A slap on the back for modest musicians

TG4's Gradam Ceoil Awards, announced today, recognise a host of talent on the traditional scene. The winners talk to Siobhán Long

The Oscars may have their haute couture, the Grammies their permanent residents (U2) and the Tonys might light the Great White Way, but TG4's Gradam Ceoil Awards have fast become a stalwart of the traditional music firmament, garnering in nine short years a momentum that's matched only by their credibility.

Let's face it: in the past, traditional musicians weren't much given to back-slapping - despite the fact that they had perfected the art of peer mentoring long before it became the buzz word of psychologists and leadership gurus from California to Caherciveen. Over the past few years though, with the gentle prodding of a TV station with discerning eardrums, the Irish traditional music world's clannish tendencies have been exploited mercilessly in an annual pursuit to unpick the great from the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Past winners have blushed, stuttered and sailed toward the podium, buoyed by the admission (if in some cases, only silently) that peer recognition is the only kind that counts. Last year, Traditional Musician of the Year Jackie Daly both regaled and dumbfounded his audience with an acceptance speech peppered with feisty wordplay and the kind of wry self-deprecation that only a scion of Sliabh Luachra (or as he mused, "Sliabh Lucrative") could muster.

This year's TG4 Gradam Ceoil reveals an eclectic gathering of winners, and includes a new award category, "Gradam na gCeoltóirí". Loosely translated as "The Musicians' Award", it celebrates the contribution that broadcaster, writer, archivist and editor, Proinsias Ó Conluain, has made to the traditional arts.

Dublin fiddler James Kelly, long resident in the US, is this year's Traditional Musician of the Year. A denizen of Miami, Florida, Kelly has been steeped in the music of West Clare, through the playing of his father, renowned fiddle and concertina player John Kelly, and he is as generous with his musical virtuosity as he is with his company. His memories of making music stretch as far back as the playpen, he reckons.

"I remember my father telling me that I sang before I spoke," James recalls, as he reins in his excitement at the news of his win. "Being a fiddler was the most natural thing in the world. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my father's knee at three years of age, with a tiny fiddle: he put the bow in my hand, and cupped his hand over my other hand, as he lilted tunes to me and gave me a 'feel' for the music. I can honestly remember feeling ecstatic about that whole experience."

With his father's involvement with the Castle Céilí Band and with Seán Ó Riada's Ceoltóirí Chualann, James Kelly was steeped in the playing of everyone from Paddy Killoran to Seamus Ennis and Darach Ó Catháin. It wasn't so much a case of following in his father's footsteps and honing a west Clare style of fiddle playing, as imbibing the diversity that surrounded him, and making the music his own.

"I was aware of stylistic differences from the age of seven or eight," he acknowledges, "but my father loved the music of Donegal, of Sliabh Luachra, Sligo, Galway and Leitrim. He painted so many wonderful pictures of players from all over the country, and we dreamed in those directions. Those musicians were our icons, but I think I followed my father in having a very broad interest in all styles of traditional playing."

Kelly has forged a particularly fine reputation for solo playing, although he has collaborated with everyone from Planxty to Patrick Street and the Chieftains. The essence, for him, is in burrowing deep beneath the epidermis of the music. "As a musician, you spend an awful lot of time struggling, trying to figure out how to play, trying to develop your own personality musically. The musical journey itself is a little bit like travelling through space: passing all these planets, you go and visit each planet and eventually you leave its atmosphere, but you take a little piece from each stop. On a musical journey, you try to understand what you've seen and heard, as you go on to the next place, until ultimately you try to develop your own voice."

Although technically brilliant, James Kelly is adamant that technique is as far removed from the essence of traditional music as day is from night.

"I didn't ever want to use technique in my playing, just because I could do it," he offers. "I wanted to follow the direction of musicians like Micho Russell who played with soulfulness and feeling and passion. So what I've spent my life doing is primarily focusing on the structure of the melody, but trying to come up with ideas that support that structure, while staying within the genre and not bringing in influences from other styles of music. That's based on my understanding of Irish music all my life."

SEÁN GARVEY, TG4's Traditional Singer of the Year, wears his laurel lightly, though he's not averse to the compliment that is the award either.

"When I got word of the award, my first thought was that I was happy for the people who had faith in me over the years," he says, laughing heartily at the potential for this comment to be viewed as a paean to himself. "I'm not saying that I've reached a stage of spiritual perfection where praise doesn't affect me - I haven't reached Buddha-hood yet!"

His Caherciveen roots ring through his singing, although he suspects that most of his influences are intangible, not given to convenient signposting.

"It's like the scenery in Kerry," he offers, "you don't notice it too much, growing up. It's only when you leave it, and go away, and come back, that you realise its value. There was always a lot of singing going on at home, but I just looked on it as I did the mountains: it was just there. My father was the best singer I knew, because he sang with a ferocious passion. I think that I learned more by osmosis than by anything else." Just as it's nigh on impossible to tell the dancer from the dance, Garvey insists that a song is only as good as its singer. Forget the finesse or sophistication of a lyric or melody line; what matters most is the manner in which a song is sung, he maintains.

"It's the personalities of the people who sang, that's what's drawn me to particular songs," he says. "In retrospect it was the people who mattered. I really don't think you can separate a song from the singer. That's why I don't like singing other people's songs, because there are certain songs I associate with particular singers, and I just feel that nobody can better that. But I've always been interested in folklore, and there are untold numbers of songs that have never been sung, and cry out to be sung. Big songs are important because there's a grandeur and a majesty about them that carry a tradition. They're icons that a race can be proud of, and every tradition needs those. But we have so many songs of work, of play, of drinking, of love and of betrayal, and they all have a place in the tradition. I don't expect I'll ever be short of a song, that's for sure."

The TG4 Gradam Ceoil/Traditional Music Awards ceremony will take place in Cork Opera House on Sat, Sept 30. Bookings at: 021-4270022 or at www.corkoperahouse.ie

The honours list 2006 winners

The 2006 TG4 Gradam Ceoil/ Traditional Music Award winners are:

James Kelly Traditional Musician of the Year

Michelle Mulcahy Young Traditional Musician

of the Year

Seán Garvey Traditional Singer of the Year

Sarah and Rita Keane Hall of Fame award

Charlie Lennon Traditional Composer of the Year

Proinsias Ó Conluain Gradam na gCeoltóirí