Tommy Peoples has just published a new book, Ó Am go hAm – From Time to Time: Tutor, Text and Tunes by Tommy Peoples.
The book is a fascinating 400-page compendium which includes a detailed fiddle tutor with notation and illustrations by Tommy, as well as a collection of 130 of Tommy’s original compositions, again with notation by Tommy.
The book also includes insights into Tommy’s life and musical journey through text which explains the titles of his compositions, accompanied by related images and photographs.
The book is now available directly from Tommy, who will personally sign each copy. The price is inclusive of postage. If more than one copy is ordered, please indicate by email to Tommy at [email protected] the name of the person you would like each book signed to.
The book can be purchased using PayPal below and choosing the proper postal destination. If you would prefer to pay by cheque you can write to Tommy at:
Kinny Cally,
St. Johnston,
County Donegal,
Ireland.
Please be sure to make cheques payable to Tommy Peoples, and include your full postal address and email address.
Further information on the site, below!
Life & Work
Bio:
Tommy Peoples is a fiddler from County Donegal (born in 1948), where he spent his early years immersed in the style which remains his today. As a teenager he went to live and work in Dublin, becoming part of the traditional music scene.
He worked and recorded with several bands, before joining The Bothy Band, with whom he stayed for about a year-and-a-half, participating in the recording of one of the biggest selling album of traditional Irish music of all time (for which he was never paid). A number of recordings with various ensembles have taken place since then.
Tommy lived for a number of years in Ennis, County Clare, an area renowned for its traditional music, before moving back to St Johnston, the village he is from. His daughter Siobhán is a noted fiddler also.
Tommy has passed away. Rest in Power Tommy Peoples!
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).