Music, Macra and much more

Although he had played the instrument since his early childhood years, it wasn’t until Fergal Bradley went to the Gaeltacht as a teenager that he really found his passion for the accordion.

During the first week of the summer course in Ranafast in his home county of Donegal, he phoned his parents wanting to know would they bring up his squeezebox at the weekend.

“It took a while to get into it, it took a long time,” Fergal reflects with a smile. “I went up to the Gaeltacht and lots of different people were playing music and I got more into it after that.

"They’d be playing after the classes, playing away until we had to go home. I said to myself, ‘I can do this as well’.”

It’s a good thing Fergal did go to the Gaeltacht that year, as he has since gone on to achieve great things as a musician. At this year’s Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann he was crowned All-Ireland senior piano accordion champion.

Irish Country Living sits down with Fergal and his father John in their home outside Carndonagh, where they – along with Fergal’s younger brother Cieran – keep sheep and cattle.

Speaking with them, it’s clear that a lot of time and practise goes into achieving the coveted All-Ireland title.

Drogheda, August 2019 was the 22-year-old’s sixth time competing in piano accordion at the All-Ireland Fleadh, having come third in 2018.

“It takes a lot of let downs – for want of a better phrase – to get that far.

"Your nerves and stuff would let you down, you would make mistakes here and there; but when you go down to the Fleadh, even during the week and you see all the musicians, you’re dying just to play.

"It’s nice to say you’re competing at the weekend, it pushes you on,” explains Fergal.

“You have four tunes for the All-Ireland, so you’re going over them, practising them, continuously trying to perfect them.

"It’s muscle memory really at the end of it, because when you get to that competition and sit down, your head is everywhere else but the accordion, so your muscles in your fingers have to remember.

"There are times when you sit up there and you’re nervous, but it’s your fingers that seem to pull you through it.”

Fergal was just seven-years-old when his late mother Teresa, who passed away four years ago, got him his first accordion.

“A wee 12-piece one,” the musician recalls. Accordions are measured by the number of basses (ie buttons) they have. Now, sitting on his lap, Fergal has an accordion imported from Italy, with 72 buttons and 34 keys.

Traditional music, he feels, is a very sociable hobby. You meet lots of people through both playing in competitions and at sessions. But, is trad cool nowadays?

“It is. A lot of people are looking at trad musicians and saying, ‘I wish I could do that’. I think maybe when you’re a teenager, football and everything else comes into play, and of your hobbies, maybe music isn’t the most favourable one. When you get to your college years though, music does play a bigger part. It’s nice to be able to go anywhere, just sit down and join in.”

Onwards in ag

In secondary school, trying to decide what he would do afterwards, for Fergal it was a toss-up between two of his main interests – farming and music. In the end he went on to do a degree in agricultural science in Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) and then complete a master’s in agricultural extension and innovation in University College Dublin (UCD).

Amid music, university and other interests, August 2019 turned out to be a momentous month for Fergal.

He handed in his thesis less than two weeks after winning at the Fleadh, having played a county hurling final and attending the Rural Youth Europe Rally in England in between – more on those later.

His thesis topic was a pretty interesting one. It was on the mental wellbeing of young farmers in the northwest.

With formal education under his belt for now, Fergal’s next big venture is going to New Zealand after Christmas for a year, where he plans on getting a job in the agricultural industry. At present he is working in Inishowen Co-op.

Between home, university and work, Fergal feels he has a lot of different angles on farming covered.

“New Zealand is just to see something different. I work in Inishowen Co-op as a sales assistant. That’s one side of it, then you have the farming side of it and doing your agricultural science is a different side again.”

Eclectic interests

As you may have gathered, Fergal is a man with several different interests and hobbies – and obviously, is accomplished in them too (although he is incredibly humble with regard to his achievements).

As we have alluded to, music and farming are just part of his repertoire, he is also big into hurling and Macra.

Fergal hurls for Carndonagh GAA and this year was a particularly interesting period for them.

It was the club’s first time in 14 years playing senior hurling and they made it to a county final. Although they didn’t win, it was still a great lift for the whole community.

“We brought hurling back to Carn a bit. It brought everybody up a wee bit too,” says Fergal.

“I would say I’m a competitive person. You have the solo element in music and in hurling you have the team, it’s hard to beat the team competition and the team bond.”

On the Macra side of things, Fergal has been a member of Inishowen Macra na Feirme since he was 19.

It’s through Macra that he got to attend the Rural Youth Europe Rally in Cirencester this summer, which he had to go to immediately after winning the Fleadh.

The results of the senior piano accordion were announced in Drogheda at 3.30pm and his flight was in Dublin airport at 6.30pm.

John brought the trophy back to Donegal and Fergal arrived a few days later to kickstart the celebrations.

Last year, the Donegal man won the Macra National Talent competition in the musical instrument category.

“They give you a booklet of all the category winners down through the years. It was nice to get Inishowen written in it, because you have Cork, Limerick, Meath and different counties in it, but very little from Donegal, so it was nice to get another stamp in the Donegal books.”

Just in his early 20s, Fergal has accomplished a lot in life so far, from music to a master’s and sport, and he has taken it all in his stride.

On the traditional music front, he claims to be finished competing, well, sort of ...

“I’m finished competing now, one All-Ireland is enough – unless it’s a band or a trio or a duet.”

Watch this space.

Read more

Longford, lyrics and the land

Homegrown talent: Little Hours