Beating Time – The Story of the Irish Bodhrán: February, 2025

The bodhrán is often assumed to be an ancient part of Irish musical tradition — but the reality is more recent and far more complex. Beating Time offers the first full history of the bodhrán and tambourine in Ireland, tracing the instrument’s emergence not from deep musical antiquity, but from a much more modern and unexpected set of influences.

Carefully researched and clearly written, the book explores how the European tambourine entered Ireland in the 1700s, was adapted by local makers, and gradually absorbed into seasonal folk traditions like the Wren. Only in the mid-20th century — particularly after 1960 — did the instrument gain widespread visibility in traditional music circles, with the name bodhrán repurposed to describe it.

Richly illustrated with photographs of leading players by Nutan, whose images bring depth and atmosphere to the story, Beating Time draws on a wide range of sources — from archaeology and museum collections to newspapers, folklore, and visual art. It challenges long-held assumptions and offers a fresh, coherent picture of how this now-iconic drum became part of Ireland’s cultural identity. A valuable resource for musicians, scholars, and anyone interested in the evolving story of Irish music.

Read more about the book here.

Order the book here.

Kevin Coneff, Aimée Farrell Courtney and Dónal Lunny

Irlande 66 / 69 – Images of Ireland in the late 1960s

Two young Belgian photographers, one in the summer of 1966, the other in 1969, set off for Ireland to complete their final year photography studies. When the first, Guy Jungblut (alias Yellow), arrived in Dublin, he discovered a city more or less like the one James Joyce had wanted to preserve in Ulysses. The second, Jacques Piraprez (alias Nutan), followed in his footsteps, documenting Ireland in the late 60s.

Their black-and-white photographs, presented indiscriminately, show an Ireland, and more particularly its capital, Dublin, fifty years after the 1916 uprising, still far removed from the way of life on the continent, and from the swinging London of the Beatles.

In meticulously constructed portraits, we see and can almost feel the world of the poor in Dublin in the 1960s: The women, with their sharp eyes and clenched teeth, determined, with their shopping bags, accordion stockings and shawls; the men absorbed in reading the newspapers and the vague-eyed drinkers in the old pubs; the drunkards sleeping rough in the courtyards of the blocks of flats; the cattle whose flanks bear the mark of the Crown - ‘Roast beef for old England’ - being driven along North Circular Road, towards the Slieve Bawn cargo ship...

This Notebook of around 200 photographs, the work of two young Belgians from a school geared towards documentary photography and live portraits, was published in 2016, one hundred years after the Rising.

Check out the article of The Irish Times here.

Cover of a book called Irlande 66/69: photographs of Ireland taken in the 1960's, by photographers Nutan (Jacques Piraprez) and Yellow.

The Tailor's Twist: Ben Lennon's Life in Traditional Irish Music

Ben Lennon of Kiltyclogher, Co. Leitrim is known widely as a stylistic performer and teacher in the national and international world of Irish Traditional music. He began playing the fiddle at the age of ten, growing up in an atmosphere of home, ceili-house music-making and served his time with his father as a tailor. He developed his skills in post-World War II London among superb artisans and there immersed himself in a cosmopolitan city lifestyle. Back on Irish soil he returned to traditional music in its headiest revival years, first in Limerick and then Cork, while also engaged as an innovator and organiser in major clothing businesses. He returned north to Leitrim after twenty five years and relocated himself in local music, going on to teach his instrument, and to record and broadcast.

Ben Lennon's life is documented here in words by Fintan Vallely. The fiddler is also presented within his music society in a hundred and more striking photographs by Nutan Jacques Piraprez. These elements are integrated by a vigorous, complementary design by Martin Gaffney as the visual story of a personal journey in music by a commentator who has a bird's eye view that is a panorama of the technological and artistic transformation from the old Ireland to the new, from traditional music redundancy to its artistic supremacy.

Elderly man playing a violin outside against a cloudy sky, wearing a dark sweater and light pants. Cover of the book: "Ben Lennon - The Tailor's Twist: Ben Lennon's life in traditional Irish music".

John Prime - Fair & Square

Album Cover
Martin Hayes - under the moon

Album Cover
Sharon Shannon - out the gap

Album Cover

Books

Nutan has published numerous books, including several collaborative works with Fintan Vallely. His publications are largely rooted in the natural world and in Irish Traditional Music. Through his photographs and books, he invites you into a visual narrative seen with his own unique eyes.

2006 - The Islands of Ireland

A beautifully photographed, revelatory tour of nearly twenty of Ireland's remotest Islands, by leading Irish photojournalist Nutan Jacques Piraprez.
2006 - Iles d' Irlande

A beautifully photographed, revelatory tour of nearly twenty of Ireland's remotest Islands, by leading Irish photojournalist Nutan Jacques Piraprez. (French edition).
2003 - L'Eternel Irlandais

This book invites readers into an Ireland that is warm and welcoming — a place that reveals itself slowly, and only to those who take the time to truly see it. Through the words of Hervé Jaouen and the evocative photographs of Nutan, it captures the essence of a land where beauty lies in simplicity and where a deep sense of place lives in every village, pub, and passing conversation. It is a portrait of an Ireland where, as the locals say, you can still live. (French edition).
2002 - La Chevauchée des Kids

In Ballymun, on the northern outskirts of Dublin, the kids don't dream of mountain bikes, they dream of horses. Their rallying point? The makeshift stables they've set up in the disused premises of a community centre. It's here, after school, that they pamper and care for their animals with the attention of experienced lads. The authors of this book followed Ciaran, Neill and all those kids aged 4 to 16 who know how to ride bareback before they learn to read.
2000 - The Irish to-day

The Irish today brings together Ireland’s leading journalists to write of subjects dear to Irish hearts and profiles 220 individuals from among the exotic tribe of 70 million people around the world who claim or could claim Irish descent.
1999 - L'Enfant et la Sorcière

In Ireland, in Connemara, the moor is treacherous, full of pitfalls and traps. Anything can happen. The day Sean and his faithful dog Chum fall into a trench filled with icy water, only Sarah, said to be a witch, is there to save them. A curious friendship thus develops between Sean and the woman whom everyone shuns and believes to be mad. But is it madness to know how to make dogs talk?
1998 - The Blooming Meadows, the world of Irish traditional musicians

The book is a document on the lives and music of 30 major performers and movers of the revival period of Irish Traditional music. It is a series of 2,000 word, specifically-researched interviews and biographies/ethnographies which set these players in the contexts of their times, lives and performing. It is a balance between the written and the visual, a presentation which uses warm, quirky and personality-laden pictures taken by award-winning photographer Jacques Piraprez Nutan.