Collection of the late Derry piper Tomas Ó Canainn donated to Irish Traditional Music Archive

Fifteen boxes of personal effects have been transferred from the Ó Canainn house in Glanmire in Cork to the ITMA in Dublin.

They include manuscripts, printed items, ephemera (posters, flyers, programmes etc.), photographs, film reels, research papers, lecture scripts, scrapbooks, commercial/non-commercial sound and video recordings (LPs, audio cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes etc.)

Mr. Ó Canainn, who died at the age of 82 in 2013, was originally from Barry Street and was educated at St. Columb’s College. In 1961 he moved to Cork where he became Dean of Engineering in University College Cork. He studied music in UCC under Aloys Fleischmann and Seán Ó Riada and succeeded Ó Riada as lecturer in Irish music after his death in 1971.

An accomplished accordion player, singer, poet, writer, composer, researcher and lecturer he was best known as an uilleann piper and toured internationally with the group Na Filí in the 1970s. At the 2004 Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, Ó Canainn was awarded Ard-Ollamh, or Supreme Bard by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. In February 2020 ITMA staff members Maeve Gebruers and Alan Woods made a number of visits to the home of Helen Ó Canainn and Nuala Ní Chanainn (Tomás’ widow and daughter) and with help from the family sorted through Tomás’ multimedia collection, isolating materials which were to be deposited in ITMA. These materials will be processed in the coming months with priority given to the digitisation of the most at-risk audio/visual carriers. ITMA is working towards organising and making the Tomás Ó Canainn Collection accessible to the public in the coming years.