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Co-Production Proposal from York Films of England:
THE MAN
WHO SAVED
IRISH MUSIC 1 x 52’
Synopsis:
A charming and star-studded biography - shot in Ireland and the US - on Ciarán
Mac Mathúna, the quiet man from Limerick who snatched Irish music
from extinction and nursed it into the vigorous tradition that has swept
the world.
THE MAN WHO SAVED IRISH MUSIC interweaves biography with tributes,
anecdotes and performances from a raft of stars including the Corrs, the
Pogues, Van Morrison, U2, the Dubliners and the global phenomenon of Riverdance.
THE MAN WHO SAVED IRISH MUSIC is the story of Ciarán
Mac Mathúna - scholar, broadcaster, raconteur. From the 1950s,
Mac Mathúna travelled Ireland recording the music, dance and stories
of a folk tradition that had all but died. He delivered an international
treasure to the 21st Century.
Today he’s the toast of the good and the great: Sinead O’Connor, Bob Geldorf,
Moya Doherty of Riverdance, Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains, Guinness heir
Garech de Bruin, Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney and John Hume and Ireland’s
President Mary McAleese. Were it not for Mac Mathúna, world
music would be so much the poorer.
From Bantry to Broadway, from ceilidhs to concerts, THE MAN WHO SAVED
IRISH MUSIC is a celebration. Interweaving music and dance, it
retraces Mac Mathúna’s collecting missions through the glories of
the Irish countryside to some of the most remote communities in Western Europe
- and to the Irish of the USA.
THE MAN WHO SAVED IRISH MUSIC is a glorious yarn - how the passion
and diligence of one man saved a culture. Today, in his late seventies,
Mac Mathúna is still dedicated to his mission. His traditional
music show on Irish radio has become a national institution. But he’s
no narrow purist - the charismatic Mac Mathúna lauds and embraces
the flood of Irish talent that has burst upon the world.
Delivery: February 1, 2004 -
in time for global TV airing on St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2004
The Irish Times on Ciarán Mac Mathúna:
“The vowels that seep gently from the radio are as quintessentially Sunday
morning in Ireland as church bells, lie-ins and old-fashioned fried breakfasts.
The voice of Ciarán Mac Mathúna has become part of the nation’s
Sunday, season by season; the chilly dark sabbath mornings of winter
are no more inappropriate occasions for his soft resonances than bright summer
Sundays when the sun has been up for hours. Whatever the weather, when
you hear that voice, it is Sunday; more importantly, it is Sunday in
Ireland.”
Outline:
THE MAN WHO SAVED IRISH MUSIC is targetted squarely at the international
market - not least the USA, with its vast Irish constituency. The tone
is both tender and celebratory. It reflects the inherited repression
of the the ‘fifties when the national mood was: if it’s Irish it’s
not much good. Emigration continued apace. Irish culture, long
downtrodden and anglicised, was a whisper. Disapproving of unsupervised
jollity between the sexes, even the Catholic Church discouraged indigenous
music and dancing. People carried fiddles under their coats to secret
ceilidhs in private homes. Lookouts watched for the priest.
Enter Ciarán Mac Mathúna. In 1954, charged by the national
broadcaster Radio Eireann with hosting a radio series on traditional music,
Mac Mathúna realised he would run out of material within three weeks
- so little Irish music had been commercially recorded. His only option
was to hit the road to find and record the music himself. Easier said
than done. People were shy of new-fangled recording apparatus - and
much of remote Ireland had no electricity. Undaunted, Mac Mathúna
carried batteries. And his kind and gentle manner coaxed the most reluctant
people to the microphone. Little by little, he helped restore Ireland’s
cultural self-confidence.
His work was labour of love. He was recording people - who otherwise
would have never been heard - in their homes, their pubs, their village halls.
These were not performers. Their songs and stories formed part of their
private lives. There were moments of stunning brilliance and embarrassing
awfulness, all recorded for posterity - fiddlers, box players (a type of
concertina), step-dancers, uilllean players (a warpipe, like a bagpipe),
sean-nos singers (unaccompanied) and story tellers. Year by year, Mac
Mathúna was uncovering Irishness - Catholic and Protestant, in the
Irish language and in the most impenetrable dialects of English. Through
his weekly broadcasts, he nurtured a burgeoning richness.
He sought Irishness abroad - and found it in many guises. In New York,
Boston and Chicago he discovered groups of exiles playing the traditional
airs of Ireland. He recorded them. To his utter delight, he found
time-capsules of Irish culture - 19th century music, song and dance preserved
as though the immigrant descendants had disembarked yesterday. Everywhere
in America were the echoes of Ireland - from the Appalachians to the Deep
South. His protege, the blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, claimed a clear
connection between Irish music and the blues. “There’s not much difference
between an Irish lament and a bluesman wailing out his grief,” he said.
“The link is in the tears of each tradition.”
Some two-thousand tapes are the reward of Mac Mathúna’s epic patience
and ceaseless travelling - thousands of songs, memories and tales that reach
back through the mists of time. The living body of Irish music - the
richest in Western Europe - owes so much of its vibrancy, indeed its very
survival to Ciarán Mac Mathúna. In America, he discovered
the Clancy Brothers, “broths of boys” who’d left the old country to start
their singing career. Mac Mathúna brought them home to fame
and fortune. For millions - Irish and foreigners alike - the Clancy
Brothers were the first step into a love of traditional music.
While Mac Mathúna’s radio and television programmes stuck strictly
to their traditional remit, the genie was out of the bottle. Irish
music was resurrected and in rude health. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy
Makem were followed by the Dubliners, the Chieftains, Van Morrison, U2, the
Corrs, the Pogues and Sinead O’Connor. Irish music influenced Kate
Bush, Alan Stivell, even Ron Wood and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones.
Riverdance became the global music-and-dance phenomenon of the 1990s.
And Mac Mathúna, impatient of stuffy official bodies that seek to
preserve the “purity” of traditional music, delights in the success,
globalisation and evolution of Irish music.
And Ireland delights in Mac Mathúna. In a country known for
its harsh handling of reputations, he enjoys a popularity approaching adoration.
Soft-spoken, self-effacing, Mac Mathúna concludes: “I can’t dance,
I can’t sing, I can’t play an instrument. All I can do is promote the
tradition.” Performers, politicians, poets and pundits - all mentioned
above - are slated to contribute to the programme. And with the performers
comes their dance and music - not least the songs of Dolly McMahon, Mac Mathúna’s
wife and a popular traditional singer. Additionally, with the participation
of Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), the documetary will draw on RTE’s incomparable
archive - including footage of Mac Mathúna’s travels in the ‘fifties.
THE MAN WHO SAVED IRISH MUSIC will appeal equally to eye and
ear. From the cottages and bars of south-west Ireland to the celtic
tiger chic of 21st century Dublin, Mac Mathúna will retrace his travels
- laced throughout with the music and dance he’s fostered so lovingly.
He’ll be at gaelic country festivals, public house ceilidhs, on-stage with
Riverdance. In America, where he was regularly mistaken for the late
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, Mac Mathúna
will savour his status as Irish folk hero. His avuncular mien, his
talent for talk and his nose for excellence guarantee compelling television,
along with the pithy contributions of friends, colleagues, performers and
stars.
Accompany Ciarán Mac Mathúna to the most remote pub in Ireland
- and he’ll be greeted as a dear old friend. The wonder is that, till
now, no one has documented his life and times.
Visual Style:
The documentary is primarily for television. The hero is Ciarán
Mac Mathúna. The setting is traditional Irish music and its
evolution to today. The look is alternately lyrical and pacey.
The camera will sensitively infiltrate Mac Mathúna’s life - at the
studio microphone, browsing libraries, retracing his travels in the south
and the west, at festivals in Ireland and the USA, at home with his family,
yarning in country bars, hob-nobbing with the Friday night crowd at Dublin’s
Shelbourne Hotel, feted in Boston and the Appalachians, on stage with Riverdance.
Producer/writer David Taylor, who has developed an excellent rapport with
Mac Mathúna, will coax from him the acute obsevations and verbal gems
we know he can deliver - a time-consuming process, for the great man does
everything at his own pace. The camera will caress those comfortable
features in a variety of conversational locations.
The interviews and performances of contributors will be carefully integrated.
Song and dance, whether specially shot or culled from archives, will be meticulously
selected. Mac Mathúna himself will be key to much of this production
process.
In short, The Man Who Saved Irish Music will be a cascade of visual splendour
- from beautifully composed sequences in rural Ireland to the cut-and-thrust
of stage performance. The pace will be businesslike, yet warm.
The narrator will be Irish (with no on-screen host and the voice/s of off-screen
interviewers eliminated) - ideal for international distribution.
Production Company:
York Films Limited,
1 Chapel Court, Borough High Street,
London SE1 1HH, United Kingdom
Tel +44 20 7403 2721
Fax +44 20 7403 3494
Contact: DAVID TAYLOR
Email: david@yorkfilms.com
Production Team:
Writer/Producer/
Executive Producer: DAVID TAYLOR
Director: MARTYN
IVES
Assistant Producer: ANDREA BOSCAN
Researcher: MUIREANN
DE BARRA
Creative Consultant LEO ENRIGHT
Budget: £200,000 (Details on request)
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