As 40,000 hurling fans packed into Croke Park on Sunday, one might be forgiven for wondering what could be the difference between watching 30 men on a field chase a ball versus watching five musicians play instruments in the same space.
Both sets of fans would invariably be shouting and singing indiscriminately for roughly an hour. Both sets of fans would likely jump up and down. Both would no doubt give each other a euphoric thump on the back or shake a fist in the air during proceedings.
But music performances can still only host a maximum of 500 people, while the biggest day of the year for Irish sport attracted 40,000.
While our national sports have been put on a pedestal as a source of solace and sustenance during Covid, the country's creative outlets have languished in second place
The biggest day of the year for Irish music was cancelled. Both the All-Ireland Fleadh – the biggest annual competition for traditional Irish music – and the country’s biggest music festival, Electric Picnic, have been given the boot again this year. Yet GAA plays on.
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Ireland’s musical talents are world famous and revered across the globe. Back home, though, we seem to take our musicians for granted.
While our national sports have been put on a pedestal as a source of solace and sustenance during Covid, the country’s creative outlets have languished in second place: treated as unnecessary, a luxury, an excess, and diminished and disregarded as a profession – as if people didn’t equally train for decades to become the masterful musicians they are now, just like sportspeople.
Irish people apparently don’t need creative outlets. No music for us in the end stages of a pandemic. We only need sport. Don’t like sport? Tough! It’s all you’re getting.
Ads on TV sponsored by AIB, Ireland’s biggest bank, let us know that The Championship Is On. No other form of entertainment is “on”, though. Just sport.
The GAA Minor tournaments are wittily advertised with the slogan This Is Major. Neither a major nor a minor scale, however, will be played on an instrument anytime soon to more than 500 people as the Government drags its feet on any let-up of restrictions for the entertainment and live music sector.
It’s not a level playing field in any respect – it’s 40,000 of one and 500 of another.
So what is it? Does the meek and mild nature of musicians to make love, not war – those sensitive creative souls – prevent a growing fury on this? Is there simply more fight in sportspeople than musicians?
Musicians aren't lucky enough to have the backing of a large unified body and a championship sponsored by a financial institution and a major insurance company
Sport easily organises into branches. The country’s musicians aren’t lucky enough to have the backing of a large unified body and a championship sponsored by a financial institution and a major insurance company.
Musicians don’t have one big union to fight their corner. They’re easily fobbed off. Let them tip away at home in the spare room, have an auld practise by themselves and be grateful if they can maybe play a few notes together in 2022. Sure it’s only music.
Why does Ireland not value its musicians, and why is it taking so long for the Government to see the injustice at play? Is it down to bias among Ministers?
To try to understand the unfair emphasis put on sports and the unjust advantage given for the GAA, we could examine the stronghold the association has in Ireland. Ingrained in Irish culture, we can look to its sense of belonging in parishes going back decades and centuries; firmly rooted in family and community. It’s understandable.
Yet this does not fully explain the discrepancy in attitudes. Ireland’s corresponding traditional music association, Comhaltas, hails from 1951, and trad music also goes back centuries before that, learned by ear and passed down through generations. Music is as tied in with Ireland’s culture as sport is, with a deep community aspect.
Go back even further, and kicking a ball or humming a tune are surely two of the earliest, most primal, pastimes known to man.
One-all, to borrow a sporting term.
GAA was given elite status last year to “lift the spirits” of the Irish nation during the pandemic. So why would it seem that the Government has decided that only sports fans deserve an outlet for their mental health? With a slew of championship games leading up to the All-Ireland finals, one would imagine that a commensurate amount of gigs could also be offered as a “morale boost” for those not interested in watching sports.
How exactly does one determine that sport is somehow more essential than music? Was there a test to figure it out? If 40,000 people can turn up to a match in the middle of summer, why not allow 40,000 to a one-off concert to support the music industry and enjoy some songs?
We should challenge the disturbing idea that one form of culture has been chosen definitively over another as more important
So why is GAA seen as the Holy Grail for the Irish psyche? Could it be simply down to whichever foundation has the most money and the hardest hitters behind it? Versus whichever can be beaten down easiest and with less resistance?
As concerts take place in the UK and even nightclubs start to open in many European countries, Ireland, with one of the highest vaccination rates on the continent, suffers on. Our musicians can play to a pitiful 200-500 people outside. (But not yet in pubs). Irish bands will soon go on tour in Europe and the US, but can’t play in their home country.
Ireland’s musicians just want to be treated fairly, as fairly as their fellow sportspeople. We all know these are not frontline jobs. Neither are essential services like supermarkets, hospitals or schools. They are both forms of entertainment.
We should value our national pastimes equally. Not just our sportspeople, but our musicians, trying to make a living. Our music-loving population, desperate to go to a concert.
And we should challenge the very disturbing idea that one form of culture has been chosen definitively over another as more important, more valuable, more worthwhile and more esteemed by a small group of people in power.
This is not the last such sporting event to be held. In two weeks’ time 40,000 people will once again congregate for a glorious day of sporting action in a stadium in north Dublin. But as for musicians getting to play a decent gig anytime soon? As far as the Government is concerned – well, they can whistle for it.
Karen McHugh is a musician and journalist