Think of hurls or hurleys, depending on what neck of the woods you hail from, and it’s rare you would make any connection between the slender stick of ash and musical performance.

However, a group of children in Tipperary have married their love of sport with music over the past 12 months. This has culminated in a hurl orchestra that provides the backing track to a unique composition that was played to the masses at the home of hurling, Semple Stadium in recent weeks.

‘Sounds of Semple’ is an original song, written and performed by the pupils of St Colmcille’s National School and St Joseph’s National School, both in Templemore, in collaboration with the Music Generation Trad ensemble, with help from Hothouse Flowers musician and song writer Peter O’Toole.

It was played during the Munster Senior Hurling Championship match between Tipperary and Cork last month, bringing huge delight and pride to the young performers involved.

The project began as a pilot scheme with the boys of St Colmcille’s in April 2023, with the fifth and sixth class girls from St Joseph’s coming on board last November.

Cathal Byrne (10), a fourth class pupil at St Colmcille’s, is hugely proud of ‘Sounds of Semple’. “The best part was using our hurleys to make different sounds and rhythms for the song and Niamh the music teacher was great and taught us so many new things,” he says. “It was a lot of work but I’m really proud of the song and the effort we put in turned out to be really cool.”

Cathal’s mother Mairin says the experience has given him a confidence she hadn’t seen before. “He would come in from school so delighted with himself because being a part of something so special meant a lot to him.

“To be the first group to do something as big as this, and for the kids themselves to have come up with the idea and then composed it and performed it was just huge for them all. Even the launch night, where all the parents and grandparents were invited to a local hotel with all the dignitaries from Music Generation and the Education and Training Board, it was a lovely occasion,” she says.

Giants of the Industry

Aidan O’Donnell, Music Development Officer for Music Generation Tipperary, explains the joy behind the project.

“We had almost 200 children involved with the project, working alongside professional musicians, to make music from bodhráns, hurls, fiddles and tin whistles,” he says.

“Peter O’Toole wrote and performed the song with us and we also had Sean Keegan as our sound engineer on location. These are giants of the industry so to have the children exposed to that level of talent and professionalism was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The St Colmcille boys had a head start on the project, the idea was first floated as they were coming to the end of the school year, in May 2023. By the time a new academic year was under way last September, the children were immersed in the quest to compose and perform a song using their hurls.

“When we started out, the boys took serious ownership of it and the whole concept of a hurl orchestra came from them as they discovered the different sounds they could make from something they had previously only associated with sport,” says Aidan.

“We knew we had something interesting when the children were figuring out different beats depending on the distances they passed the sliotar from and they were composing music and conducting themselves throughout the whole project. The girls came on board last November and they added another dimension to the project, but every single child had distinct, vivid images of the epic experience that is the big match in Semple, which encouraged their creativity.

“They went from clashing hurls against a wall to having their music, which included a Tipperary Haka, played to a crowd of 40,000 people. This was a gateway to music through sport and delivered a unique crossover between the two. The children’s love of the game of hurling was translated into music and crossed back into sport in that their rhythm skills played back into their hurling.”

Tipp Haka

Music educator with Music Generation Tipperary Niamh Meehan Fenton says that after a reluctant start, the boys discovered their love of using hurls for something other than hitting sliotars. “I did a full year working with the boys to introduce different instruments, but they were getting bored with the music and when I asked them what they would rather be doing, they said hurling,” she says.

“So, I told them to go get their hurls and to bring one for me and we started working on coming up with our own rhythms. They transferred what they had learned in the music programme to the hurls, and it basically went from there. We practiced the rhythms on other instruments and then I approached Aidan and suggested we get someone to write a song around what we had come up with.”

The call went out to Peter O’Toole who travelled down to the school and wrote a song around the 4:4 rhythm the children had come up with.

“The Tipp Haka part was all down to the kids who incorporated the whole game experience, along with whistles and chants into the song,” says Niamh. “The girls were brought in to raise the song to another level and they’re as hurling mad as the boys so it worked really well. Conor Doyle (St Colmcille’s NS) and Elaine Foley (St Joseph’s NS), the two principals worked very closely on this and it shows and it’s even filtered through to other schools in the county. I visited a national school in Rossmore recently where the junior and senior infant children had learned the song off and performed it for me, so we’re hoping it can become an anthem.”

Peter O’Toole, who also acts as a Music Educator with Music Generation, praised the children for the ‘magical thing they’ve done’. “We brought them in class by class and they all picked up the chorus, Arms of the County, really quickly,” he says. “There were other lines in the song that they also identified with so it was a brilliant experience and the hope is that other schools will see it and want to do something similar.”

Aidan added that the experience had proven that music is accessible to everyone, once the approach taken is all inclusive. “Music Generation is now involved with 60 schools across Tipperary and the key thing for us is that the children enjoy music, it’s something they play, not practice,” he says.

“ ‘Sounds of Semple’ takes away a barrier to music education and has created a spark for those children who otherwise may never have thought music was for them.”