A music hub is just what Cork city needs
Irish Jack opens the Sir Henry’s exhibition in UCC, in 2014, celebrating the iconic venue.
Recently, I co-ran a music exhibition in St Peter’s on North Main Street and I spent a lot of time chatting to those who came through the doors.
Many were from Cork, others were visitors for the jazz weekend.
The nature of the exhibition meant that most of my actual work had been done in the preceding weeks, and during the time it was there, I spent a lot of time talking to these various people about music and Cork’s music scene.
Lots of these conversations stayed in my head and I’ve been thinking a lot about how we could do something amazing here with our musical heritage.
One conversation, with local dancer and movement teacher Helena Palmer was especially relevant. She was telling me that her mother was always saying that “Cork needs a music museum”.
I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the years, and running the exhibition, I ended up travelling back in time a fair bit through my own personal music journey, and lots of Cork’s own history too.
As the Cork Jazz Festival turned 45, I was thinking about its history and of the acts that I’ve seen that are no longer with us.
Many of them were jazz and hip-hop greats, and some of them were celebrated at our exhibition through photographs, signed records, and other bits.
This exhibition was largely a personal one for myself and Mark Murphy, of Choice Cuts, but previously I also helped co-run an exhibition in the Boole library in UCC.
Alongside Martin O’Connor and Eileen Hogan, we crowdsourced a Sir Henry’s exhibition, that ran through the summer of 2014, and it was a great way to celebrate the iconic venue (from a rock and dance perspective).
Both of these exhibitions took a lot of energy and time, but both told stories that might have been lost unless we documented them.
The legendary Irish Jack, who turned 80 last week, presented me with a binder full of info on every Sir Henry’s gig that took place.
The likes of Jack are a treasure of information. Many of us have big archives of musical memorabilia, posters, flyers, recordings, and other interesting artefacts that are gathering dust in attics at home.
It would be cool to house them in a place with a more permanent legacy, and a place that might inspire the next generation too.
I was delighted to see so many youngsters at our exhibition. If you had a museum space where you could do workshops/talks/gigs, it could be an important cultural hub in Cork city and a huge tourist attraction.
I’ve seen other cities do this, and with performance and practice space such a precious commodity these days, it would be cool if a body such as the Cork City Council had the vision to back such a space in the years to come. I might be only dreaming, but I think it could be amazing.
Other organisations could use it too. One of my Foróige/ETB youth projects has been operating pretty much without a home for the last few years, we need more spaces for youth work and the creative arts.
Such a museum space could be perfect for this too, and it could be a hub that is used all day and even at nights by our music people.
We have music sections and spaces in some of our libraries (Cork City Library has the Rory Gallagher music library), but we can do more.
We can honour Rory alongside Five Go Down to the Sea and Fish Go Deep and Ellll and the many other Cork music talents.
We can nurture the next generation and provide them with a space to create, and link them with the others who have gone before. We can promote our music scene in this hub and make it an essential tourist destination too, highlighting all that’s good about our amazing city.
People love music in Cork and we will continue to create it no matter what. But maybe we can give Cork a space outside of the traditional pub/club mould that will prove to be the focal point for the next few generations. We could run exhibitions, workshops, and host talks and shows all year round. It would be amazing!
