One of the most recognisable names in traditional music, Sharon Shannon has had an extensive career, recording twelve studio albums, making many other live and compilation albums, as well as contributing to other collaborations. Tradfluencer – The Sharon Shannon Story, broadcast on RTÉ One, is a new film by Tamber Media exploring her career, personal life, and, as the rather awkward title suggests, her influence and impact on the music scene in Ireland. Produced by Jenny Buckley and directed by Carol Gunner, it includes a wealth of new interviews, performances and contextual footage, without over-relying on archival material.

The programme begins by bringing us directly into the world of the two-row button accordion. It usefully highlights bellows control as well as Shannon’s signature stylistic development in ornamentation, the one-note triplet, which might be said to define her style. It certainly distinguished her from the mainstream B/C accordion style, and, as she noted herself, put her at odds with the acceptable ‘traditional’ style associated with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and the Fleadh Cheoil. Ironically, she wasn’t ‘innovating’ for the sake of it, but instead developed this as a way of replicating the bowed triplets used by fiddle players (particularly Tommy Peoples, a strong influence on her).

Peoples had settled in Clare at the time, which is where Shannon grew up, alongside her musician siblings Garry (flute), Majella (fiddle) and Mary (banjo). Traditional music played a huge part in her upbringing, and she was lucky enough to be close to the legendary teacher Frank Custy, as well as to get the opportunity to travel, perform and record with Comhaltas and the Dísirt Tola group. She is open about her lack of interest in school and college, and that she felt most at home playing music.

Photo: Brendan Duffy

Embarking on a career
A move to Doolin was a natural one at the time, and she notes the influence of Eoin O’Neill (bouzouki), Kevin Griffin (banjo) and Mary Custy (fiddle) on her decision to embark on a career as a musician. Attentive listeners (and fans) will recognise, among the early clips in the documentary, ‘Jean’s Reel’ (composed by Bobby McLeod), which must have been in her repertoire for a long time before arriving on the first album. The influence of Peoples is evident in these early tunes too – we hear Shannon playing his ‘La Cosa Mulligan’ from a Comhaltas on Tour album, and her debut also included ‘The Green Fields of Glentown’. Some focus on her instrument and its importance to her sound and style might have been included here: while we could see the progression from the red Paolo Soprani to the smaller Hohner accordions, and later the modern Castagnari and Saltarelle models, the importance of ‘dry’ tuning (where the reeds are closely tuned together), with its sharper and sometimes sweeter sound, deserved some attention. Such a close association between instrument, sound and musician has been capitalised on by Castagnari, which developed a ‘Sharon’ model.

The documentary becomes more fragmentary and focused on the person from this point. Much space is given to her reticence and shyness, and it is to the film-makers’ credit that they have given her this platform. Looking back from this age of over-sharing and endless social media promotion, it is remarkable that she was able to establish herself solely on the basis of her music. The cliché ‘meteoric rise’ is, for once, justified: within a few short years she had played with Arcady; joined the Waterboys (1989), recorded on Room to Roam, won many awards (from Hot Press accolades to the Irish Recorded Music Awards), and released her eponymous debut album (1991). This culminated in her being the focus of a Late Late Show special (1992) while still in her twenties.

Revisiting this at a distance emphasises two things that have persisted throughout her career: what Mike Scott described as a ‘steeliness’ in her musical character, and her ability to form connections with musicians and to bring them into her musical orbit. Her time with the Waterboys was, as Áine Hensey recalls, a ‘big deal for the traditional music community’, and probably also informed some of her musical ideas from then on. She herself provides a number of insights into the gestation of the first album, which walked a fine line between what several describe as the ‘pure drop’ and the different flavours and sounds she also brought to it. Hensey rightfully identifies it as an album that had an enormous influence; whether this has persisted up to today, as Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh argues, is less clear to me, although I do recall being encouraged by the younger members of a summer school accordion class not that long ago to teach them the ‘Blackbird’ set. Dr Joanne Cusack also rightly underlines how she achieved this success within a very male-dominated scene, and in the process became a role model for many younger musicians. The wider focus that is provided here is beneficial: this was a period of great growth, and the impact of Riverdance and A Woman’s Heart in amplifying and driving the broader traditional scene can’t be overstated.

The last portion of the film is more diffuse: there is too much on the song ‘Galway Girl’, although it does stand for the many collaborations she is often involved in; it explores her stance on and support for animal rights; and there is a more intimate segment on the sudden and tragic loss of her partner Leo. The last segment of the film follows Shannon and the band to Japan, as a way of showing her popularity outside of Ireland, before finishing with the type of gathering of friends which has been a constant throughout her career.

Tradfluencer is a gentle and revealing portrait. Its main strength is how much space it gives to Shannon to talk. Like the recent Dónal Lunny documentary though, its weakness is in how the narrative gets dispensed with so quickly. There is valuable material on her family, her early musical life, and on her progress through Doolin and the Waterboys towards her solo album, and then… almost nothing. It was almost as if none of the music mattered after this (and even the track played at the end of the film is ‘Cordino’, again from the first album). Despite a lot of informative contributions, I was left wanting more about the creative process, on her compositions, and on the world of collaboration. But this is a wishlist rather than a criticism, and the film succeeds in its argument that, through her approach, Shannon was admirably able to bring traditional music to an audience that otherwise might not have engaged with it.

Tradfluencer – The Sharon Shannon Story is available to view on the RTÉ Player.