Sambas at the crossroads

WHILE they may be familiar to those who follow the fortunes of the Brazilian national football team, it's probably fair to say that the insistent rhythms and vibrant colours of the samba band are not - for the majority of Irish people - immediately redolent of the rolling hills of Co Tipperary. Nor is the playing of samba music the kind of leisure activity you might immediately associate with young Irish farmers. But this week the 40 strong Macra Samba Sound begins rehearsing for its debut at the Miss Macra competition in Tipperary in August. Has rural Ireland gone mad? Not at all, says Emer McNamara, arts officer with Macra na Feirme. And when you hear her reasons for starting a samba band in Tipperary, it sounds so sane that you wonder why nobody thought of it before.

But first things first. Macra na Feirme? Arts officer? "I know what you're thinking culchies in wellies and all that," says Emer McNamara. Well, think again. Yes, Macra has been on the go since 1944, when it was set up to assist in the education of young farmers, and it has - in recent years - acquired an image that is, to put it at its mildest, somewhat staid. But it wasn't always so. At various times in the past Macra was regarded as a highly progressive force. In the Sixties it provided a forum for articulate young people to question the patriarchal values embedded in the Irish agricultural system; it was instrumental in the setting up of the IFA and the Farmers' Journal it has now evolved into a youth organisation whose 10,000 members are largely drawn from outside the farming sector.

In 1994 Macra undertook a review of its own activities and, when that review concluded that it was high time for a change in its programmes, it applied to the Arts Council for an arts officer. The council provided funding for a consultant to look at what, exactly, a Macra na Feirme arts officer might do - and the consultant, one Emer McNamara, embarked on a four month study of the organisation's activities. Having secured agreement from the council to fund an arts officer at Macra for three years, she went off to work for the Cork Examiner - only to find herself applying, after less than a year, for the very job whose specifications she had drawn up.

A well known figure on the Irish arts administration scene, Emer McNamara moved from Cork Theatre Company to the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick. In 1991 she resigned as regions officer for the Arts Council over the controversial shredding of 200 copies of Brian Kennedy's book, Dreams and Responsibilities. So what drew her to a job which many would see as positioned firmly at the side lines of arts activity in Ireland? "Probably what attracted me was, first, the political astuteness of people in the agricultural sector," she says. "Farming people are quite upfront about what they want."

And then of course she is a card carrying culchie in wellies herself. "I'm from Thurles and I lived there for 14 years and I felt there was a certain" - she searches carefully for the right word - "snobbery, I suppose, about people who live in rural areas. So for various reasons the whole thing intrigued me." Half way into her first year, her enthusiasm and energy are undimmed. She has organised theatre and contemporary dance workshops; she is looking into the possibility of a youth theatre group in Cork and a scriptwriting project in Monaghan. She has persuaded Fuji Ireland to sponsor a photographic competition.

"The big thing - what I've been trying, really, to get at - is the need for Macra members to describe themselves," she says. "There are such negative images of living in rural Ireland; and there are no positive images of rural youth. A lot of young people are living in relatively isolated situations, so they need Macra from a social point of view, but they're also very aware that it has almost a negative connotation - and in a sense they've kind of bought into this prevailing notion about rural Ireland, that it's the bright ones who leave, the uneducated who stay behind.

"Which is totally at odds with the type of people who are actually in Macra; community leaders in the making, people who are interested in developing leadership skills and who are very exercised about what is happening in their communities." So most of the aforementioned initiatives, while they are all about having fun and about participation in arts related activities, are also about broadening perceptions and offering access to the arts in a very direct, immediate way.

Thus the photographic competition will include workshops in composition and lighting, providing a way into the visual arts. And then there's that samba band. "I was at the Ken Sarowiwa benefit in Andrews Lane," says Emer McNamara. "It was a whole night of samba and I just stood there and thought, `what would Macra members make of this? I'm sure they'd love it'." She organised a preliminary workshop by Ceol Batacada, a samba group from Drogheda, and the Macra Samba Sound was born. "I don't know if you know much about samba music," she says, "but it's good for leadership training and team work because there are groups of different instruments which are organised by the person who stands in the middle with a whistle, like a conductor. And it's highly accessible to people who have never played a musical instrument before."

EMER McNAMARA maintains that Macra na Feirme, with its strong infrastructure and youthful profile, is uniquely placed to get a debate going on the rural/urban culture divide in Ireland. "Because of that, and because initiatives taken in the arts don't always have a philosophical overview, I've put together an artists' committee consisting of Johnny Hanrahan, Pat Boran, Cindy Cummins and Luke Gibbons, with John Waters as chairman. It will, I hope, act as an ideas forum."

"At the moment there is a lot of work being done in urban working class areas in terms of access to the arts - in fact, it's almost cool now to view disadvantage in terms of an urban working class industrial base." But exactly the same disadvantage operates, she points out, in rural areas. And Macra's members, though they are drawn from all walks of life, have one thing in common. "Enthusiasm, since they've actually gone out and joined an organisation, and a certain amount of concern to get involved in something productive. Because, let's face it, if we don't do something, rural communities are just going to die."