Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Field Recordings
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Abstract
The Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Field Recordings consists of field recordings made and collected by Dr. Mick Moloney in the course of his career as a folklorist, producer, musician, and academic. The recordings include interviews and private performances, commercial recording sessions, rehearsals, demos, concert performances, informal group sessions, ceilis, competitions, lectures, and broadcasts. The field recordings range in date from 1956-2001. The majority of the original tapes are ¼″ reel-to-reels and audio cassettes, but also include some 8, 16 and 24-track master reels. Some of the recordings have been digitized. The collection also includes written inventories containing metadata pertaining to recordings found within the collection.
Biographical Note
Dr. Mick Moloney (1944-2022) was a musician, folklorist, and Global Distinguished Professor of Music and Irish Studies at New York University. He immigrated to the United States in 1973, earning a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He recorded and produced over forty albums of traditional music, acted as advisor for scores of festivals and concerts, and served as artistic director for the musical ensemble, The Green Fields of America. In 1999, Moloney was awarded the National Heritage Award of the National Endowment of the Arts, the highest official honor of traditional artist can receive in the United States.
Moloney was the author of Far from the Shamrock Shore (2002) and numerous essays on Irish music and musical culture, and the co-editor of Close to the Floor: Irish Dance from the Boreen to Broadway (2009).
Sources:
Steve Winnick, "From Limerick Rake to Solid Man: The Musical Life of Mick Moloney," Dirty Linen, No. 48 (October/November 1993)
1999 NEA National Heritage Fellowships: http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=1999_11
Mick Moloney, Musician and Folklorist: http://www.mickmoloney.com
Arrangement
The Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Field Recordings is arranged in two series, as follows:
Series I. Private Performances
Series II. Public Performances
Series III. Interview Information Sheets
Series IV. Audio Inventories for Grammy Preservation Project
Series I and II are further arranged alphabetically by surname. Series III and IV also list performers by their surname, however, they are arranged in the original order in which the documents were received.
Scope and Contents
The Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Field Recordings document the Irish-American traditional music scene between 1956 and 2001 (bulk dates 1974 to 1997). The collection is diverse in its musical styles and content, making it an informative resource for scholars and students of the Irish-American experience. The collection features 115 formal and informal interviews, as well as hundreds of musical performances from instrumental virtuosi, including a significant number of women musicians, ranging from live concert performances to recording and informal sessions. Additionally, the collection uniquely documents Mick Moloney's own musical and academic career by reflecting the types of materials that interested him and he felt compelled to collect. The collection consists primarily of ¼″ reel-to-reels and audio cassettes, but also includes some 8, 16 and 24-track master reels.
Series III. Interview Information Sheets and Series IV. Audio Inventories for Grammy Preservation Project consists of paper documents relating to the audio materials in this collection. Both the "Interview Information Sheets" and "Grammy Preservation Project" documents provide background information and basic metadata about the tapes that were digitized in 2007 and 2008 by archiving and preservation grants from the Grammy Foundation.
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Conditions Governing Access
Open for research without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (and related rights to publicity and privacy) to materials in this collection are held by the musicians or the interviewees and/or their estates. Permission to publish or reproduce materials must be secured from the copyright holder. Please contact the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, special.collections@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596 for assistance.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Mick Moloney Irish American Music and Popular Culture Field Recordings; AIA 031.002; box number; folder number or electronic item identifier; Archives of Irish America, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
An additional accession was donated by Mick Moloney in 2018, the accession number associated with this gift is 2018.118.
Custodial History
New York University's Division of Libraries, in conjunction with Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, purchased the Mick Moloney Collection for the Archives of Irish America in 2006. Until the Collection was transferred to New York University, under the supervision of Dr. Michael Nash, Head of the Tamiment Library, the materials were stored in Dr. Moloney's house in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The accession numbers associated with this collection are 2006.071, 2010.019, and 2010.073.
In September 2022, Elizabeth Carron, Senior Accessioning Archivist at the Boston College Burns Library, transferred four optical discs of recordings copied from Moloney's original cassettes to New York University. These items were deaccessioned from Boston College's Irish Music Archives at the discretion of Curator Beth Sweeney. The accession number associated with this transfer is 2023.026.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Access to some audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact special.collections@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
About this Guide
Processing Information
In cases where tapes were too fragile to be listened to, information from the box has been transcribed verbatim and appears in quotation marks in the container list. Any markings from the original tape boxes which might indicate context also appear in quotes. All other item titles have been supplied by an archivist.
Under two Archiving and Preservation Grants from the Grammy Foundation in 2007 and 2008, New York University's Division of Libraries has digitally preserved approximately a quarter of the 1237 tapes (around 252 hours), while 891 tapes (around 715 hours) exist only in their original format. The remaining reels and cassettes were digitized through grants provided by New York State and the Gladys Brooks Foundation. Recordings that were identified as having no content (blank tapes, only beeping, etc.) were not digitized and no access copies were made of these recordings.
Papers relating to the 2007 and 2008 Grammy Foundation digitization project were processed and described by an archivist in the fall of 2022. These papers were removed from three binders and rehoused into archival folders and boxes. Origial titles were retained. Two additional series -- Series III and IV -- were created to highlight these documents.
In March 2023, an accretion of optical discs was inventoried, forensically imaged, and intellectually arranged into the collection's existing arrangement structure. New York University Libraries follow professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the content.
