Sit back and be enthralled by this unique show featuring the songs and story of ‘The Queen of Connemara’, the iconic Delia Murphy sung in her unique style.

This show is by her niece Carmen Cullen, author of ‘Two Sisters Singing’.

Roll back the years with If I were a Blackbird, The Spinning Wheel and Three Lovely Lassies and other much loved songs. Dramatised reading as part of the show.

This is a show to bring you down memory lane.

 

 

Delia Murphy (1902 – 1971)

As a young girl growing up in Mayo Delia benefited from the songs and stories she heard all around. Later they became part of her repertoire on a world stage.  She became a pioneering folk singer in Ireland and abroad in the forties and fifties and established ballad singing as an acceptable song form. Liam Clancy in talking about her  importance as a  singer said that she was a pivotal figure who took up the Irish ballad and turned it into something of her own. She was the first person to become a celebrity in this tradition and gave the Irish Ballad and folk songs the importance they hold in Irish and international music today.

 

Known as The Queen of Connemara, Delia was a pioneering figure in Irish folk music and the show ‘Hello Delia Murphy’ also highlights the pivotal role she played in the development of Irish song, in particular the Irish ballad.

Delia is a revered figure in Irish music and is still remembered and loved by those who heard her on radio or saw her in concert and those who appreciate the celebrity status she had in Irish recording and on radio. She lives on through her songs, still played on Irish radio today and reissued on CD.

 

 

Carmen Cullen

Head of English in a large Dublin second-level school for more than twenty years Carmen is now a fulltime writer. She has published four collections of poetry and her book Class Acts, plays and workshop material for schools  is currently on the Applied Leaving Cert’ course. She completed her MA in Creative Writing in Trinity College in 2008 Her novel Two Sisters Singing from which her reading for the show takes place was published by by Liberties Press in 2013. She provides valuable insights into her aunt's music and family times.

 

 

A tribute to Delia Murphy

To set the scene of Ireland in the forties this tribute incorporates a reading from Carmen's  novel called Two Sisters Singing, loosely based on Delia's life and published by Liberties Press in 2013.

 

There are many from an older age group who still remember her songs or who have seen her in concert, or who remember their parents talking about her.

 

This show has been touring successfully since 2009 all over Ireland and indeed Britain.

This year is the 43rd anniversary of her death and Carmen is making a special effort to bring back memories of Delia to people who recall her, as well as attracting new interest in her as a unique woman and artiste.

 

www.deliamurphy.com