The landscape of Irish traditional music has expanded greatly since the rather tentative beginning of the revival in the 1950s. The rediscovery of Irish Ireland, initiated by the Gaelic League at the end of the last century, awoke the interest of the urban classes in the autochthonous culture, but had a limited success in arresting the decline of the music, and of the language. Confined to crumbling redoubts in isolated country districts the music was diminishing in importance and relevance. The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935, a product of clerical and conservative pressure, put an end to social non-commercial house dancing in many areas.
The music was in danger of drying up at its source. Who could have foretold that by the end of the millennium the traditional music, in one form or another, would have become a badge of Irish cultural identity, recognised round the world! The move from private to public, forced by the Dance Halls Act, led to the formation of the ceili bands and they in turn, responsive to changing opinions and demands, metamorphosed into a bewildering number of bands or groups with extraordinary names: Emmet Spiceland, Pumpkinhead, De Danann, Relativity, Dervish, to name but a few.
So rapid have been the changes over the past few decades that Vallely's Companion comes most timeously. It responds to nets wide, historically from the earliest harps to the modern synthesiser, geographically from Ireland to the USA and Finland and Australia, stylistically from the community based but very personal solo singing of seannos to the spectacular stage show of Riverdance.
The 108 contributors to the Companion are drawn from a wide range of singers, instrumentalists, dancers, collectors, researchers, instrument-makers and scholars, for many of whom traditional music has become a governing passion. The importance of their joint effort is that it looks both back and forward at a moment when there is a balance, uneasy though it may be, between the old style practitioners and the more commercially orientated contemporary players, supported by the new ex-rural, comparatively wealthy middle class.
More people now can make a living from traditional music and dance than could ever have been expected but it is at the price of continuing innovation, and the contributors to the Companion, though fully aware of the boost that is being given to the whole scene by the spread of stage-shows and Irish bars and by the proliferation of groups and styles, would not be averse to a slowing down of the rate of change.
The Companion is in the form of an A to Z reference work and is partly a directory of individuals (400 entries) and a compendium of useful and interesting information (around 600 entries). Directory entries are mostly short, compendium entries can be quite long: harp, 22 columns; USA, 14 columns; song, 50 columns. There is so much information that the A to Z format requires either copious cross-references or a comprehensive index to help the reader track down a particular interest.
For example, Gael-Linn is entered under the name of its founder O Morain, Nioclas Toibin can be found under Connerys, and the only mentions of Caoine that I can find are under Gender and Ui Mhaitiu. In a compilation of this sort some omissions will be inevitable; the editor defuses criticism or resentment by giving his own list of omissions and asking for comment and corrections.
Considering that the proposal of such a Companion was only mooted in 1996 it is an astonishing achievement, even in this electronic age, that it can now be presented to the public in very handsome shape, clearly printed, well bound, and elegantly diversified with illustrations and players, instruments and musical examples.
Not only is it highly informative but it is also highly readable. Who would grudge the three lines about committee members of the Feis Ceoil who resigned because the word "kiss" occurred more than once in a choral piece?
The contributors are happily free of that provincialism that led a Co Mayo adjudicator to say of a Co Down singer: "We have to break this Ulster style . . . it's not singing at all. It should be kept to the back rooms of pubs." Regional styles are cherished but borrowing and fusion are accepted as necessary to the continuing well-being of the art.
This book, which includes a bibliography, a discography and a chronology, gives a well focused overview of the whole landscape and should bring the literature of traditional music into more public gaze, out from the local library shelves where it has been, to quote the editor, "hidden among faith-healing, calligraphy and Celtic crosses".
Douglas Sealy is a music critic with The Irish Times