The National Endowment for the Arts is a United States government agency which makes annual awards to people who have made an outstanding contribution to folklore. Known as National Heritage Fellowships, they are the American "Oscars" of traditional arts such as storytelling, music and dance. The Connemara-born seannos singer Joe Heaney received one in 1982, the inaugural year of the awards. Michael Flatley received one in 1988. This year's National Heritage Fellowship recipients include an African-American gospel singer from North Carolina, a tap-dancer from Massachusetts, an fiddler from Missouri, a drummer from California and a banjo-player and singer from Limerick.
Folk Revival
If you are of a certain age you will remember Mick Moloney. He was part of the folk revival in Dublin in the late 1960s and played in clubs such as the Old Triangle, the 95, the Coffee Kitchen and the Universal.
He later joined the Johnstons and had a number one hit record with Ewan MacColl's Travelling People. The Johnstons were the bridge between the boozy ballads and the more subtle approaches of folk musicians in Britain and the US. Lucy and Adi Johnston and Paul Brady completed the group. Mick also played with Emmet Spiceland, of which Donal Lunny was a member.
The Johnstons moved to England and spent five years touring the English folk club circuit at a time when there were more than 600 clubs on the go. The group was popular and made a good living.
In 1973, Mick Moloney made a brave and wise decision. Abandoning the excitement of show business, he applied to the University of Pennsylvania to complete a doctorate in folklore. There he became friends with Kenny Goldstein, chairman of the Folklore Department at the University of Philadelphia and also involved in running the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
"He had the biggest library of Irish folklore that I had ever seen or even heard of. So I got interested in the academic study of folklore," Mick says. He had, of course, brought his banjo with him and before long he had explored the Irish music scene in the United States. Someone remarked a few years ago: "Nothing moves in Irish-American traditional music circles without Mick Moloney having a hand in it." And it is generally acknowledged that no one played a bigger role in the revival of Irish traditional music in America in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mick organised countless concerts and festivals and recorded many albums with a variety of musical partners. His "Green Fields of America" ensemble presented Irish music and dance to audiences all over America and even as far away as Africa.
Classic recordings
He also produced dozens of recordings for other musicians as well as reissues of classic recordings from the 78 r.p.m. era. He taught folklore at Villanova University in Philadelphia and founded the Irish Week - a week of musical instruction - at the Augusta Centre in West Virginia. He had originally intended staying in the US for only a couple of years but he was hired by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington to put together the Irish component of the 1976 Bicentennial Festival of American Folklife.
"That research really opened all the doors to me and enabled me to find out what a wealth of Irish music there was in America," he says. In the 1970s, the Irish traditional scene in the US was very much behind closed doors. Musicians played in each other's houses. "It was almost a sub-culture, even in the Irish community itself. It was essentially an emigrant tradition."
Then second- and third-generation Irish-Americans started playing the music. "And that was a very significant shift. Because if that hadn't happened, you could have been looking at a dying tradition, which happens to a lot of ethnic cultures in America," Moloney says. And, he believes, the interest from Irish-Americans in their roots and heritage has at last given the music its full recognition.
He is still as enthusiastic about Irish-American traditional music as when he first went to the US. "When I first heard all this great art I got very excited. And I just wanted other people to know how great it was."
Tours of Ireland
He is in the process of recording an album of Irish-American songs, mostly from 1850 to 1900 - music from minstrelsy and vaudeville. He is also
putting the finishing touches to a book - Irish Music in America: Continuity and Change - and finds himself constantly acting as a consultant in Irish-American educational programmes.
On top of all that, he organises tours of Ireland. "What started as a hobby has become a small business for me," he says. "I am meeting regularly with people I knew in the 1960s and they now keep me in touch with the traditional scene over here."
Mick Moloney's National Heritage Fellowship, which comes with a cheque for $10,000, will be presented by Mrs Hillary Clinton at the White House this autumn. Before he goes to Washington for the awards ceremony and concert, Mick will give a lecture at the Merriman Summer School in Lisdoonvarna in late August, entitled "Songs of Irish Emigration and Settlement in the United States".