COLLIDE-A-SCOPE

Brian Boyd travels to a church in Dingle, Co Kerry to witness the unique annual musical assembly that brings together the most different of voices in the most remote of venues

BACK in medieval times, when Dingle was developed into the second largest port on the west coast, it was an important embarkation point for pilgrims on their way to Spain's Santiago de Compostella to visit the shrine of St James. The traffic wasn't all one way, and it is believed that some Spanish dudes built the town's medieval church and called it St James's in honour of the pilgrim-magnet. Oddly enough, the Roman name for Santiago de Compostella was "Finis Terrae" - the end of the world, an epithet that could equally be applied down here.

Tonight, in the bleak midwinter of December, the vestry of St James's church is being used as an ad hoc dressing room for the mini-festival of musical acts which has descended on Dingle for the filming of the fourth series of RTE's Other Voices programme. This is South By South-West: four acts a night over a week filmed in the still splendid 80-seater church.

Best now to leave tonight's star turn, Elbow, to get on with their vocal warm-up in the vestry and execute a nifty leap out the back window to see who's who and what's what around the town.

In these precise confines, you're just as likely to bump into a bunch of Horslips mooching around limbering themselves up for their first electric live show in decades as you are to walk into a pub to be confronted by a Waterboy or two deep in fervent musical session. The after-show, when everyone repairs to the very welcoming Benners Hotel across the road from the church, is a hoot and a half: Elbow watch, rapt, as Seamus Begley sings unaccompanied, while Humanzi contribute a few acoustic Pink Floyd covers.

This year's line-up is a blur of boundaries broken. Iarla O'Lionaird shares a stage with Asian Dub Foundation; the new indie wows from Montreal, Stars, nestle in beside Trashcan Sinatras; James Blunt is on the same bill as the two Wainwrights (Rufus and Martha) and Dave Couse goes into battle against Nizlopi (the JCB people).

Taking shelter from the musical storm he has so assiduously orchestrated, the show's producer, Philip King, sits in a quiet pub, happy that he has brought it all back home (he lives in nearby Ventry) yet again.

One of the very few people who can get away with beginning a conversation by referencing John Cage's 1979 work Roaratorio, An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake - with a side reference thrown in to Jacques Attali's absorbing book The Political Economy Of Music book just to keep you on your toes, King is a personable polymath. From his early days with Scullion, he has worked behind the camera with everyone from Daniel Lanois to John McGahern, Elvis Costello, U2 and Seamus Heaney. He's written songs for Sinead O'Connor (I Am Stretched On Your Grave), directed and produced the acclaimed Bringing It All Back Home series and hosted the excellent South Wind Blows radio programme. He's currently a member of the Arts Council.

"A lot of this comes from the South Wind Blows radio show," he says. "I used to record it for RTÉ down the road in the Radio na Gaeltachta studio. I'd be sitting there at the edge of Europe looking out over the Atlantic playing all this music - some would get sent to me, some I would discover myself - but it struck me doing that show how there were other voices in the musical world that I had been made aware of. I looked at Dingle, looked at the church and suggested the idea for the television show to RTÉ. I only had a piece of paper with 100 names on it, but they were all for it. I met Glen Hansard walking around Dingle one day and asked him to present it. I had this idea that whatever magnetic pull drew me to live down here, would similarly draw the music acts down. There's a different atmosphere here, the tradition is extant. There's a sense of the bands being made welcome here, that there's an understanding of their music here."

For King, Other Voices can only be a snapshot. While the first three series of the show leaned heavily on the Irish singer-songwriter contingent, this year's line-up is a lot more jumbled up. "It's now a viral thing within the musical community," he says. "In the second year, Christy Moore had heard about it and rang asking to come down. In the third year, Steve Earle was on to us saying he had heard about it and wanted to play. Within that musical community they all talk to each other so now in year four it's at the stage where the acts are ringing us more.

"There's no backstage here, no laminates, no VIPs. At the heart of the show is the idea we cherish the music. There was a great moment this afternoon when we were filming Stephen Fretwell (one of this year's acts) playing up the road in Foxy John's pub. There was a Manchester United match on the television at the time, but when Stephen began to play, the sound was put down and everyone turned to listen to him play. And then you'll have Seamus Begley, Steve Wickham, Mike Scott, Elbow and Humanzi all in the same room talking and arguing about music."

Curating the programme is a breeze, he says. "Apart from my own record collection, I'll read about an act in a newspaper, hear something or the radio, somebody will send me something . . . I tend to hear the world rather than see it. And with the Irish acts, what I like is there is a voice there which is mutating, which is changing, which is alive and reflective of the society out of which it comes. This is just a record, an archive of these changes. Some of the acts we've had on go on to great things, some are never heard of again."

Apart from the more internationally inclined line-up this year, the show is getting out of the church and around the area more. "We put Mike Scott in a pub and got him to do a new song for us," says King. "We brought Elbow down to the harbour where they played - and that singer has a marvellous keening voice - and then they started talking about The Stone Roses, and we had Liam O'Maonlaoi singing sean-nós on the beach. So it's not so linear and we have the show's presenter, John Kelly, doing links from outside the church."

For King, Other Voices is a continuation of what he's been doing ever since he left Scullion. "In one way or another over the last 20 years I have been in a position to create a context for these musical meetings," he says.

"Elbow and Seamus Begley - where would you get it? It's not a dialogue, it's a collision. A fantastic collision."

Other Voices begins on RTÉ2 next Wednesday at 11.30pm