In December 2009, Ciarán Mac Mathúna, one of Ireland’s best loved broadcasters with his own signature voice died, aged 84 years. He began work in Radio Éireann in late 1954 as a music producer with responsibility for traditional music. During the 1950s & especially in the ‘60s, he was engaged in extensive field-recording. Travelling the highroads and byroads of Ireland getting to the source of the Irish musical tradition, recording musicians in the own homes and locales. His gentle, slow manner put nervous musicians and singers at their ease amid all the new fangled and cumbersome technology . “Ciarán’s voice was central to it all, everyone recognised it and when he spoke about music people hung onto his every word.” Paddy Glackin It was on one such fieldtrip to the west, that he met his future wife Dolly while interviewing her father Martin Furey. They went on to have three children together. “Love is a very peculiar thing, it happens, and we were both very lucky. We were different in lots of ways but maybe that’s why our marriage was so successful.” Dolly MacMahon Ciarán also travelled abroad recording music in Britain and in the USA and it was on one of his American trips that he heard the Clancy Brothers for the first time, and had a hand in helping them become such a success on their native shores. He presented such radio series as Ceolta Tíre and A Job of Journeywork in the 60s while in the 70s and 80s he also worked in television, presenting traditional music series such as Fonn and The Humours of Donnybrook as well as fronting numerous traditional music documentaries. “He was somebody who didn’t believe in formal barriers between different types of music. Music was good or not good.” Deirdre Mac Mathúna ( Daughter) He was perhaps best known to Irish audiences for his long running Sunday morning radio programme Mo Cheol Thú which combined music, poetry and folklore. A constant in the RTÉ R