The Irish ‘frame drum’ first entered mainstream Irish consciousness in 1959 with John B. Keane’s use of a tambourine in his play Sive at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. It was given tremendous visibility from 1960 on in the traditional-music revival by Seán Ó Riada’s Radio Éireann ensemble Ceoltóirí Chualann, then by The Chieftains, and, later, by the Bothy Band, Planxty, Christy Moore and De Dannan. By the end of the century, tens of thousands of bodhráns had been made and dispersed in Ireland and world-wide, and the instrument has been a staple in traditional music teaching and promotion by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

Beating Time explores this history for the first time. It radically acknowledges not only the influence of the music trade and British military bands, but also that of the touring ensembles that were the roots of today’s popular-music. Through literature and newspapers the book looks too at the use of tambourines on the Wren, and the morphing of this into accompaniment and solo playing in today’s ‘listening’ to traditional music.

The first ever comprehensive history of our national drum, Beating Time has been researched and written by Dr Fintan Vallely, editor of the Companion to Irish Traditional Music. A performer since his younger teens in the early 1960s, he has travelled widely playing music, and in 1986 was the author of Timber, the first tutor for Irish flute. He teaches flute at Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy (summer school) in Co. Clare annually and at workshops internationally.