With over 100,000 people expected to descend on Ballina for the 48th All-Ireland Fleadh in two weeks' time, its organising body, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, and its ard-stiurthoir, or director, Labhras O Murchu, find themselves at an interesting juncture. Through some rocky years at the centre of both political and artistic storms, Comhaltas is still managing to grow, is planting new cultural centres around the country, and as O Murchu points out, recently received praise from the likes of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac.
In O Murchu's home town of Cashel, a number of Comhaltas functions (courses in music, and performance skills), the Irish Family History Foundation (of which he is Chairman), and his wife's performance troupe of Bru Boru are housed in a glittering white complex of the same name; where over 14 weeks in the summer, the troupe play five nights a week.
After a decade angling and campaigning for the Senate as a Fianna Failer, O Murchu celebrates one year in office this month, while his wife Una, the hands-on director of Bru Boru and a Comhaltas stalwart, was recently appointed to the new Arts Council.
The Bru Boru building, which faced some planning permission struggles, is located in a landscaped gully at the foot of the stark Rock of Cashel. Despite being eight years old, it is utterly spotless, from its restaurant, no-smoking bar and teach ceoil (for informal family-style sessions) to the touristy craft shop down to its 300-seat theatre, which during the winter hosts touring productions and conferences. It cost "the bones of two million," and, remarkably, has finally been paid for, through rental, tickets and crafts sales, fund-raising and revenue from "tea and scones" - much of it on the back of the selfless voluntary work which Comhaltas is known for.
There's a canny, measured energy to Labhras O Murchu's conversation these days, in his low, even, gravelly voice; a groomed politician who has headed Comhaltas since he was elected President in 1968. Between his senatorial duties, speech engagements and Comhaltas, he seems to spend most of his time nowadays on the road. Impeccably dressed in white shirts and dark blue suits, he has the air of a man whose time has come; the grassroots touch of the wide grin often spreading across his lantern jaw, or the eyes lighting up under the bushy eyebrows whenever a familiar face hoves into view.
I went down to see the Bru Boru performance, an energetic musical tableau played in a naively painted castle set, with flutes, fiddles and accordions ranged around the centrepiece of the harp. The costumes, designed by Joan Bergin, have left behind the sawn-off peasant breeches and heavily spangled Celtic designs of old, but they are still uniforms: sensible, floral dresses for the ladies, black waistcoat and trousers for the men and boys.
As a showpiece of music, song and dance - even if some of the musicians are teenagers - the solo playing reaches a standard which is often masked during the unison playing. And you'd want to be tone-deaf not to pick up on the Matt Molloy ambitions in the star turns of young Darragh Pattwell's flute, let alone the enormous, ingenious personality and humour of veteran accordionist and lilter Bobby Gardiner.
Apart from the singing of Sally Gardens, and The Dear Little Isle sung manfully by one 15 year-old, there is little real pandering to tourism in the show. Particularly explosive are the step dancers (in high demand in the "flying squads" of Riverdance, Gael Force and Chieftains tours), who violently batter sparks out of the stage. While the fists are bunched rigid by the side - particularly by the younger dancers - the energy is wild, particularly when they pile on the special effects (strobe, u-v light, smoke machines) with one girl taking off like a demented and deconstructed Alice in Wonderland. I was more than impressed. It was a most peculiar view of a movement which, most significantly through its education programmes, continues to feed the booming revival of traditional music and dance, with the social and competitive features of the county and provincial fleadhs which feed into the annual All-Ireland.
Mind you, Comhaltas is not without its controversy, even among the musicians who "came up through" its classes, summer schools and fleadhanna, who often accuse Comhaltas of musical antiquarianism in canonising a narrow repertoire; favouring certain regional styles to the detriment of others; and even failing to set certain standards in its adjudicators of some of the competitive events.
Many musicians also criticise the presentation of the music, and indeed the interpretation of "tradition" - a topic which immediately strays onto the argumentative turf of its presentation of Irish identity: a complex of ideas of temperance and religion, romantic and cultural nationalism, all set against a political backdrop of, you could argue, republicanism.
Although Comhaltas's constitution defines it as non-political, O Murchu's public statements over the years have often mired the organisation in controversy, causing bitter internal dissension and high-level expulsions from the ard-chomhairle. And people both within and outside Comhaltas have long memories: how the ard-chomhairle called off the 1971 Fleadh in Listowel after the introduction of internment in the North (apart from the competitions, it largely went ahead).
He has enthusiastically spoken out for various causes, with values as traditional as the music: pronouncements on abortion during referenda, and the Long Kesh Hunger Strikers in 1981. In 1977, he was famously detained overnight in Britain, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, for refusing to translate his name into English, and says that after a similar incident a decade later, he received a guarantee that no Irish person would suffer such an indignity again.
His concerns were with issues of civil rights, he says, although he adds: "I've never hidden the fact that I'm republican, I don't see why I should. I think we should all be honest in our views."
However, many regard him as shooting himself squarely in the foot in his pronouncements on RTE Radio's Morning Ireland in support of Fr Patrick Ryan, the priest at the centre of an extradition controversy when he was arrested on explosive charges in 1988. Although it scuppered his campaign for the Senate at that time, O Murchu has become more groomed in his utterances - although in the current issue of Treoir, the old fire is evident as he addresses the issue of IMRO attempting to copyright traditional music.
Born Larry Murphy in 1939 to an English mother and a father once active in the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the old IRA, he changed his name by deed poll as a teenager to its current form. Around that time, he set up Cumann an Phiarsaigh dedicated to the ideals of Patrick Pearse, Irish language drama, and ceili dancing. He was interned in the Curragh in the late 1950s - according to himself, for refusing to account for his whereabouts as a matter of principle.
After four years as an organiser for Conradh na Gaeilge, he took over at Comhaltas in a two-room office in Harcourt Street in 1968. While not a musician himself, he has battled the organisation through the development of the Monkstown HQ with its purpose-built theatre, and fostering the enormous support it enjoys in its "provinces" in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and Britain.
He is sanguine about the widespread fragmentation of the traditional music scene and the explosion of summer schools (led by the long-established, non-competitive Willie Clancy week in Miltown Malbay), or other independent organisations whose functions could be said to duplicate those of Comhaltas, such as the Traditional Music Archive, or na Piobairi Uilleann. As one musician said, "Comhaltas was often seen as trying to contain it, which is just impossible."
Much of this can be said to come from O Murchu's own style in running Comhaltas. Nowadays, he has his eyes firmly set on the political career, which sees him tying in with delegations and functions in the North, and inviting PUP leader David Irvine to speak at the Culturlann in Monkstown.
"I'd love to think that in the context of the all-Ireland bodies, that culture and art will enjoy a priority rating. I think Comhaltas is exceptionally well-poised North and South to play a role in the peace process. In terms of cross community activities in the North, I would particularly single out the Presbyterian faith as playing a strong role, and indeed the Derry and Antrim's Fiddlers' Association, who have always had a representative on our central council right through the Troubles and to this very day."
Comhaltas now attracts £205,000 core funding directly from the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. Meanwhile, after a decade and a half of receiving no funding from the Arts Council, things may well have changed with Una's Ni Mhurchu's appointment. "We obviously will be making our approaches, because I think we've a lot to offer. Irish traditional music is very much in vogue at the moment, and I think anybody interested in the art, whether a statutory body or otherwise, would need to cultivate community activities and to ensure that those roots are nourished, particularly in areas like our very broad educational programme."
With regard to recent remarks quoted in the press about "a whooping and a hollering" Arts Council, O Murchu notes with equanimity: "We don't mind that perception. Una is very much her own person, and virtually everyone on the council has their own particular expertise, and I'd be surprised if they don't reflect that. I just resent the suggestion that someone from Comhaltas shouldn't be on the Arts Council, that they're somehow less suited to serve on a statutory body - which is an elitist position, isn't it?"
