Northern Ireland

Seán Corcoran: A lifetime performing and collecting traditional music

SEÁN Corcoran spent a lifetime both performing and collecting traditional music.

Born in 1946 and brought up in Clogherhead and Drogheda in Co Louth, he came from a musical family and began singing in choirs and feis competitions as child.

Alive to the rich repertoire of local singers, he also began collecting songs in the 1960s and became involved in traditional music festivals.

A fine singer and bouzouki player, he recorded music with the vocal group The Press Gang and later Cran.

He also worked as a teacher, studied ethnomusicology at Queen’s University, and wrote a folk column for Hot Press and Fortnight.

Based in Belfast during much of the 1980s and '90s, Corcoran collected and recorded songs and music across the north, including in west Fermanagh.

He edited three audio collections for the NI Arts Council as well as contributing to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

In recent years, he had researched and presented several television and radio documentaries.

Seán Corcoran died aged 74 on May 3 in Buxton, Derbyshire, where he had been living with his wife Vera.

His family said he will also be sadly missed by his "many friends made over a lifetime of performing and researching Irish traditional music and song and through his long involvement in local history as a founder member of the Old Drogheda Society".