Irish Trad Music Blog

Chicago Police Chief Francis O'Neill 1901–1905 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Chicago's past is filled with characters and events that seem ready-made for the stage, and as the city's theatergoers eagerly await the Wednesday raising of a certain ill-fated ship in the form of Lookingglass Theatre's musical "Eastland," audiences are already having a grand historical time at "Music Mad." "Music Mad," performed Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m. through June 28 at the charming and terrific-on-every-level Chief O'Neill's Irish Pub & Restaurant (3471 N. Elston Ave.), is based on the life of the man for whom the bar/restaurant is named. Francis O'Neill left Ireland at 16 in 1865, joined the Chicago Police Department in 1873 and was its chief from 1901-1905. Though I hear tell he was a fine chief, this show is about his lifelong desire to preserve and catalog Irish music, which manifested in the largest collection of Ir...

At the dawn of the 20th century, Ireland’s traditional music was in danger. English occupiers and Catholic authorities frowned on those old Celtic tunes. Waves of emigration scattered Irish musicians around the globe. And no one was publishing their melodies. No one, that is, other than the police chief of Chicago. Francis O’Neill, an Irish immigrant who was chief from 1901 to 1905, did more than anyone to save Irish folk music from extinction. Even as he led the police force, he kept his ears open for tunes played by people from all over Ireland who had come to Chicago with their flutes, fiddles and pipes. He compiled 1,850 of those songs in a 1903 book, O’Neill’s Music of Ireland. It’s still considered the bible of traditional Irish music. Highland Park resident Adam Whiteman, who practices law in the Loop, discovered all this when he was producing the album “Hidden Treasures: Irish Music In Chicago” for his record label, Big Chicago Records. He decided it was a story he needed...

Image by MPBecker via Flickr Chicago's Irish Community Comes Together To Help Natasha McShane - cbs2chicago.com : "From the South Side to the North Side, the City of Chicago banded together�Sunday�to help Natasha McShane. The woman from Northern Ireland remains hospitalized after she was severely beaten in the Bucktown neighborhood. As she makes a slow and steady recovery, Chicagoans came together to raise money for her, as CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports."