Small earthquake in Vicar Street

Good vibrations wouldn't even begin to describe it: "small earthquake in Vicar Street" might be more like it. The nation's news pages may grumble along with their tales of protest marches and "Ireland says no", but there's another side to the multiculturalism debate in Ireland - and it's definitely upbeat. Just go along to any of the concerts in the ESB/Routes in Rhythm series and you'll see it in action. A band singing in Spanish? Fair enough. But when the audience starts responding in the same language, when the announcement of a Cuban song gets the sort of welcoming ripple of applause once reserved for stadium rock bands - when the person behind you launches into a sinuous solo salsa, for goodness sake, you know that something has changed forever in Irish society.

According to Gerry Godley of the Improvised Music Company, who devised the series, this was apparent from the moment Juan Martin's Arte Flamenco Pura took the stage at the beginning of May.

"A large proportion of the audience turned out to be Spanish, and began to do the traditional hand-clapping and vocal encouragement you'd find at flamenco in Spain, which made a huge difference to the atmosphere. At the second concert on May 30th, by Vocal Sampling, there seemed to be a lot of people who were, maybe, Cuban because there is a Cuban community here - and at the Master Drummers of Africa concert on Friday June 16th, we'll probably get a lot of African people."

But though Irish audiences are no longer exclusively Irish, there's no doubt that Irish punters are responding to this musical diversity in a marvellously open and enthusiastic way. To Gerry Godley, this makes perfect sense. "At the risk of going into it a bit too deeply, I think one of the reasons there's so much interest here is that it taps into our own recent history, where music had a different role in society. Where music wasn't high, medium or low music - where we didn't have a posture about it. A lot of the music we're bringing in comes from countries which have a predominantly agrarian lifestyle, just as we did until quite recently, and it's part of the fabric of how people live their lives. It's also music which hasn't been tainted by the more commercial appetites of the rock and pop market. It's real. Irish people definitely identify with that."

In many ways, of course, it's a misnomer to speak of "world music" at all, and the series aims to reflect the diversity of styles which comes under that somewhat unwieldy umbrella. "The series is called `Routes in Rhythm' for a reason, which is this idea that rhythm is really the genesis of all music," says Godley.

"In the European tradition we have this strange perspective on music where we place harmony and melody at the top of the infrastructure, with rhythm a poor second. But if you look beyond Europe, indigenous music is predominantly rhythmic in nature. The Master Drummers of Africa show will be a vivid example. It's one of those things where all your criteria for judging music become redundant because you're dealing with the idea of rhythm on a very, very profound level. It's like a life force - a biorhythm that you tap into."

Between them, the drummers represent 12 African countries and have, since the group's foundation in 1979, worked with just about every influential African musician you could name, not to mention Bob Marley, Barbra Streisand and The Rolling Stones.

In fact all of the artists in the series, though their names are not well known in these parts, are chart-toppers in their respective countries. The Rizwan Muazam Qawwali group from Pakistan, who will perform at Vicar Street on July 1st, are directly related (literally - the singers are his nephews) to the great qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; and it's worth noting at this point that in deference to the devout Islamic tradition from which these singers come, the Vicar Street venue will be an alcoholfree zone for the duration of that concert.

On November 4th it will be the turn of the Argentinian tango group Dino Saluzzi y Familia, while on November 18th, the Karnatic College of Percussion from Bangalore will take the stage. "Since the death of Astro Piazzola, Dino Saluzzi has been the keeper of the nuevo tango flame," says Godley.

"He performs with his brothers, men in their middle years, lantern-jawed characters - another example of the way local flavours come through from this music. The flamenco concert was all pistols at dawn and Lorca and Blood Wedding and tragedy; with the Cuban guys you get what is almost an existential need to party, because they come from a country where there's a lot of hardship and music is a very important valve for letting off steam; tango captures a kind of broody melodrama."

And then there's the highly evolved world of Indian percussion. "Karnatic music puts a lot of our ideas about rhythmic sophistication in a halfpenny place," says Godley, who, as a jazz musician himself, knows a thing or two about the subject. His own Night in Havana Orchestra will, in the company of a special guest, round off the series at Vicar Street on December 9th.

A final word? "In speaking of this music, the singer Terry Callier talks about `the wonder and the one-ness'. This music is beyond labels, beyond categories, beyond geography even. It's music at its most human."

Master Drummers of Africa play at Vicar Street on Friday at 8 p.m.