“It’s a way of preserving our Irish music” - Killasser craftsman maintains Irish handmade flute tradition

ON a quiet stretch of road in Killasser in east Mayo, the sound of drilling, sanding, and fine-tuning carries from a small workshop where tradition continues. Here, works Michael Cronnolly, an authentic Irish flute handcrafter.

For more than four decades, flute-making was a passion pursued after hours.

“I worked for Mayo County Council for 43 years,” he told The Mayo News. “I spent my evening making flutes, but I had no money to buy a machine, so I made them by hand, which was a very slow job.”

From the beginning

MICHAEL’S fascination with music began long before he owned an instrument. As a child of eight or nine years old, he would watch the local pipe band rehearse for St Patrick’s Day parades. With no access to a flute of his own, Michael decided to take matters into his own hands.

At the end of his garden stood an elderberry bush. The soft centre of it stems could be hollowed out with a screwdriver. “We would put holes in that and be playing away on it,” he says. “I suppose that’s how I got into flutes anyway.”

When he later joined a band called ‘The Killasser Trio’, he still had no flute of his own. So again, he decided to take on the project. But this time it was a little different.

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Using old wheel spokes made of oak, which he estimates to be 100 to 150 years old, he drilled the bore with a long-handled auger. The internal taper was shaped by hand using a steel rod wrapped in sandpaper. The flute was crafted in two pieces.

“I used that flute for playing in the band, and to this day I still have it here.”

Word began to spread. Soon, others wanted instruments of their own. Without machinery, each flute took weeks to complete, with Michael spending his evenings and weekends meeting demand. Musicians went on to win competitions playing Cronnolly’s handmade creations.

Retirement changed everything. With savings behind him, Cronnolly invested in proper lathes and reamers. Production became faster - two days for a flute instead of weeks - but the process remained manual.

“We take a piece of wood, drill and cut it, and put tapers on it. It’s all handmade,” he explains. The machinery offers no shortcuts as such: “You just get the feel for it.”

The ‘feel’ that Michael describes is the resistance of wood, the balance of bore and taper. Fitting rings and joints requires meticulous care.

Cronnolly initially worked with blackwood and rosewood primarily, though both are increasingly scarce. In response, he became one of the first Irish makers to experiment with polymer.

“I think I was the first person to use polymer, and they’re all at it now,” he says. “The polymer that I use isn’t an engineering polymer, it’s a medical polymer. They use it in hospitals, so there is no harm to health at all.”

So how does sound compare between wood and polymer?

“I think there’s as good a sound out of the polymer as there is out of the wood. Most flute players would never notice the difference in sound whatsoever.”

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Keeping tradition alive

MICHAEL is determined to keep tradition alive by passing on his skill set.

“I’m trying to teach my nephew now, because, well, I suppose I’m an old man in a hurry,” he laughed.

“Handcraft is disappearing,” he says. “What I have, I put an awful lot of time into my work in my lifetime, and I would like to see that carried on because it should be a shame to lose these crafts.”

In an age when an instrument can be bought instantaneously online with just a click, often by mass production overseas, the economics of handcraft are challenging.

However, Michael believes his customers are buying more than an object: “The people coming to me know that a handmade flute is better than any flute you buy in any shop. At least when you’re buying it off me, they know where I am if anything goes wrong with it. That’s worth an awful lot.”

When Irish traditional music has never been more visible, the making of the instrument is often left behind.

Michael sees his work as part of cultural preservation. “It’s a way of preserving our Irish music. Irish music is getting very big at the moment.”

Having featured on RTÉ’s nationwide last Friday evening, Michael’s work is far from forgotten, despite how unique it might have become. You can watch a re-run of Nationwide on the RTÉ Player.