To Clare with love

`If it's music you want, then go to Clare." Christy Moore's old dictum, from his song Lisdoonvarna, still holds true. Anyone in Ennis over the weekend would have been left in no doubt about which county they were in.

Turn any corner and there was a hairy gentleman with a banjo. Enter any pub and the air was full of fiddles. On the streets there were Spaniards playing the pipes, Germans thrashing bodrans, and even people from as far away as Co Tyrone horsing out a song after a long week working through the traditional repertoire and guzzling pints.

The Fleadh Nua, despite its name, is hardly new. Organised by Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, the body founded to promote Irish traditional music, it is 30 years old. Having started in Dublin, the real marriage of festival and place happened when it moved to Ennis 27 years ago. Since then, it's been a breeding ground for some of our more accomplished traditional musicians. The Donal Lunnys and Tommy Hayeses of this world were nurtured and encouraged through the fleadh culture. The fleadhs kept the music alive long before Irish traditional music gained the world status that it enjoys today.

For many, the fleadhs' heyday was the 1970s. In an Ireland with few large music festivals, the summer fleadh was the embodiment of the craic concept. All types came down from the mountains, over the plains and from out of the cities to enjoy the licentious atmosphere of the fleadh, drinksodden and driven by jigs and reels. In the Linguaphone Irish language tape, one doubtlessly thirsty Irish solider remarked that what he missed most about Ireland in the dry sands of the Lebanon, was not his girlfriend, or his family - but the fleadhs. They were wild festivals where the music was taken so seriously that fistfights were known to happen between rival ceili bands over matters musical.

But what most of the festivals - such as the Fleadh Cheoil - concentrated on, were competitions. While the possibility of winning may have kept many youngsters interested in the music, others were known to have their love of the music killed off by pushy parents, who wanted their Brid or Sean to bag the big prize. While most musicians agree there is a role for competition in encouraging young players in technical ability, many feel that too much of an emphasis on music as a competitive sport stifles experimentation. It was partly for this reason that the Fleadh Nua was started, to take the emphasis away from competition and put it back on the pure enjoyment of the music.

What is central to the concept, however, is not so much experimentation, as the preservation of the tradition. Younger musicians get a chance to meet older seasoned ones. Workshops are held and the focus is on listening to fellow musicians and on performance. There are more amateur players than professionals, and the vast majority of them are young.

"It's more like a family festival than a musicians' festival," says Ciaran Cotter, whose traditional music shop, The Knotted Chord, has been open in Ennis for 10 months. "In November, there is the Ennis Traditional Festival which is more of a musicians' festival. And the Fleadh Nua is more focused on formal events than pubs."

Because of the nature of the festival, there were not many big names knocking around Ennis last weekend. Two notable exceptions were Gerdie Commane and Sonny Murray, legendary Clare concertina players, now in their 80s, who, according to Ciaran Cotter, "kept music going in Clare when it was at a low point; they're legends in their own lifetimes". Each year, the Fleadh Nua honours outstanding musicians, and this year it was Commane and Murray's turn.

Away from the more formal events of the festival, some of the most interesting activity was to be found on the margins, where informal sessions were happening in every nook and cranny, or dark watering hole. While some pubs were too packed to enter, I was assured by banjo players Martin McColgan and Eric Mitchell, in O'Hallorans pub on High Street, that they weren't the pubs most worth entering, in any case.

Following their advice to stay off the beaten track, I found a session from tourist heaven in P. Arthur's grocery-cum-pub-cum-kitchen on Parnell Street.

Drawn by the sound of a powerful singing voice, I found the best session in town, with the singers taking their turns over bottles of porter (no draught) and sitting on kitchen-style stools. When one singer, with a quintessentially Irish singing voice, finished his song and spoke, I was surprised to hear a heavy Liverpool accent. It seems that an English bank holiday and the strength of sterling, not to mention the strength of Comhaltas in Britain, had combined to attract more than 500 English visitors.

While the Fleadh Nua may have the image of presenting the conservative side of Irish music, with its revivalist jargon, Mass in Irish, and traditional St. Patrick's Day style "National Cultural Parade", that doesn't prevent people from all over Ireland and the world returning year in, year out. The fleadh in Ennis is an example of a local community celebrating its vibrant musical tradition, and while great experimentalists have come out of that tradition, they have that tradition to return to. As Labhras O Murchu, director general of Comhaltas, points out, if anything the Fleadh Nua is becoming more popular. "We had a lull in attendance in the 1980s, but I must say that it's really come back in the last five or six years. Young people are coming in large numbers."