WATCH: Cork farmer making bouzoukis in his spare time says he now sells them to musicians around the world

“A FEW years ago, I was thinking, ‘well, what am I going to do when my body gives out and doing physical work is more difficult?’ So I had the idea that I might start and learn some trade. And because I play music, I decided that I’d have a go — to try to make a bouzouki.”

Ultan Walsh is a farmer based in East Kinsale, near Nohoval. He and his wife supply vegetables to a number of restaurants in Cork City.

Mr Walsh has a few months each year when he does not grow vegetables on his farmland due to the weather. So, eight years ago, he decided to fill his time during those months building bouzoukis.

“I bought a couple of books on making Spanish guitars, and I adapted to those techniques and applied them to the bouzouki. So for the last seven or eight years now, I’ve been making bouzoukis and selling them all over the world, which is fantastic.”

At the beginning of his musical instrument-building career, Mr Walsh said people wondered why he decided to choose this job.

“Many people would ask me, ‘like, how do you build such a complicated thing, and get it looking so beautiful and sounding great?’

Talking about his first bouzouki, which he called Frankenstein, Mr Walsh said it was a disaster.

“It was the ugliest looking thing I’d ever seen in my life. But to my surprise, it actually sounded okay”.

Despite how the first one looked, he enjoyed the process of each task involved.

“When you are in the process of making, you can almost kind of enter that kind of meditative state that craft and that art can give you which is so different from my main job, which is growing vegetables.”

Between October to April, he builds about five pieces. He exports his bouzoukis to people in Portugal, Finland, and the US, but most of his clients are be in Ireland.

“I only take commissions if I know that I can actually fill them. So I would never take more than five commissions in a year. Because I know within that period, I’ll be able to complete the instruments.”

By the end of April, he has to go back out into the farm as this is his primary source of income.

“I’ve got to start growing vegetables and plants so that we can make money from that as well and pay our bills and pay the mortgage.”

Talking about the bouzouki’s history, Mr Walsh said an Irish man had brought back a Greek bouzouki to Ireland in the early 1960s.

Within a couple of years, the instruments found their way into Irish traditional music.

However, a decade later, these Greek instruments had changed and became more useful in an Irish context.

“So outside of Ireland now, the instrument that I make the bouzouki is known as an Irish bouzouki. In Ireland, we call it hip bouzouki.”

He believes that there are more crafters and musical instruments builders in Ireland now than there was 50 years ago.

Mr Walsh said instrument makers are very independent.

“From my experience, most instrument makers are very self-reliant. And they do these things because they love music, and they love making instruments. And, and their real goal is to try and, and push their instruments into the hands of truly great musicians to see what those great musicians can do with them.

“Ultimately, it’s all about the musician. It’s all about what magic they can make with the instruments.”

M Walsh said he believes there is no comparison between factory-made instruments and handmade instruments.

“As a builder of musical instruments, the last thing I would ever worry about will be competition from factory-made instruments’.’

He said that they could not spend time selecting the best woods and treating each piece of wood differently.

“Certainly, all of us small builders, who only produce a handful of instruments every year, we’re not really in competition with factory-made instruments.”