Book

On February 18th 2006 The James Tourish Collection, was passed on to me by my great grand-uncle Bernard Tourish. He inherited the collection by accident when he moved into the residence of his late brother John Tourish after the latter’s death in June 1998. The collection had remained in a box in his late brother’s bedroom untouched since it had been given to him by Kathleen Elizabeth Winnifred Tourish in 1951 before her emigration to the USA. Before Kathleen came into possession of it, it was used and possibly contributed to by George Tourish, a ‘fiddle player’ and composer whose signature appears in the collection. Prior to George Tourish, it is more than likely that it was in the possession of James Tourish himself as he and George were only one or two generations apart and had the fiddle as a common interest.

While the collection as a whole consists of 378 tunes, spread over four main handwritten manuscript books, the book that I’m interested in publishing as volume 1 is the oldest of the manuscripts and dating between 1896 and 1901, contains 133 tunes.

What is significant about this collection of music is the fact that during the period in which it was written, it wasn’t published. This is vital to the integrity of the work because all of the well known early 20th century collections were actually much larger than what was published under their titles. This was because anything which was not deemed to be Irish in origin was omitted, primarily because of the new sense of identity the Irish had at the beginning of the last century and the cultural context that surrounded it. Therefore, with the James Tourish Collection, one gets the clearest representation of what actually went on in the rural folk music landscape of late 19th century Ireland, and to that extent, there are many surprises.

Volume one of the collection is currently being worked on and it is hoped will be launched sometime in Feburary. Check the News section of the website regularly for updates on its progress.