The world in 1999 has become a global one-party state, the party in question being that of big business. Central to the running of this monstrosity is the replacement of the United Nations, purportedly representing us all, by NATO, manifestly representing its richest members. The recent decision to ally this country with NATO through the so-called Partnership for Peace constitutes a defining change of paradigm that is very much in harmony with the rejection of an independent perspective everywhere apparent in Irish society. The paradox is that the media loudly celebrate these submissive trends as demonstrating the opposite: confidence, maturity, emancipation.
In the post-Gulf War reissue of his Deterring Democracy, Noam Chomsky instanced certain Irish newspapers as having been almost unique in revealing the truth about that massacre. His explanation was that Irish journalists operated "outside the major power centres" and hence availed of a degree of freedom withheld from those more centrally placed. Alas, more recent events such as the illegal NATO onslaught on Yugoslavia have seen our journalists adopt a far more obedient stance, lining up with their colleagues throughout the western world as malleable servants of power.
Note that Chomsky did not seek to evoke some nebulous Celtic identity in assessing our journalists' independence. Instead, he postulated an independent perspective ("outside the major power centres") derived from our historical and geographical realities. Now that we have renounced neutrality along with sovereignty, the hubbub of crass rhetoric about our "coolness" and "funkiness" has reached an unprecedented decibel level. The disgusting spectacle of the recent MTV Awards is a good example of how willingly our rock and pop musicians have enlisted in this campaign to assert our emancipation at the very moment when we are displaying a new subservience.
Traditionally, Irish writers were considered to epitomise our uniqueness. The originality of such figures as Mangan, Maturin, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Flann O'Brien again emanated less from "identity" than from perspective, an essentially liberating distance from "the sources of power". Today's successful prose-writers mostly toe the line tacitly laid down by their publishers, and write stolidly in that leftover version of The Great Tradition favoured by their British counterparts. This abdication of a distinctive perspective on literary form is perhaps the only option open to a career-minded writer wishing to profit from the notorious munificence of UK-based multinational publishers.
Our traditional music has proved eminently amenable to annexation into the fuzzy universe of so-called world music. To a large extent "the real thing" has disappeared back into the ghettoes where "purists" pursue their solitary pleasures. While very often the fusions and confusions of world music generate exciting results, nobody should gullibly accept that the resultant levelling constitutes some kind of progressive merging of disparate cultures. The unhealthy illusion that the Irish are somehow conquering the world by subjecting different musical idioms to the "Celtic" treatment masks the reality: traditional music is being absorbed into a mid-Atlantic mush that ultimately derives its flavour from US-American cultural imperialism. Again the purportedly global reveals its inherent parochialism.
As for classical music, the prospects are mixed. The very fact that Irish composers are still a largely undefined entity means that they can't easily be co-opted into anything in particular. Perhaps it is time to see this handicap as a source of pride. The rejection by Irish composers before the 1970s of involvement in such trends as serialism (with the temporary exception of Seoirse Bodley) or minimalism has hitherto been seen as a manifestation of the ostrich mentality. Perhaps, however, it was also a stubborn expression of independence that had as yet not quite found a productive perspective. Since roughly 1969 it seems to me that such a perspective has been evolving, within which internationally-minded composers have wished a plague on all the houses of orthodoxy, be they spectral, serial, minimal, or just downright tonal, although the same composers feel free to take what suits them from any or all of these directions. Just as the originality of Joyce, Beckett or O'Brien never depended on specifically Irish materials (even if those were present), these composers are not necessarily dependent on the recycling of jigs and reels or sean nos; nor indeed the shamefaced avoidance of such elements. They pillage from Europe and the United States (the "sources of power") without feeling the need to align themselves with either. This is no mere cosmopolitanism or eclecticism, still less a classical version of "world music", but rather a genuine non-conformism, a positive non-alignment rather than a passive neutrality.
THE rewards for this freedom of spirit have hitherto been negligible, as the totalitarian marketplace resists what cannot be compartmentalised. Up to now Gerald Barry is the only composer to have made an international reputation without compromising with mock-Celtic expectations. He alone has decisively broken the BBC barrier - that unwritten exclusion of composers from the Republic of Ireland (those from the North are somewhat luckier) from the British airwaves. In this respect his status is very much that of the exception proving the rule, allowing those who enforce the rule to point to him as a rebuttal of its existence. He is also the one composer from the Republic to have found a major international publisher.
Nevertheless, others have been "taken up" by recording companies such as Vienna Modern masters, Naxos/Marco Polo and Black Box. These recordings, however, are scarcely to be found on the shelves of Irish record shops. Clearly they don't fit that misty but mercantile image of ourselves in which we so persistently delight. In addition, there is a healthily increasing number of live performances of new Irish works both in Dublin and in provincial centres such as Cork, Galway, and Sligo. Lyric FM has the potential to develop into a useful resource once it feels confident enough to trust the receptivity of its audience.
Perhaps when the outside world has become fed up with the yobbish posturings of the Celtic Tiger, it will be noticed that in the realm of classical composition a quiet renaissance has been taking place. Our composers will then be faced with the temptation to conform, to yield to one of the international orthodoxies, or to become "Irish" instead of Irish composers.
Raymond Deane's most recent composition to be performed was The Wall of Cloud, staged by Opera Theatre Company.
