that was ever the problem. The analysis of gender here and of the regional representation in Fleadh results does not account for participation rates in either category, which when further investigated will give much more nuanced understanding of both from this worthy start. There’s a wealth of material yet to be mined in future research building on adjacent work in the area of gender and also media representation (which is not thematically distinct in any of the above entries).

It would be remiss not to mention key contributors specifically named by Vallely for their ‘graft’: Liz Doherty, Terry Moylan, Rebecca Draisey Collishaw, Martin Dowling, Catherine Foley, Verena Commins, Hammy Hamilton, Niall Keegan, Daithí Kearney, Paula Carroll, Don Meade and Sara Lanier. And not to forget the various additional materials available, such as the Compánach audio-visual concert, available with accompanying 2-CD album digital download included in the book purchase. A review in the very first issue of the Journal of Music in Ireland (in 2000) praised Cork University Press for its commitment to publishing the first Companion, encouraging the press to ‘produce even more books written by Irish traditional musicians’. The publisher continues to demonstrate that commitment in this, the third edition.

In 1999 in the Irish Times, Douglas Sealy expressed the hope that the Companion’s publication would ‘bring the literature of traditional music into the more public gaze’. What is indisputable is that the Companion to Irish Traditional Music has become as essential to the Irish traditional community of practice as one of the other most frequently owned traditional music texts, Francis O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland (1907). Intra-community, both are referred to in shorthand (O’Neill’s and the Companion), confirming status and familiarity. One final note: average house prices in Ireland from 1999 to 2024 almost tripled (and you get less square footage in the bargain); the newest Companion to Irish Traditional Music, twice the size of the 1999 edition, with twice the number of contributors, is less than double the original price. For anyone with a professional or passing interest in Irish traditional music, it’s well worth it.

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music (Third Edition) edited by Fintan Vallely is published by Cork University Press. Visit www.corkuniversitypress.com.

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References
Buckley, Ann, ‘The Companion to Irish Traditional Music’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 31,  pp. 165–9.
Carson, Ciaran, ‘Big Book, Small Back Room’, The Journal of Music, 29 February 2012. https://journalofmusic.com/criticism/big-book-small-back-room.
Galvin, Rónán, ‘Companion to Irish Traditional Music (second edition)’, Béaloideas, Vol. 80, pp. 226–9.
Quinn, Toner, ‘The Companion to Irish Traditional Music – edited by Fintan Vallely’, The Journal of Music in Ireland, Vol. 1 No. 1, p. 19. 
Sealy, Douglas, ‘Out from faith-healing, calligraphy and Celtic crosses’, The Irish Times, 12 June 1999. 
Vallely, Fintan, ‘The Making of a Lifelong Companion: An Editor’s Memoir’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 141–52.
Winter, Eric, ‘The Companion to Irish Traditional Music’, Reference Reviews, Vol. 14 No. 7, p. 40.