Traditional music's boom in the gloom

Music lovers may have less money to spend on gigs and concerts these days, but that hasn't stopped trad fans from breathing new life into sessions across the country writes SIOBHAN LONG

TO JUDGE by the volume of listings submitted to this newspaper's The Ticketmagazine each week over the past year, there has been a steady rise in the number of traditional concerts, gigs and sessions throughout the country. This is happening at a time when punters' disposable income is shrinking.

The long-dormant Harcourt Sessions in Dublin were reignited on Monday nights last year, and many other examples can be found across the country. Are traditional musicians more inventive at a time of recession? Are more traditional music fans going to gigs than lovers of jazz, classical or rock and pop?

Flautist and promoter Conor Byrne recently established The Liffey Banks Sessions in the Grand Social in Dublin, a Tuesday-night club that’s been called the “Meeting Place for the 21st century”, in homage to the late, much-lamented folk club from the 1970s. The Liffey Banks Sessions has lured some of the best traditional musicians and singers to its stage over its two months in existence. Luka Bloom, Fidil, Lúnasa and recently, Máirtín O’Connor and his band, all performed.

“My whole life has revolved around organising clubs,” Byrne says. His mother, Eilish Moore, ran a folk club in Mother Redcaps for years, and last year Conor ran The County Sessions in Dublin’s Button Factory. “I really just wanted to generate a community of traditional musicians and lovers of folk music, and create a meeting place for those people to come together, staging quality music – new and upcoming – as well as music of the past; mixing them together in a quality venue with really good music production. That’s always been my goal. And so far, that’s the feedback I’ve been getting: people leaving the Liffey Banks feeling uplifted by the whole experience.”

John Carty is a fiddle and banjo player who makes no secret of his pragmatism in the face of this downturn. Does the necessity of earning a crust in tough times mean that some musicians are tapping into aspects of their creativity that they mightn’t have previously explored? “Absolutely,” Carty says, and while acknowledging, “you can’t get away from that word ‘recession’”, he’s happy to be working as consistently now as he was during the boom.

“I find when I play with [trad fourpiece] Patrick Street, I tap into something different to when I play with Matt Molloy and Arty McGlynn. Andy Irvine sent me some new songs over the summer, and as Dónal Lunny said: ‘They’re not just songs, they’re an obstacle course.’”

The real spark that keeps the music burning for Carty comes from learning new tunes from old masters. Of his recent acquisition of vintage Paddy Killoran recordings he says: “It’s going to be a long winter, and I’ll spend that time absorbing all that music. Then maybe later, I might create something, reinvent it and make it my own. To get something like that: it’s gold dust.”

Music Network curates, promotes and funds traditional, jazz and classical live music, building audiences through inventive programming. Sharon Rollston, acting chief executive, believes Music Network’s long-term strategy of nurturing audiences is paying dividends now, with attendances up at its most recent traditional tour, featuring Breandán Begley, Tommy Peoples and Laoise Kelly.

“The success of that tour has led to the musicians talking about seeking further funding now to record together,” Rollston says, “and that’s an element that’s over and above the actual concert experience, in terms of us helping the development of the musicians.

"Another Music Network tour featuring concertina and fiddle player Niamh Ní Charra, Basque Alboka horn-pipe player Ibon Koteron and guitarist Gavin Ralston has recently yielded a CD too, Ó Euskadi go hÉireann, as well as a Basque tour."

Louise Walsh of Music Network has also seen a rise in self-sufficiency and professionalism among traditional musicians. “Artists are far more proactive than before,” she says. “We’ve had more trad musicians engage with us on various courses and schemes, such as Making Overtures, which aims to empower artists to get gigs and promote themselves. It goes hand-in-hand with the rise in online promotion and the whole DIY ethic around that.”

Accordian player Christy Leahy has also been slowly building an audience in Ballincollig’s music venue The White Horse. He’s happy that the venue is drawing a growing audience by dint of careful programming.

“One of my biggest challenges was getting people used to coming to a completely new place,” he says, “so we’ve been getting as many well-known names to begin with such as [Altan and De Dannan] with the idea being that if they enjoyed them, they might come out to see musicians they may not be familiar with. I find I’m energised by it because I think the more it happens, the more opportunities there will be for musicians to play and for people to hear new music.”

Trad scene: venues to visit

Dublin: The Harcourt Sessions, Harcourt Hotel (Mondays); The Liffey Banks Sessions – The Grand Social, Liffey Street (Tuesdays); The Clé Club, The Flowing Tide, Middle Abbey Street (Wednesdays); An Góilín Singers Club, The Teachers Club, Parnell Square (Fridays)

Cork: Cork Singers Club, An Spailpín Fánach (Sundays); De Barra's, Clonakilty; The White Horse, Ballincollig; The Pavilion, Carey's Lane, Cork city

West and northwest:Barry's, Grange, Sligo; McGrory's, Culdaff, Donegal; The Crane Bar, Galway city