Music Generation Cork City marks 10 years

IMAGINE the stratospherically famous rock band U2 describing your work as having “the potential to be one their greatest legacies”. Well, this is how U2’s bass guitarist Adam Clayton once described Music Generation.

Initiated by Music Network and co-funded by U2, The Ireland Funds, the Department of Education, and Local Music Education Partnerships, Music Generation is now Ireland’s national music education programme.

It identifies communities without access to performance music education and provides opportunities to develop this. In a very real and immediate sense, Music Generation changes lives – a great legacy indeed.

Birthday Celebrations

The Cork branch, Music Generation Cork City (MGCC) celebrates its tenth anniversary this month with a night of entertainment hosted by guest MC Evelyn Grant at the Everyman Theatre on Monday, November 21.

The event will celebrate the busy hives of music-making in schools, youth clubs, libraries, and community halls in Knocknaheeny, Mahon, Ballyphehane, Togher, Mayfield, Fairfield, Blackpool and Farranree.

Guests will enjoy a specially commissioned commemorative film, captured by up-and-coming talent Seán Downey. This film aims to give a snapshot into the everyday life of MGCC, the places the music is made, the characters who make it come together and the long-reaching, positive impact it has in these localities.

It will be a night to “celebrate the music, community and pure joy at the heart of Music Generation Cork City.” Pure joy seems about right when one looks back at the decade-long contribution Music Generation has made to our city. And joy is hugely evident chatting to two Cork teenagers who are members of the hip-hop group Misneach.

Cara Cullen and Sophie McCarthy, both aged 17, have been involved with MGCC since it launched in 2012. They are co-songwriters of a new song Music Gives Me A Reason, also commissioned for the event in the Everyman.

Cara explains that their journey started when she was just seven years old, when Jessie Cawley and Karl Nesbitt of Creative Tradition came into her school to teach her the tin whistle.

“It just basically led on from there. We just stuck with them and stuck with Music Generation. It opened us up to doing other styles of music too. We learned with Jessie and Club Ceoil and then, when we were in 5th or 6th class, we joined SoundOUT, which moved to Music Mash Up, and that was all guitars, drums, non-Irish traditional instruments, and we were learning to play covers of songs.

“And now, in the Kabin, we don’t play instruments as much, and we write our own songs, so it’s been like a nice transition between all the different music that we have done.”

Sophie believes that this eclectic musical training has had a big impact on their work.

“The music that we do now features a lot of what we did when we were learning trad music. So, in our Misneach songs, there’s elements of trad in the songs, there are fiddles, there’s everything. In the Kabin, we make mostly original music, and I personally work more with pop or garage stuff.”

Their new song for the birthday event is based on a previous song, Cara explains.

“It was a song before, but we took bits and parts of it to make a new song. We took the chorus from a song we had written at a summer camp in July at the Kabin and brought it to this new song but changed the lyrics a bit.

“So, we were talking about how we love music and music changes our lives. So that was my input on the song anyway. And Sophie, you wrote a verse…”

“Ya, I wrote part of one of the verses, and I was just talking about how music has made me who I am over the past say ten years that we’ve been with Music Generation.

“Been here since day one biys!”

Cara beams and both girls laugh.

The Kabin, GMCBeats (led by Director Garry McCarthy) seems to be a like a second home to the songsters. The studio delivers a range of workshops throughout the week and the rehearsal space in Knocknaheeny is central to the work of MGCC.

“You just don’t really get judged when you’re in there,” the teenagers explain.

“It’s just like, if that’s what you want to write about, that’s what you write about. If this is who you are, it’s who you are!”

Both teenagers mention highlights from their time in the programme. Sophie remembers their performance at ‘Party at the Port’ for Cork Pride.

“It was the biggest crowd we’d ever performed to – there were over 4,000 people! And all the people we met backstage, and the fact we met Nadine Coyle backstage before we left. I was in awe! In awe!

“We were so nervous in front of that amount of people, but then the atmosphere and all the people coming up chatting to us afterwards, it was just unreal!”

Cara enthuses about being at Child Talks in 2019, that was filmed for RTÉ 1.

“To be honest, I didn’t even know that it was going to be filmed for RTÉ! But I didn’t really think about it anyway once I got told. I was just, it’s not going to change anything; it’s just a camera.”

The singer-songwriters feel the positive impact of their creative work on their broader communities too. Cara describes performing in the library in Hollyhill.

“Some of the girls there, their jaws were just on the floor, like they were like starstruck because of us. It was the weirdest feeling ever! And at the end of the performance, a couple of the girls went up to Sophie, asking ‘What are your songs called, I want to look you up’.”

Sophie adds: “They had me write it down on their piece of paper so they could look it up when they went home. I was nearly crying!”

Cara says it was the first time she’d thought about the influence of their work.

“I like letting them know they don’t have to worry about who they are, and just to be themselves. Because it’s too much work being someone else.”

A Great Legacy

Cara and Sophie, like thousands of other children and young people, have clearly benefitted from the music programme and it is a joy to hear them talk about it.

Music Generation developed in response to a 1985 report highlighting Ireland’s failure to musically educate its young.

In 2009, U2 and The Ireland Funds committed €7 million to enable implementation of the report’s recommendations over the following five years. In 2017, U2 and The Ireland Funds confirmed a total philanthropic donation of €6.3million to support Music Generation’s expansion into nine cities/counties as part of ‘Phase 2’. The not-for-profit organisation has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.

Aoibheann Carey-Philpott of the Cork branch says: “We’re very grateful to our local partners, Cork City Council, Cork ETB, The HSE, MTU and UCC. We’d love to see Music Generation in every Cork suburb. We are interested in training staff to work with autistic children, and we would also like to strengthen our connections to Cork Migrant Centre. We hope our funding continues to increase because we see first-hand the difference music makes.”