Michael O'Shea has been played on NTS over 40 times, featured on 47 episodes and was first played on 2 May 2016.

Michael O’Shea (11 July 1947 - 18 December 1991) was an experimental folk musician from Newry, Northern Ireland, who played a unique handmade string instrument he called “Mo Chara” (Irish for “My Friend”), loosely based on the blueprints for a North African zither. The instrument had seventeen main strings, with six more sympathetic strings which added a profound resonance similar to a sitar. It typically played by O'Shea with a pair of sticks (often chopsticks, drumsticks, or paintbrush handles)

After years as…