Samba on down, Sean

I SEE where Macra na Feirme has taken to the samba. According to this paper, a samba workshop has already taken place in Thurles, with help from Ceol Batacada, a samba group from Drogheda (the "samba capital" of Ireland, according to one account), and the 40 strong Macra Samba Sound is even now rehearsing for its debut at the Miss Macra competition in Tipperary in August.

What am I to "make" of this? Am I going to snigger at my rural cousins, deny my close relationship with the land, align myself with city slickers and generally mock "culchie" artistic aspirations for no good reason?

Not at all. However, I am apprehensive. I have no objection to the quick quick slow rhythm of the samba or its complex syncopation, but I am concerned at the notion of our young farming stock involving themselves in accentuated hip movements with the torso held erect. It was not for this the Wild Geese spread the grey wing upon every tide. More is owed to the delirium of the brave.

I understand, too, the wish to play down the vulgar Celtic thing, now spiralling out of all control, but this new dilution of our culture is disturbing.

Riverdance, with its promotion of the flamenco element, must take some of the blame. However, the flamenco is at least more suited to the Irish psyche than the samba, particularly in the former's cante jondo or "deep song" mode, when its vocal expression is (according to one eminent flamencologist) like the howl of a trapped beast, with its lyrics addressing poverty, hunger, imprisonment and insanity - all aspects of life we are at home with. Its development from simple juergas, or drunken hootenannies, has comforting Irish connotations, too.

Of course, flamenco became urbanised and "civilised" when it moved from the scruffy taverns of Andalusia and into the so called cafes cantantes of Madrid. It lost the bite, possibly even its duende or much vaunted soul, and we wouldn't want that in Macra.

Thurles may not prove a problem, but they will have to be careful to preserve its essence as the samba approaches the bigger towns. The tango suffered a similar emasculation when it shook off its underclass origins, entered the larger culture and surrendered its typically doleful theme ("My girlfriend left me, my heart is bleeding so I'm going to drink this whole bottle of whisky") for a breezy false optimism. This is not the way to go.

In developing the Macra samba, we must at all costs avoid the quarrels over national identity associated with flamenco and tango. The form must not be diluted - agringado, as they say - by the avant garde city crowd.

Macra must be careful, too, that the samba is not hijacked politically in the way the rumba was. Developed in the slums, this initially attractive Afro Cuban form was taken over by Castro's government. Improvisation gave way to composition. Finally the whole thing was re cast as simplistic propaganda, and is now attractive only to undiscriminating tourists at scheduled Rumba Saturdays in downtown Havana.

I am not going to get into the sexual politics or the tricky issue of race.

It might be possible to create an entirely new dance with elements of rumba and samba: the macra, maybe. What we want to do at any rate is update the outdated hillbilly notion of rural Ireland by means of music, in the way Riverdance changed the approach to Irish traditional song and dance. Whoever is in at the start will make a packet here.

It may be, however, that the well tested country and western idiom will serve Macra na Feirme better in the long run. The life of Patsy Montana ("The Yodelling Cowgirl"), who sadly died the other week at 81, could offer pointers.

Patsy was the woman to whom Ronald Reagan wrote to tell her that I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart "was the song every cowboy wanted his favourite girlfriend to sing." This is a sentiment that must appeal to all Macra members.

But what made Patsy and the Prairie Ramblers stand out was their openness to the influence of western swing, the jazz influenced music that blasted out of Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s.

In other words they did not simply take one form and get stuck with it. They developed a style of their own.

It would be nice to see Macra members inject new life into Montana classics like I'm an Old Cowhand, Sweetheart, The Moon Hangs Low and Little Old Rag Doll.