Singer, musician and researcher Seán Corcoran, who died on May 3 at the age of 74, made a substantial contribution to Irish culture. A native of Drogheda, Co Louth, he was best known for his participation in the band Cran, who released several albums over the last three decades and toured internationally in Europe, Canada and Japan, among other places.

Corcoran played the bouzouki, mandocello and other instruments and sang traditional songs in English, Irish and Scots Gaelic.

Regarding his family’s musical history, he said: “My father and his mother’s side were all musicians, the classic rural background, but I came from a seaport town and people there had all kinds of fascinating songs. This whole thing about folk music being a rural thing is nonsense, it was a popular culture and it was everywhere.”

In his younger days he was involved in running the Tradition Club on Dublin’s Capel Street, which contributed greatly to the popularity of traditional and folk music with city audiences.

He and his friends Tom Crean, Niall Fennell and Dave Smith formed the vocal harmony group The Press Gang, who released an album of the same name in 1976. The band got together initially at a pub in Drogheda and performed on the music scene in Belfast during the Troubles.

The Press Gang also took part in a Liberty Hall concert to raise funds for Drogheda cement strikers in May 1970. Seán’s politics were radical: as a young man he was involved with the left-wing League for a Workers’ Republic and in more recent times his Twitter account showed that he retained an anti-establishment outlook.

His progress towards adulthood coincided with the rise in popularity of the Fleadh Cheoil festival of traditional music at different locations, which turned into major social gatherings and liberating occasions for the young people of Ireland.

The Fleadh placed traditional singers and musicians centre stage and, as Corcoran commented: “All these old guys who had been in the dark and sneered at for the past 20 years, suddenly found that thousands of kids wanted to hear them — they were heroes again.”

Song collecting was a major part of Seán’s activities over the years and he played a major role in bringing English-language Ulster ballads, which had initially been published in the press during the 1920s and 1930s, to public attention again.

“I came across this extraordinary Sam Henry collection, pieces of newspaper pasted into a large tome. I could not believe how rich it was in songs,” he said.

Seán was also an expert on the history of traditional and folk music and its role in society.

He studied ethnomusicology at Queen’s University Belfast and from 1979 worked as a collector of songs and music in West Fermanagh for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. This work resulted in a 1986 book and cassette titled Here is a Health: Songs, Music and Stories of an Ulster Community. He also collected for the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

Seán Corcoran had lived in England for the past number of years with his wife Vera, and he died after a short illness at their home in Buxton, Derbyshire.

He is survived also by his children Rósa and Fiachra and their mother Helen, his daughter Jess, granddaughter Sadhbh, his sister Claire, brothers Colin and Terry, and other relatives and lifelong friends.

A brief funeral ceremony respecting Covid-19 regulations took place at Macclesfield Crematorium last Thursday.

In a tribute, his brother Terry recalled that Seán was proud of “the agrarian and socialist traditions” on both sides of the family.

“He was interested in culture and the arts, music, painting, cinema and literature, for as long as I can remember. He was already on the way to being a professional-level researcher of oral history and song by his mid-teens.”

Seán was a multi-talented creator, “as a musician and singer, as a writer with a beautiful prose style, as a maker of documentaries”.

His cultural interests “blended easily with his radicalism and so his interest was above all in the culture of ordinary working people, their music, their songs and their stories”.

His professional output was prolific and he also took a keen interest in local history through the Old Drogheda Society.

“Seán did all of this with a great sense of fun and mischief that made him a pleasure to work with and a joy to meet,” Terry said.

A larger gathering of friends to remember Seán Corcoran will be organised later in the year, when travel restrictions have been further relaxed.

Sunday Independent