Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin

(Professor of Music, Jefferson Smurfit Corporation Professor of Irish Studies)

Anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, Dr Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, MBA, Ph.D., is the Jefferson Smurfit Corporation Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A fourth generation musician and a native of Co. Clare on the west coast of Ireland, he holds five World Championship Irish music titles: as a concertina player, uilleann piper, and as a member of the renowned Kilfenora Céilí Band, the oldest traditional dance band in Ireland. A specialist in Irish traditional music and its cultural history in Ireland and throughout the Irish diaspora, he has taught at University College Cork, Ireland; St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia; and the University of San Francisco. He completed his undergraduate degrees at University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin and received his doctorate in Social Anthropology and Ethnomusicology from the Queen’s University of Belfast, where he worked with the renowned European ethnomusicologist, Professor John Blacking.

Since 1994, he has been on the faculty of the Catskills Irish Arts School, (NY); Swanannoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, (NC); Milwaukee Irish Summer School at the University of Wisconsin, and Goderich Celtic College, Ontario. An Irish music and history consultant for the National Geographic Society, ABC News and PBS television, he consulted for the celebrated 1998 PBS series The Story of the Irish in America: Long Journey Home, which attracted huge television audiences in the United States and Europe. The ethnographic documentary, Photos to Send: Dorothea Lange’s Ireland, on which he also consulted, won first prize at the Galway International Film Festival (2001), the San Francisco Film Festival (2002) and the Lake Placid Film Forum (2002). It has been chosen for the prestigious HBO Frame by Frame film award. Formerly Irish language editor of the San Francisco Gael, he continues as a US correspondent for Raidió na Gaeltachta, Ireland’s Gaelic-language radio network, and as Irish Traditional Music editor of the academic journal New Hibernia Review.

As an educator and producer for the California-based music company Celtic Crossings since 1995, he has presented lectures and interactive seminars on Irish music, history and folklife to students in libraries, elementary schools, high schools, universities and community forums throughout the United States.

His publications include academic monographs, scholarly articles and commercial recordings of Irish traditional music. His work has appeared in the international press, most notably, the Irish Times, Le Monde de Musique, the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Examiner. His A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music was published by the O’Brien Press, Dublin in 1998. His first solo album, Traditional Music From Clare and Beyond, (Celtic Crossings, 1996) featured Clare fiddle masters Paddy Canny, Martin Hayes, and Peadar O’Loughlin, and was followed by Tracin’ (Celtic Crossings, 1999) with French fiddler, Patrick Ourceau, which exemplified the seminal duet style of Peadar O’Loughlin and Paddy Murphy in the 1950s. Dr. Ó hAllmhuráin is currently writing a history of traditional music and folklife in County Clare since the Great Famine, and is co-editing a history of the Irish in San Francisco, to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2004.

As well as teaching Irish music, history and ethnomusicology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, he conducts extensive field research in Irish communities throughout Western Europe and North America. He also advises students researching Celtic music and folklife at the National University of Ireland, Galway; Brown University; the University of Portland; Emerson College; Boston College and the University of Notre Dame. He broadcasts frequently on Irish and US-based radio networks.

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