Singing the praises of Kerry

Sliabh Luachra, long acknowledged as more a state of mind than a geographical entity in north Kerry, has spawned more than its share of remarkable musicians: Jackie Daly, Johnny O'Leary, Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford, Paddy Cronin and the great blind fiddler, Tom Billy Murphy. But the late Patrick O'Keeffe, the travelling fiddle master, surely sits centre-stage in that gathering. His music lives in the repertoires of local musicians, but for the wider listening public, O'Keeffe's reputation has seeped into the collective subconscious courtesy of the 1948/49 Seamus Ennis recordings, released by RT╔ in 1993 as The Sliabh Luachra Fiddle Master.

Castle Island, in North Kerry, has honoured Patrick O'Keeffe's memory every October bank holiday weekend since 1993, the 30th anniversary of his death. Mike Kenny, festival chairperson, has steered the festival on a magnificent course. A measure of the Patrick O'Keeffe Weekend is the fact that it's widely acknowledged to be a musician's festival. Players of repute wend their way to the height of Glounsharoon, the lowlands of Kilmurry and the pastures of Dysert en route to Castle Island, where sessions burst out of the unlikeliest of corners and neither Gregorian calendar nor Greenwich Mean Time hold sway against the onslaught of reels, slow airs, songs and slides.

Mike Kenny sums up the spirit of the festival in a few words. "There's always time for the music," he smiles. "What we wanted to create with this festival was a place where musicians could enjoy playing, and enjoy hearing one another play and sing. I think we've managed that well enough here."

Jackie Daly, peerless accordion player, pairs up with Seamus Creagh and stills all conversation with a draw of the box. Tim Dennehy and Dessie O'Halloran lead a singing session as intimate as anything you'll encounter behind closed doors in the front bar of Tom McCarthy's. Seamus Begley and Jon Sanders take accordion, melodeon and guitar to vertiginous heights in the shadow of Tangney's bar, and neophytes Maedbh O'Hare (last year's Young Traditional Musician Of The Year), Conor Byrne and Martin O'Connell joust and play, using fiddle, flute and accordion as springboards to another plain. Add the impish Brendan Begley to the equation - at his peak on Sunday afternoon, when the autumn sun streams in through Brennan's windows - and what you've got is a cross between a karaoke tradisi·nta and a peep into a world where music and music makers merge with their audience into a seamless whole.

Johnny O'Leary, Sliabh Luachra's master of the accordion, who shared many sessions with Patrick O'Keeffe, is sanguine when quizzed on the nature of a festival devoted to commemoration, celebration and, inevitably, some exploitation of the great O'Keefe.

"Patrick was a lovely man," O'Leary says. "He passed on an amount of tunes to me, and he'd a great bow hand. He could get 13 or 14 notes in one rub of the bow. Sure, he won the All Ireland twice. We played from Brosna to Scartaglen and Gneeveguilla. 'Tis good that they're honouring him now with the festival, and I always love playing at it."

Matt Cranitch, fiddler, music historian and O'Keeffe scholar, has returned to the festival again this year, holding court with his compadre from Sliabh Notes, Abbeyfeale box player, Donal Murphy. They're in the Fountain Bar where O'Keeffe's reels received a tumultuous response from punters who'd navigated the mountain roads in search of a tune.

"I've always been very interested in the fiddle dialects or accents of Sliabh Luachra, living in the region myself," he says. "And I'm drawn emotionally to the pure spirit of the music. The more I learn about Patrick, the more I realise how great a contribution he made to the Sliabh Luachra repertoire. He was a great teacher, and he valued the importance of passing the tunes on.

"I think if this festival looks towards expanding its educational aspects, through the classes, it would be a great thing. I feel that reflecting that aspect of Patrick's persona, the fact that he was a great educator, would add a lot to the festival. The music from this area has a special voice, so this could be a great opportunity to concentrate on its polkas and slides and reels."

The ultimate test of the Patrick O'Keeffe Festival is its ability to draw the listener into the magic of the music, and Con Houlihan, Castle Island's finest writer, thinks that it has succeeded. "The festival is proof that our values have changed," he suggests. "Long ago, there was a minority who respected O'Keefe and a majority who really didn't understand him. We had become 'modern', you know. We'd thrown out the settle beds and the sugβn chairs and we were getting in Formica and Swedish furniture, Lord save us! The farmers were getting baths and sheep were being dipped. Then there was the arrival of the gramophone and the radio with songs about your mother coming from Killarney and moonlight in Mayo. It was all right, but it was confectionery. The rough bread made from local barley or wheat wasn't fashionable any more. O'Keeffe belonged to the frugal generation, and played tunes that were related to the earth. I don't blame people because they were tired of poverty, and the great tunes and songs were lonesome, were about emigration. So you can see why the modern world seduced them.

"It was the same with the Irish language," Houlihan continues. "It was associated with hard times. It's only now that people are seeing that it's part of our great culture. And so it is with Patrick. Better late than never."