Tabhair Mo Ghrá Go Conamara (Bring My Love to Connemara)

I doubt there will be a more evocative, or valuable, Irish traditional music disc released this year than this spellbinding collection of archive recordings of sean nós singing, in Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) and English, from Count Galway. Tabhair Mo Ghrá Go Conamara showcases six of the count's finest exponents of the ancient art in previously unreleased recordings from the early 1970s. It's a moment caught in aspic. The treasure-trove from a lost age has been vividly captured by Terry Yarnell, alumnus of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's London's Singers Club in the 1960s. Especially poignant is the sense of solidly rooted tradition, lack of artifice and intimacy (a dog is heard barking in the background of one track). If Seán 'ac Dhonncha's ‘The Bogs of Shanakeever’ conjures John McCormack's signature rich burr, elsewhere is evidence of a less refined, more authentically bittersweet experience. The aged voices of Colm Ó Caoidheáin, Tom Pháidín Tom and Pádraic Ó Conghaile offer a touching, time-stopped fragility all their own. Cáit Bean Uí Chonluain and the Keane sisters Sarah and Rita (aunts of De Dannan's Dolores Keane) inject necessary and eloquent female voices. Éamonn Ó Bróithe and John Howson's extensive notes are exemplary.