Many villages all over Ireland this summer will host a traditional music festival in memory of a local musician. In Co Clare alone, Feakle, Doonbeg, Kilrush, Labasheeda and Tulla will all attract their share of traditional music enthusiasts.
But the biggest, longest established and best known of such events is the Willie Clancy Summer School which opened in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, at the weekend and continues until next Saturday.
The summer school, affectionately known as the Willie Week, offers over 18 hours' tuition in the uilleann pipes, fiddle, whistle, flute, accordeon and concertina. There are also set and sean-nós dance classes, singing sessions, lectures, concerts, céilís and, of course, impromptu sessions in local bars.
To mark the school's 30th year, a book entitled A Touchstone for the Tradition has been published. Its author Barry Taylor and the photographer Tony Kearns have put together an attractive and highly entertaining story of the summer school.
The success of the Willie Week can be attributed to two men who, although not themselves musicians, have been its driving force since the beginning. In the early 1970s Muiris Ó Rócháin and Harry Hughes were two young secondary school teachers living in Miltown Malbay. Interested in all aspects of Irish culture, they enjoyed the music and company of Miltown's musicians, particularly Willie Clancy, who played regularly in Friel's pub.
An accomplished piper, he also played the flute and whistle, and could dance and sing. Thanks to the upsurge of interest in the music of Clare in the late 1960s, Willie and his fellow musicians had been "discovered" by young enthusiasts. Finbar Boyle, who was involved in the folk-song movement of the 1960s and 1970s remembers:
"I was in my early twenties when I started going to Miltown Malbay first. I was going there before the School really started at all, initially because Willie Clancy was there. I think the word had gone out among all the musicians and all the people I knew, that this was a nice man that knew a lot about music. I found the whole atmosphere in Miltown at that time was so nice, people were so kind, and there didn't seem to be any great division between the generations. . .The hospitality was unbelievable."
Although remembered as a rather shy, retiring person Willie was the focus of most of Miltown's musical activities. His sudden death in January 1973 was a shock to the people of Miltown and the wider community of musicians and his standing was such that a local committee was set up to seek a suitable way to commemorate his life.
A subscription list for a memorial was advertised in the Clare Champion and Harry Hughes found himself in charge of a fund. But a statue seemed an inappropriate way to celebrate the life of a man who had revelled in making music and passing on the traditions of his native Clare. Slowly the idea of a summer school for musicians began to take shape.
With their network of contacts in the local musical fraternity Ó Rocháin and Hughes organised the first summer school in July 1973. Their plan was to make the musicians the focus of a school of traditional music and to expose as many young people as possible to their influence. And it worked
Now, 30 years down the road, the school can rely on the support of the best musicians. There are many musical families involved - notably the Kellys (now with three generations involved in teaching) O'Connors, Peoples, McCarthys, McPeakes, McKeons, Crehans and Potts. Linked into this family grouping are their long-time musical associates, so a huge extended family has evolved. Nicholas Carolan of the Irish Traditional Music Archive has observed: "The School has almost recreated a kind of traditional society. People pay their dues by attending, talking, by playing, by interacting socially year after year."
Although the school was conceived as a teaching event for all traditional instruments, pride of place goes to the the uilleann pipes - bellows-driven bagpipes with chanter, drones and regulators capable of providing harmony along with the melody.
Na Piobairí Uilleann, the pipers' association based in Henrietta Street, Dublin, now re-locates to Miltown Malbay for the week and looks after all the classes at the Summer School. There are also daily workshops for reed-making and pipe maintenance, as well as specialised recitals.
The largest group of students are fiddlers. Over 400 players of varying ability will enrol and the unenviable task of placing them in classes appropriate to their needs falls to John Kelly and Eamon McGivney.
The dancing programme, introduced in 1982, might be called the social heart of the school. Most of the dances taught are of a type which, until relatively recently, were rejected by "authorities" such as the Commission for Irish Dance as being either non-Irish, in the case of set dances, or too loosely structured, in the case of sean-nós.
Aidan Vaughan, a native of Miltown Malbay, teaches steps for Clare sets and specialises in "battering" - a sort of drumming of the feet traditionally the preserve of men. "I know there's an old tradition that women never battered, but you have to have equality now! So I teach the women the same as the men, because the majority in my class would be women, anyway."
• A Touchstone for the Tradition, The Willie Clancy Summer School by Tony Kearns and Barry Taylor is published by Brandon at €22.50.