New bard opens a window on world for Comhaltas

Frank McNally marks the elevation of musician Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, to the post of "supreme bard".

There was a lot of talk about "bridge-building" in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, this week, when Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann honoured the achievements of Prof Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin.

A tourist who happened on the ceremony might have guessed from some of the language used that the event was part of the peace process. And the tourist might not have been far wrong.

For half a century, Comhaltas has been the ultimate authority over Irish traditional music, jealously guarding its territory from threats internal and external. Border disputes have been frequent and sometimes bitter.

So for the organisation to proclaim the founder of the Irish World Music Centre as its first supreme bard - "Ard Ollamh na hÉigse" - is a bit like the State dropping the constitutional claim to the North.

A fairer comparison might be with the GAA. As its cultural equivalent, Comhaltas too was founded in hard times, when the music was officially despised and deeply unfashionable.

Having played such a part in the transformation - more than 200,000 people are expected in Clonmel for this weekend's Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann - the organisation might be understandably reluctant to let just anyone play on its pitch.

Ó Súilleabháin is not now and has never been a member of the movement. But he is doubly honoured as "an outsider" to be its first official bard. And pressed on the subject, he placed the organisation's reputation for preciousness against the background of history.

"People don't realise now how things were in the 1950s, when Comhaltas started. Traditional music was severely looked down on, even by State bodies involved in promoting culture. It was the lowest of the low. So much so that musicians were having what we'd now call serious self-esteem problems - the classical post-colonial situation. Of course the second half of the 20th century was a gynormous success story. It wasn't so much a revival as the resurrection of traditional music.

"Now Comhaltas has a huge following - the Fleadh is one of the great festivals of Europe. But I think the future of the organisation lies in change, in its ability to remake itself."

It only added to the honour for Ó Súilleabháin that the award was made in his own town. Ironically for a man who would found a World Music Centre, he was born in a place known locally as "the narrow street".

His parents owned a grocery store: scene of a tragedy in the late 1970s, when corroded gas pipes led to an explosion that killed his mother and hastened his father's demise a few years later. It was a national news story at the time, and - too late for the Ó Súilleabháins - precipitated an overhaul of old gas systems around the country.

Ambrose Ó Súilleabháin was perhaps typical of traditional music's hard times, in that he was a musician, but didn't really know it.

"If you gave him a mouth organ, he'd play it," his son says, "but if you asked him was he a musician he'd say no."

Even so, the young Mícheál's talent was "genetic - no doubt about that". And when his mother took him to piano lessons at the age of 10, it was love at first sight. Followed by marriage.

"A piano was bought, and I fell on it greedily. I started to live in my hands, and think with my hands, which all musicians will tell you they do. And no matter what I did after that, I was a piano player. It's a bit like being married to an instrument. I play - gently - on several instruments, but not in public, because I don't have the same tactile relationship with those."

Surprisingly then (and it's a surprise on more than one level), he wrote his first scholarly dissertation on the bodhrán. In the sort of response that that instrument is doomed to provoke within musical circles, his superiors at UCC were sceptical.

"But it's a stone-aged drum!" protested Prof Aloys Fleischmann. "Exactly," said the future Prof Ó Súilleabháin. And off he went to Kerry to track down Ireland's leading expert Sonny Canafin, whose herd of goats - raw material for more bodhráns - attested to his interest in the subject.

At the advice of another UCC academic, the dissertation was published in Treoir, the Comhaltas journal. So Ó Súilleabháin's and the organisation's paths had crossed before this week: "But it was a brief flirtation and after that, although there was never any falling out, I went my own way."

His own way has made him an expert on the issue that he now sees facing Comhaltas: the embrace of change.

When he founded the World Music Centre at University of Limerick in 1994, he was - only just - ahead of his time. "In 1995, Ireland was a monocultural society. But within three years, we had several hundred Nigerians in a hostel in Limerick."

These new arrivals were soon contributing to the UL project, a trend that continues.

If you're a musical asylum-seeker arriving at Shannon these days, it's touch and go whether the Department of Justice or the World Music Centre will be in touch with you first. "We had a Pakistani tabla [a north Indian percussion instrument] player, a professional player, arrive last month. So what are we supposed to do? We're going to play with the guy, obviously." The travel is not all one way. His central role in integrating traditional music into Ireland's higher education has turned Ó Súilleabháin into a foreign missionary as he takes up invitations from places as far away as Kenya and China, where others want to learn from our experience. And while he has been at all times open to influences from outside, most of his achievements have been to the greater glory of Irish music, a point not lost on Comhaltas.

This week's ceremony in Clonmel was based on the tradition of the Irish bardic schools which flourished between the 13th and 17th centuries.

Aspiring bards studied for 12 years in academic sessions extending from November to May, and climbed through seven degrees of accomplishment to reach the top grade of "Ollamh," or "doctor".

Ó Súilleabháin has had to serve more than 12 years for his, but he's not complaining - even though, as a bard, he now enjoys the right to say anything he likes (a licence that made the ancient bards much feared, even by kings).

In fact, as he says, he has been operating without a licence all his life, so the honour won't change him: "I think I'm known for saying what I feel. I've just been doing it illegally until now."