TO ADAPT a famous aphorism of the (very) late Miss Jane Austen, it seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that Arklow is a disaster zone, writes PETER THOMPSON
When I announced my intention of moving to this south Wicklow town, having been badly mauled by the Celtic Tiger in 2000 when the rent on my Dublin apartment was doubled (what a very long time ago that was), an old friend of mine, a salesman who had been down every boreen in Ireland, remarked in warning: “Arklow, Peter! In some places in this country people are just crackers, but in Arklow, they’re cream crackers!” A few years later, deep in psychotherapy, I found that my therapist seemed to regard it as a precondition of recovering my mental health that I get out of the place, and in fact he probably still does.
The reasons for this jaundiced view of the metropolis of the Avoca are, unfortunately, plentiful. The town, promised a sewerage system in 1988, still hasn’t got one. What it does have is an appalling drug abuse problem and high unemployment.
Because of the tribal brutalities of our PR voting system, Arklow has never had its own TD to fight its corner in the places that matter.
But if you live in Arklow, as I continue to do, you come to recognise that there is a tremendous spirit here, a sense of community which, in my view, is rich in potential. And one of the chief expressions of this spirit is the Arklow Music Festival. This year’s event, which begins next Friday, celebrates 40 years of very real achievement by ordinary townspeople who give up countless hours of their own time year after year to make it happen.
Over the years the music festival has played host to many outstanding musicians and singers, including Ronan Tynan and Patricia Cahill, the Guinness and Goethe Institute choirs,Our Lady’s Choral Society and many leading Irish classical musicians.
It has expanded over the years to its present level of 6,000 competitors, who come from all over Ireland, many of them doing “dummy runs” for the Feis Ceoil at Easter, making the Arklow Music Festival the second largest of its kind in Ireland, after the Feis.
The festival had modest beginnings in the 1960s when a local curate, Fr Paddy Ryan, asked Michael Byrne, an Arklow-based teacher, to start a youth choir. Michael got 18 good boy singers from the local youth club and made an EP with them. Recently he discovered the original tapes of this recording (“with a quarter of an inch of dust on them”), together with others he made at the time, on an old reel-to-reel machine and they have been transferred to CD.
The resulting album of sacred and folk songs, complete with a photograph of the Arklow lads in sailor suits taken c. 1965, is a snapshot of a more innocent age. The boys’ voices have an unpolished clarity that is utterly charming. The CD is for sale from various local outlets for €10, with proceeds going to charity.
Also very significant in those days was the presence at St Mary’s College, the local Sisters of Mercy school, of one of the great unsung heroines of Irish music, Sr Agnes Cecilia Nolan, now aged 94, and in retirement. Her girls’ choir was, says Michael Byrne, “easily the best school choir in the country”. Sister Agnes had herself been a soprano gold medallist at the Feis, and was later an adjudicator at both the Cork Choral Festival and the Welsh Eisteddfod.
After notable successes by both choirs at feiseanna around Ireland, the idea of a festival was mooted one evening in 1969 by two Arklow ladies: May Kavanagh, who was to serve many years as honorary secretary, and a Mrs Wadden, mother of one of the boy choristers, Jim Wadden. The following year, the new festival was launched by the late Earl of Wicklow as a two-day event staged over a weekend.
Distinguished adjudicators over the years have included A.J. Potter, Brian Boydell and Seoirse Bodley.
In truth, the festival was tapping into a rich mine for, like many places with their backs to the wall, Arklow was and is rich in music. It is not for nothing that one of Van Morrison’s most celebrated songs is The Streets of Arklow. The greatly talented musicians the town has produced include the late Jim Tyrell of the Jim Tyrell Trio of the showband era, and the late Danny Kenny, a dear friend of mine, a great guitarist who regularly gigged with Declan Synnott.
The town supports three bands and they have made their marks internationally. The Arklow Shipping Silver Band came second in the European Championships in 2006, and St Colmcille’s Pipe Band won the World Championship at grade three level of the Irish and Scottish Pipe Band Association in 2007, and was promoted to grade two. The town’s Youth Marching Band plays regularly at St Patrick’s Day events in London and Birmingham, and this year the children will tour Canada.
Long-cherished hopes of building a proper concert hall in the town are unlikely to be realised in current circumstances. But the bands play on, and the performers perform.
For entrance fees as low as €2, you can enjoy hearing them during the festival at various venues in the town, and I hope you will find the time to do so.
The festival runs from February 27th until March 8th.