Frankie Kennedy
| Frankie Kennedy | |
|---|---|
Frankie Kennedy in the 1970s.
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| Background information | |
| Born |
30 September 1955 Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland |
| Died | 19 September 1994 (aged 38) Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Flautist |
| Instruments | Flute |
| Years active | 1981–1994 |
| Labels | |
| Website | www |
Frankie Kennedy (30 September 1955 – 19 September 1994) was a flute and tin whistle player born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was also the co-founder of the band Altan, formed with his wife Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh. The popular Frankie Kennedy Winter Music School was founded in 1994 in his honour.
He had three sisters and one brother.
Kennedy's uncle was married to the daughter of Robert Cinnamond, a singer from Glenavy, County Antrim, who was a frequent visitor in his family home.
His memory of [Cinnamond] was as a gentle soul singing "Dobbin's Flowery Vale", a version that Frankie plays. And he had all those northern versions of songs. Frankie used to say, "really I have no tradition," but he had a connection with the tradition which he didn't know himself.
Kennedy became interested in Irish traditional music when he was 18 years old, through the music of Horslips, Planxty, The Chieftains, and The Boys of the Lough. He learned his Irish as a young man in Belfast's Cumann Chluain Árd and travelled frequently to Donegal to perform at local sessions in Gweedore with Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh.
When Kennedy was eighteen he took a sixth form summer trip to the Gaeltacht of Gweedore in County Donegal. He went to a session one evening and there met a fifteen-year-old fiddle player named Mairéad, daughter of the session's leader Proinsias Ó Maonaigh. They were attracted to each other, and he wrote to her regularly after leaving Donegal.
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Wikipedia