Arts Bill Assistance - Where 

Submission to The Joint Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language on the Traditional Music of Ireland

8. Where is assistance needed?

Assistance is most need in the areas referred to in the previous section, the subsidiary activities.

• The provision of access to archives creates a resource that feeds directly into the tradition and enriches it over and over again. By allowing access to the repertoires of all periods and all regions, the complexity of the tradition is deepened and extended, and its value as an artistic activity increased.
• The facilitation of access to materials and skills for the manufacture and repair of instruments and accoutrements would likewise increase the sheer interest of the music. At present many musicians play on old or imported instruments because, depending on the instrument, the skills to make them either have been lost or were never here in the first place. The prohibitive cost of good instruments deters many people from becoming involved with the music.
• The creation of new material within the tradition is essential to its long-term viability. This is an activity that has really only developed in the last ten to twenty years. At least two decades of revival activity had to go by before the practise of creating new items became anyway commonplace. It is difficult to legislate for creativity but any measures that have the effect of maintaining the image and reality of a vibrant living music will help to underwrite the conditions in which such creativity will naturally take place.
• The area of copyright is an extremely important one. Irish music has existed for generations as a "commons" over which no one has exclusive rights. A by-product of the recent increase in popularity has been the attempts by interests such as recording companies and artists' rights organisations to exercise commercial control over traditional material and to exact a financial price for its performance. This is an area where the Oireachtas is directly relevant. The question should be examined and a final legislative solution to this problem provided. The legislation should be informed by the realisation that traditional music is a very different thing to commercial music.
• The collection of source material has provided a resource that has inspired and which underpins the current revival. Each new generation throws up its own crop of performers that make a significant contribution to the tradition through their accomplishment or creativity. These are rarely the ones that catch the attention of the media. The documenting of such players will always be an essential task.
• The broadening of the public base of appreciation for traditional music is an important objective. The broadcasting of genuine, un-sweetened, un-diluted traditional music would assist this aim. This has been done in the past with varying degrees of success. However such programming has always been seen as at best minority-interest, at worst catering for cranks. It is always one of the first casualties of ratings wars as different stations compete to gain and hold advertising revenue. It should be acknowledged a cause of shame that our State-run media has consistently failed to afford reasonable air-time to a national music that attracts attention from all over the world.
• Research into the production of reliable, cheap instruments and supplies would be of enormous benefit to the spreading of access to the music. For example, the musical properties of the uilleann pipes are imperfectly understood. Present-day makers try to reproduce the characteristics of good old sets, but there is no consensus about the best way to do this as the factors which affect the sound production and tuning of this instrument have not all been identified and described.
• Centres of research and of other activities such as publication and teaching should be encouraged and supported in so far as they serve the interests of the music alone, and not any other agendas. Ireland's traditional music is so varied and complex that a strong case can be made for the support of one, or several, centres catering for each different genre and/or instrument. As mentioned above, several such centres already exist. In other cases groups have been formed to promote particular issues but they do not yet have the resources to do so properly. All such ground-up ventures are worthy of support. Centres, where they exist, should be afforded the funding to enable them to fulfil their objectives. Non-centre based groups should be considered as the possible basis upon which to create centres. In respect of the uilleann pipes and the harp, the two instruments archetypically associated with Irish traditional music, National centres, under the control of players, should be a focus of funding.
• The provision of classes by experienced teachers should be supported, where necessary. In general students have always been expected to pay for classes and there is no justification for abandoning this principal. There is justification for supporting the provision of classes for children who could not otherwise afford them, or in communities where there is little penetration by traditional music, as a way of increasing their exposure to the music. The provision of master-classes is also an area where public funding would be useful and welcome.
• The publication of material in all mediums is an activity that repays investment many times over. A few thousand pounds spent on the publication of a tune collection or a video tutor may provide many thousands of performers with a tool to further their craft. The costs of such activities are quite modest, and the benefits incalculable. We do not advocate support for the publication of purely commercial items, although there can often be sound reasons for supporting these too.

 

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