IN 1951 the first Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann was held in Mullingar. By 1969 it had developed a reputation as a prime annual event for "the craic". In the "coming out" of Ireland into the modern world, it became a whirlpool of mutual education: youth gradually figuring out how to carnival without craziness, business realising the value of treating them well, the Garda discovering that life on the streets does not necessarily mean riot. From Evening Herald newspaper headlines like "Bottle Blitz at Fleadh", media attention has almost disappeared, the connection with glass now formalised in Guinness's £15,000 sponsorship for the 1996 event in Listowel this weekend.
This fleadh is, in fact, the climax of the 48 smaller ones that have been taking place since March, three of them in the US, one in Scotland, three in England. In the words of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann's director, Labhras O Murchu: "It is a major exhibition of Irish traditional music, and it allows young performers to pace their development on the road to excellence." The Listowel fleadh's publicist and chairman of the town council, Ned Sullivan, expects "10,000 more visitors than in 1995 - publicans are anticipating good weather and have organised beer gardens."
It is the twelfth time the fleadh has been in the town; this year it will cost up to £200,000 to run. He expects it to be worth £3 million to north Kerry, mostly for beverages, catering and B&B. O Murchu's estimation is considerably higher, at £7 million, the amount generated each year in Clonmel during its three years of fleadh tenancy.
It is this commercialism that rankles with a lot of musicians and is these days the most popular criticism. But it went on in the 1960s too: "The fleadh's success has been its downfall . . . it has turned into a lumbering, biological machine, crazy, schizophrenic, aggressive and uncontrollable," as journalist Ian Hill wrote of Cashel 69 for the Guardian. "Traditional musicians gel put off easily by crowds who do not understand the intricacy of the music," Clare/London fiddler Bobby Casey is reported in this newspaper as saying of Clones 68.
The period created the word "purist" for such outrageous self interest a June 1966, Irish Press editorial suggested that fleadhs should have segregated marquee dormitories for the masses, "and for the purists, perhaps special programmes of traditional music could be arranged."
Today, the players' logic is straightforward music is the reason for the fleadh, the throngs of "good time voyeurs, who know nothing" that it attracts and at whom it pitches itself, are regarded as, at best a necessary nuisance, at worst destructive and devaluing. That is the major reason for many musicians' non participation. Tony Mac Mahon, traditional music producer in RTE for many years, feels that "the social aspect is great, but mostly the sessions revolve around musical brawling, people in large numbers where no one can be heard".
Singer Aine Ni Cheallaigh identifies a byproduct of this: "To find the good music, you need to be lucky or in the know. I've gone to fleadhs and seen nothing, only people drinking". As the Irish Times said of the Clones Ulster Fleadh of 1968: "There seemed a world of difference between the world of the competitors in the halls and the rowdiness and the drunkenness outside."
The fleadh still has the rowdy drunks, even if better behaved, the glazed eyed lads who will walk through you, the boyos like bottomless sumps whose no tomorrow capacities inspire paraphrasing Myles na Gopaleen: "Be careful, don't bump into him you might spill some!". But it is Nirvana for teenage players, their confidence and their egos. Nothing can compare with the thrill of hearing so much music, rubbing shoulders with fabled mentors: "My first fleadh was Buncrana in 78," says Ni Cheallaigh. "I had a ball. I remember happening on a room with Geordie Hanna, Paddy Tunney and Sarah Anne O'Neill all in full flight."
Especially in the years before television and accessible recorded material, the magic experienced by young country players at a first fleadh is hard for others to appreciate: intense, open mouthed, indescribable pleasure, a painful craving to need to play what is being witnessed, the head still bursting with music weeks later.
OFF the street are the competitions. Hundreds sit in rapt silence as regional competitors - 10 to 12 in each solo competition - play formula selections and are adjudicated, the officials sometimes controversially moralising and politicking in their summing up. This year there will be 144 competitions involving 1,246 instrumental soloists, 162 singers, 45 ceili bands, 99 duets and trios, 31 marching bands, 45 music groups and 28 set dance teams.
Last year, females dominated in the age groups up to 18 (57 per cent), but males took over in all the senior categories (68 per cent). Overall, 56 per cent of the participating singers were female, as were 51 per cent of instrumentalists. Seventy two per cent of (mixed) senior first prizes went to males. Of the 1,656 soloists and bandy groups entered, 77 per cent were from Ireland, 11 per cent from the US, 10 per cent from England, 2, per cent from Glasgow. There were single entrants from Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
"Competition is very healthy," O Murchu says. There are very few personal animosities; most young people like the challenge." Mac Mahon, however, is "deeply suspicious of the whole concept of competition where young people are put into a position of being treated like fodder. I have seen people of a particular bias adjudicate people who have the opposite opinion." Indeed at least one such assessor has acknowledged the fragility, if not impossibility of the task in a 1982 CCE Treoir magazine: "We adjudicated ... if not always correctly, then I can swear we were always honest and helpful in our efforts."
Ciaran Carson, traditional music officer of the Northern Ireland Arts Council, sees competitions as useful to young people getting involved. Buncrana fiddler Liz Doherty, who lectures in traditional music in UCC, believes the competitions were essential: "Once a lot of us stopped competing, we stopped playing." She thinks, however, that "after a certain age they lose that value. I am not impressed by the title All Ireland champion for older people - who else was in the competition, who adjudicated it?"
O Murchu thinks, on the contrary, that senior competitions are no different to those in other musics, sport or literature; that competition is natural and productive, and that most of today's well known, professional players enjoy the confidence of "their All Irelands". Other critics like Denis Doody feel that adjudicators' preferences inevitably devalue and suffocate interesting regional styles, such as "Ulster" singing, and "Sliabh Luachra" or "Donegal" fiddling. Young people are not impressed by styles that carry no kudos in combat.
The scale of the competition is socially tremendous: "Maybe 20,000 have already taken part in the early competition heats," O Murchu says, and there are 4,000 taking part over the all Ireland weekend." For Doherty, "it was great for us coming from a small town, where we could hear hardly anybody, to see so many different people playing."
For Carson the opposite was the attraction: "Until my first fleadh, the experience was of playing with people my own age. In Cootehill, 1965, there were oul' boys down from the hills that you would never see. It made you aware that the music had been there before." Singer Tim Dennehy found the social aspect uplifting, but thinks that with what he calls "a new regionalisation, availability of good music everywhere, people now have less need to travel away. In any case, because of all the music and song "weekends" you get to meet people regularly throughout the year now. The fleadh is no longer so special".
IT seems clear, though, that participation is about age. Getting older, we become more involved with the actual music. We want space and comfort - the jostle of strange towns jammed with exultant hedonists can be aggravating. Even so, Listowel will have all age groups, some there for the very first time, or the first time in years, most just helpless recidivists back for the getaway, the buzz and the annual re aquaintancing. The fleadh attracts a disproportionate number of Northerners, for most of whom it is an empowering experience of Irishness, a blissful embalming in sounds of identity.
For the other Irish, it is an important comminitas, a levelling out of the classes within the music, a democracy of accents, abilities and playing styles. There will be few "big names" - the professionals shun such soul baring - instead, there is another star system. Do not expect to stumble on brilliance like, say, the standard of Donal Lunny's or Maire Breatnach's designer music.
The fleadh is about people, the rawness of unmediated melody and the accessibility of it all, being right in there among electricity free, resonant voices, ephemeral highs and gloomy lows, riding on the energy of idyllic community, squashed bodies, collective goodwill, often imperfect tuning, ego compromised by protocol, miracles of coincidence, and uncle Arthur's efficacious liniment. All of this decorates a backdrop of relentless banjo plink plonk and bodhran thump, blended by the chip van generators into 15 hour musak loops.
This is the traditional music revival's "Carnival". The cause is "the music" and the bulk of the work is voluntary. This is how it all began, with a thousand people in 1951, and this is the way it will survive.
