Sir, - Fintan Vallely is concerned for the future of Scoil Samhraidh
Will Clancy ("The Willie Week", July 5th). He need have no fear that
BLAS, the University of Limerick International Summer School in Irish
Traditional Music and Dance, will in any way damage what has been achieved over 25 excellent years by the Miltown Malbay school.
The "Willie Week" produces an experience of traditional music which BLAS would do well to work with, rather than compete against.
However, a university-based summer school can network internationally through the worldwide community of universities in a way which may well complement the pioneering work which the Willie Clancy event has done so well and so generously for the Irish community of musicians and dancers throughout the world.
At this year's school in Miltown, I noted that the enrolment at the all-important classes which form its heart had increased once again. Walking through St Joseph's Secondary School at Spanish Point, the location of these classes, I was struck by the vibrancy of all that was taking place. Set dancers in the corridors, fiddle classes with tiny tots leaning out towards the music's source, local gods
Junior Crehan and Bobby Casey, fiddles in hand, moving proudly between the rooms as if carrying something precious within them.
Later that night an informal session at The Crosses of Annagh had
Altan's Mairead Ni Mhaoinaigh, Sharon Shannon, and a host of music notables from throughout the country sharing tunes in a way that allowed participation by three 12-year-old fiddlers.
The Willie Clancy School is in many ways what a university musical energy might be - confident in its local knowledge, while welcoming international interest, and working out of its own community to make an international contribution to knowledge. For that reason, as well as others, BLAS looks to the Clancy School as an inspired friend in a common journey. In so doing, it also restores to an Irish university campus after a gap of 28 years an engagement with that stream of musical educational exploration - the very first international summer school took place under Sean O Riada, Aloys
Fleischmann, and Pilib O Loaghaire in University College Cork in
1970. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O SUILLEABHAIN,
Irish World Music Centre,
University of Limerick