WIMA is pleased to announced that on August 16, 2010, we’re officially releasing a double audio CD of the Dunn Family Collection recordings called The Francis O’Neill Cylinders: Thirty-two Recordings of Irish Traditional Music in America circa 1904. We’ll simultaneously release a dedicated website, The Dunn Family Collection: Francis O’Neill Cylinders, featuring online versions of images, manuscripts, and historical information from the Dunn Family Collection, as well as streaming versions of all the Francis O’Neill cylinders. Keep your eyes on our website, http://www.irishfest.com/archives, and Facebook page for links to purchase the CD and study the collection sometime in early August.

We’ve taken word about this fine collection on the road the past few months. Director Barry Stapleton presented a program about the Dunn Family Collection at the 44th annual conference of the Association for Record Sound Collections in New Orleans in May. I recently returned from a trip to the Catskills Irish Arts Week where I presented information about the collection, as well as unveiling several of the remastered recordings.

Barry and I will launch the CD and website at the 2010 Milwaukee Irish Fest Summer School on Monday night, August 16 from 7 to 9pm. Feel free to contact us about the launch or visit the Summer School site for more details: http://www.irishfest.com/schools/summerschool.php

Expect more updates in the next week or two!

-Jeff Ksiazek, archivist

We here at the Ward Irish Music Archives wish you a great and happy day, and we ask that you get out and enjoy some live Irish music during the 2010 Green Season!

In other news:

The Archives and the Dunn Family Collection were featured in a recent issue of Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express. Click here to read the online version.

Work is moving ahead on getting the Dunn materials online. More updates will come soon!

Slainte!

Jeff Ksiazek, Archivist

WIMA

March is upon us, and if you’re involved with an Irish music archives, you know that means the Green Season is in full swing. The St. Patrick’s season is always a busy one for WIMA, so here’s an update of what we’ll be up to this month.

This Saturday, March 6, we have the eleventh annual Green Tie Event, which is a major fundraiser for the archives. We’ll be featuring entertainment from local traditional band áthas, the McMenamin Irish Dancers, and you can watch (and participate in!) the Great Celtic Whiskey Debate! It’s all taking place at the Wisconsin Club—contact the Milwaukee Irish Fest Center for further details.

The week of March 22, WIMA will participate in our third Alternative Spring Break with the UWM Archives department. We’re happy and grateful to have the help of another MLIS student volunteer during this week, and we’ll be putting a lot of energy into processing the festival photo collection of Milwaukee Irish Fest.

We’re still moving forward with the Dunn Collection project as well. A CD copy of the recently re-mastered cylinder recordings are currently hurtling through the mail system, and we here at WIMA are looking forward to having a listen! This batch has some speed and pitch correction applied, thanks in part to a special set of uilleann pipes that may very well have been played on the recordings themselves! More information on that will be coming soon.

And speaking of the Dunn Collection and fundraisers, WIMA just launched it’s Adopt a Cylinder program online! If you’d like to help support getting the Dunn Collection online for the world to see and hear, please consider sponsoring a cylinder recording! Check out the website here: http://www.irishfest.com/archives/adopt-a-cylinder.php

Enjoy March in all its Irish celebratory glory, and be sure to get out and partake of some live Irish music wherever you may be!

The Dunn Family Collection was donated to the Ward Irish Music Archives (WIMA) in January 2007. The collection contains many artifacts from the life and times of Michael J. Dunn who immigrated to Milwaukee from Ireland in the 1880s. The items include musical manuscripts, instruments, photos, books, a Victrola and his Ancient Order of Hibernians uniform.

Micheal "Joe" Dunn and Michael J. Dunn, August 1911

The cornerstone of this collection is the Francis O’Neill cylinders. Dunn was friends with O’Neill, and towards the end of O’Neill’s life he gave his friends many items from his vast musical collection. Whether the cylinders came to Dunn directly or through a mutual friend, Sgt. James Early, is unknown, but the cylinders were likely in the Dunn home on south 26^th street in Milwaukee for over 80 years.

O’Neill was known for collecting Irish tunes from the musicians in Chicago. He published over 3,500 tunes through several publications, including the mammoth O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903). It was known that O’Neill had recorded some of these musicians sometime circa 1904, and that they had been given to Dunn. But many thought these cylinders were destroyed after Dunn’s death in 1935.

In 2003 Dr. David Dunn, Michael Dunn’s grandson, took one last look in the attic of his grandfather’s home before selling it and found the suitcase of these 32 cylinder recordings along with most of the artifacts in the Dunn Family Collection at WIMA.

So what’s in store for the Dunn Family Collection? We’re currently developing a website to give the public online access to the majority of the collection, including the ability to listen to the cylinder recordings. The recordings themselves are being mastered, and  the pitch and speed of the transfers are being compared to one of the original sets of uilleann pipes used by Patrick Touhey on the recordings. We’ll also be releasing a CD of the cylinders, along with more information about the collection and musicians involved.

Stay tuned to the blog for more updates as WIMA works on these projects!

-Jeff Ksiazek, archivist

As we head in to Christmas its amazing how many Irish-Americans have contributed to our culture of Christmas related songs and carols. Tin Pan Alley was practicly done when Bing Crosby had his huge hit of “White Christmas” in 1942. That one song kept songwriters in business for the next decade as they all tried to write the next Christmas hit song. Many of the current songs we sing today came from that time period. Burl Ives was half Irish and of course he left us a wealth of Christmas songs…and who could forget Suzie snowflake made famous by Rosemary Clooney.

Have a Great Thanksgiving!

Barry Stapleton

Come Back to Erin Exhibit in Dublin, Ohio

Our hardy crew at work at La Crosse Irish Fest.

Plaque from the Great Great Grandson of Edward Bunting, Frederick J. Mahoney

Items recieved through our program of 2 free tickets to Irish Fest for the donation of 10 Irish music related items.

In September the Archives take the Come Back to Erin exhibit to Kansas City, Chicago and then to Muskegon, Michigan. Hope to meet lots of new friends at these festivals!

Fort Collins is a great town…we thoroughly enjoyed it…beautiful setting for a festival. Great music and a great exhibit from Parnell’s Irish Cobs of an old Tinker wagon and the Irish Cobs (horses) that pulled the wagons. Ken Hannon had his Irish Surname exhibit and we brought our History of Irish Rock Music to the fest.
Many thanks to John and Beverly Schreck who really put on a great fest! We hope to be back someday.

Main Entrance to the History of Irish Rock Music exhibit

Folks enjoying the exhibit

More folks enjoying the exhibit

Screaming Orphans in front of their poster in our exhibit

Tinker wagon from Parnell's Irish Cobs

Crossroads dancing

Searson on stage

Young Dubliners with Pyro display

Early Irish American Music Parlor

we also make exhibits for outdoor festivals which is where many of you see us. Our musical heritage is an important part of our culture, it’s a joy to put these exhibits together and utilize our holdings in the Archives. So see you in Fort Collins or some of the other festivals as listed on our website at the following link:
http://www.irishfest.com/archives/newsEvents.php

Irish Film Exhibit in Dublin, Ohio

One recent event was the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, ARSC, conference which was hosted by the Library of Congress in Washington DC this past weekend.

We had a great time at the conference mingling with many others who have a love for collecting and preserving our “aural” history.

We got to see the new Packard Campus of the Library of Congress in Culpeper, VA. This is the new home of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC), an amazing facility. See link
http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/packard/

We also gave a presentation of the life and times of Morton Downey.

Next week we’re off to the Fort Collins Irish Fest where we’ll be taking our “History of Irish Rock Music” exhibit.

Barry Stapleton