Film Opinion: How Irish Cinema Celebrates Homegrown Music

In one of this month’s releases, Float Like A Butterfly director and music editor Stephen Warbeck combines a score filled with trad influences and Traveller ballads to capture the emotion, tradition and storytelling power of Irish music. It elevates the clash of tradition, modernity and a young girl’s fight for acceptance and independence in Carmel Winters’ stirring tale. The power of the music isn’t a coincidence – the producers, David Collins and Martina Niland, also worked on the similarly music-powered films Once and Sing Street. They obviously share an appreciation for how music can make a film more resonant, though it also points to a larger in trend in Irish music, which has long celebrated the power of music.

The Commitments is of course the classic Irish film that celebrates music, and though the soundtrack was filled with classic hits rather than original tunes, it acted as an irresistible showcase for the actor-musicians, including a young Glen Hansard, who of course went on to later star in Once. That movie – an intimate romance between two young musicians who wander around Dublin together – became a sensation, going on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song. It was also adapted for Broadway, where it eventually won eight Tony awards.

John Carney’s 2016 coming-of-age film Sing Street combined the best of both approaches, with the Dublin comedy-drama mixing original material with covers of The Jam, The Cure, Hall & Oates and Duran Duran (which had brilliant and hilarious homemade music videos to match).

Although Sing Street, The Commitments and Once were undeniably Irish stories, all celebrating the visual geography and specificity of Dublin, as well as a quintessentially Irish sense of humour and expression, the use of music – both well-loved classics and new songs – showed the power that Irish performers have to connect with international audiences. It also demonstrated how Irish directors intuitively understand how to progress story through music.

Irish cinema is also committed to celebrating the real stories behind influential and charismatic figures in the music industry, from Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’sa’s celebration of Northern Ireland’s godfather of punk, Terri Hooley in the charming Good Vibrations, to the reimagining of the experiences of aspiring musicians Neil and Ivan McCormick. They watch on in envy as their classmate Paul goes on to become the frontman of U2 in Killing Bono – a film that also recognises the important role Hot Press has played in supporting Irish music, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, some Irish directors are committing themselves to celebrating Irish music onscreen in more explicit ways. Documentaries such as The Swell Season, and Song Of Granite about Joe Heaney – one of Ireland’s most enigmatic sean-nos singers – celebrate the wealth of musical talent in Ireland, across different genres. And earlier this year, Myles O’Reilly’s documentary Backwards To Go Forwards was released online to a glorious reception. His film is a sensitive and loving exploration of the influence of traditional Irish music in contemporary Ireland, featuring interviews and performances from musicians like This Is How We Fly, Cormac Begley, Zoe Conway and John Mc Intyre, Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh from The Gloaming, and more. O’Reilly hopes that his film will introduce neophytes and cynics to the beauty of Irish music, while showing trad lovers the ways it can evolve and stay relevant to modern audiences.