KILLIAN MCKENNA

Award Year: 2011

Course: Electrical Engineering

Activities: Jazz Society

Occupation: PhD Candidate, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

I was once told at UCD that I had brought “cool charms to a new level in Belfield”. I can’t say being told I’m cool is a regular occurrence, or an occurrence at all for that matter, but it certainly left an indelible impression when it was none other than President Dr Hugh Brady who made the assertion to a full O’Reilly Hall.

It was 2011, the year I was privileged enough to be part of an effort to reanimate the syncopated foot tapping, finger-clicking, swinging pulse of the UCD Jazz Society. Frank Zappa once said “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny” and things certainly smelt funny on campus with a distinct Eau De Pop, Rock, and other such aromas. Inspired by a weathered old poster of Ghandi proclaiming “Be the change you want to see”, placed in no finer an establishment than the old pool hall known as the Trap, I decided to instigate a jazz revolution.

Cobbled together in the flurry of Freshers’ Week and with a bit of bribery in the form of plastic kazoos and t-shirts ‘Team Jazz’ was formed. It was their mission to turn that UCD jazzy smell from funny to funky. With a lethal cocktail of ignorance and unabashed ambition we pledged to recruit 1,000 members, start the first ever UCD Jazz Big Band, start the inaugural UCD Jazz Festival, and have no less than a keyboard and drum kit purchased before the college year was out.

But no. We didn’t recruit 1,000 members. Nor did we start UCD’s first Jazz Big Band. Or even get a keyboard - at least not that year. To continue the run of quotes (this one from a rival alma mater), it was a case of “ever tried, ever failed, no matter…” We tried again and failed again, but at each fail the sound of trumpeting jazz increased a little.

Up from the ashes of our failures rose the UCD Jazz Ensembles, a format that has stuck to this day, plaguing events and functions with renditions of Green Onions, the theme from Peter Gunn, and the occasional Autumn Leaves. With additional support from UCD we did manage to purchase a rusty old drum kit that had heaps of character, and which I guess might have too much character at this stage. And yes, we did manage to kick off UCD Jazz Festival; a festival Irish jazz drumming legend Kevin Brady said in subsequent years was starting to “turn heads as the biggest student Jazz Festival.”

Most importantly we had the students of UCD playing and immersing themselves in a music that, as drumming legend Art Blakey once put it, “washes away the dust of everyday life”, and I guess that’s a bit, how should one put it? Cool.