Eleanor Kane Neary and the Piano in Irish Traditional Music

Abstract

��� Irish traditional music has been thriving in the United States for many years now, with festivals, concerts, workshops, university and community courses, and an abundance of regular pub seisuns and gigs. But this was not always the case. There was an upsurge of interest in the mid1920s, stimulated by increased immigration from Ireland and a brief investment in the music by commercial recording companies. Then came a protracted slump of thirty years, during which the recordings stopped selling and consequently stopped being made, and the music came to be seen by many, in Ireland and America both, as backward looking and decidedly uncool. This slough of despond lasted from the Depression years of the mid-1930s to the folk revival of the late 1960s. Since then, the news has been much better, with heartening, steady support for the music in America, Ireland, and elsewhere in the world. A modest bungalow at 6123 South Washtenaw on the South Side of Chicago, however, was one of the few places where the tradition was kept alive from World War II into the 1980s. This was the home of Jimmy and Eleanor Kane Neary, musicians, teachers, and passionate advocates for the centuries-old heritage of Ireland’s music during some of that music’s darkest days. When interest began to revive, the Nearys’ living room became the genius loci for a remarkable new generation of Chicago Irish artists. Among the teenagers who gathered there on Sunday evenings