Sir, - I refer to Richard Pine's article "The Politics of Irish Music" (The Irish Times, October 31st). Prof Harry White uses the specious Anglo-Irish argument to degrade traditional music. I would think that traditional music was very fortunate not to have become Anglicised. It is a tralatitious entity, orally and aurally transmitted like natural language, and is generally not amenable to academic pursuit. As a traditional musician myself for 35 years, I venture to suggest that the best traditional musicians are not music academics. There is an old saying (seanfhocal), "Is treise duchas na oiliunt". That which is natural to you is better than education in a particular area.
Prof White suggests implicitly that traditional music greatly lacks credibility or is outmoded because it has not been fully academised, Anglicised or Europeanised. How about the notion of ethnomusicology or protecting the identity of traditional music in a pluralist Europe? I would not be satisfied with Prof White's ipse dixit.
For some time now, academics and media commentators (those who do not play traditional music) have been asserting that traditional music is in a condition of stasis. In my view, these people are projecting their post-colonial inferiority onto traditional music. They love to talk about the grandiose notions of European and world music as a form of overcompensation for this unconscious inferiority. Traditional music is flourishing at the moment. It is stagnant only to those who do not play it and have no influence on it.
I say that one can be fully European, even world-wide, in one's outlook and love traditional Irish music at the same time. - Yours, etc., Maurice McKenna,
Cooleen, Dingle, Co Kerry.