Is a saxaphone player any less Irish than a fiddle player. As the dissenting murmurs over the new Arts Bill 2002 heat into howls of protest, the debate over the distinctions between 'tradition' and 'innovation' - if indeed there are any - begs the question about the 'Irishness' of the arts
Llike the flowers that bloom in the spring, the piece of legislation known as The Arts Bill 2002 burst on to the scene in the early days of April with a modest flourish. The result of a long process of discussion and deliberation, the bill set out to produce a slim, streamlined Arts Council (nine members instead of 16) and reflect a coherent, contemporary approach to matters artistic on the part of both the government and the arts community.
It had been a long time coming. The Arts Council was set up under the Arts Act of 1951, which was amended in a second act in 1973, but the pace of cultural change in Ireland during the past two decades demanded a radical overhaul of arts policy and infrastructure. On the face of it, the new bill did exactly that, and as it was accompanied by a double whammy of good news on the arts front - namely, that lots more money would be made available for arts funding and that the Arts Plan 2002-2006, a carefully-costed blueprint for development which had been hammered out following a lengthy series of submissions from a wide range of interested parties, would be implemented in full - it was broadly, if somewhat cautiously, welcomed by the arts sector.
Six months later, however, things are anything but rosy in the arts garden. There a new Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue having replaced Síle de Valera in the post-election reshuffle, and the Arts portfolio itself has been whipped away from its romantic-sounding bedfellows Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands and filed with the ultra-pragmatic Tourism and Sport departments instead. The rapidly deteriorating economic climate has made funding increases look like pipe dreams. And, as the bill approaches its final, committee stage in the Dáil, murmurs of dissent from certain individuals and organisations have risen to a veritable howl of protest over its proposed establishment of three standing committees to advise the Arts Council on traditional arts, local government arts activity and innovation in the arts.
Since the traditional arts committee is the only one of these standing committees which would have a funding function (or, as the bill puts it, "make recommendations to the council in relation to the advance of moneys to any person relating to traditional Irish arts"), concerns have been expressed over the potential erosion of the Arts Council's traditional "arms-length" approach to funding applications. But what may look to the outside observer like an arcane argument over money conceals a deeper - and considerably more significant - debate about the nature of Ireland's cultural identity and who - if any - its custodians should be.
"If such a standing committee is a good idea, then why is one not established for all the artforms?" asks Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. "If it is a bad idea, then why is one inflicted on the traditional arts? And this is set in legislation which will affect every Arts Council for the next 20 years at least - that's a long time, and there'll be a lot of changes during that time, but no matter what crops up, those standing committees will be standing there like iron, as of right."
Carolan is highly critical of the bill's vague use of language and lack of adequate definitions. "Any definition of traditional arts must include music, song and dance, and probably story-telling - but what about quilt-making and dry-stone walling? That's a flaw in the bill generally; it doesn't distinguish between arts and crafts. Insofar as there's any definition of 'traditional arts', there's an implication that they are 'something not contemporary' - and that is absolutely objectionable to anyone involved in the field. If they weren't a contemporary art, albeit one with a long and important history, they would be just antiquarian curiosities."
Tom Sherlock, who manages a number of traditional musicians, including Liam O'Flynn, Altan and Karan Casey, shares these reservations and questions whether, from a practical point of view, the day-to-day operation of the standing committees has been properly thought through. "There appears to me to be a risk that the committees will be effectively unworkable," he says. "The bill proposes a nine-person Arts Council. Three standing committees consisting of two council members each, plus a chairperson, will result not only in an increased workload for members, but could also create conflict between the smaller committees and the larger council.
"The whole standing committee issue is unsound. I have been in touch with the Local Authority Arts Officers Association, and they are at a loss to know where any demand for a standing committee relating to their area of interest came from. I have yet to meet anyone who can state with confidence what the proposed committee on innovation and the arts might concern itself with. It is arguable that those two committees are simply smokescreens in order to allow for the creation of a de facto separate Arts Council for traditional arts, something that Comhaltas Ceóltoirí Éireann has long lobbied for, but which has been comprehensively rejected by everyone else in the traditional sector."
A separate council for traditional music was also given a thumping thumbs-down by the Department of the Taoiseach, which, when submissions were being taken on the idea just over a year ago, decribed it as "deeply regressive". But Comhaltas Ceóltoirí Éireann, which runs the annual Fleadh Ceoil and administers its own highly structured educational and examination programme for young musicians - the Comhaltas website even distinguishes between a "session" and a "Comhaltas session" - insists it would be a positive development.
Director-general Labhrás Ó Murchú goes further, welcoming the standing committee suggestion as a highly acceptable alternative. "What we're dealing with here is one of the most exciting things that has happened in a legislative sense for traditional arts, ever," he says. "We had been participating for over 20 years in public debate at the lack of developmental attention from the Arts Council for the traditional arts, and also lack of funding. And even after all of that debate, last year - out of their total budget for the arts - less than one per cent was given to traditional arts. So even after a 20-year debate nothing had changed."
Opponents of the bill insist, however, that while the establishment of a standing committee devoted specifically to traditional arts appears to address the underfunding issue, it does not actually guarantee so much as an extra penny of additional funding for traditional arts. It may even hinder the development of those - unspecified - arts by its implicit opposal of the concepts of "tradition" and "innovation". After all, is traditional music not also a contemporary and innovative art form? Take, for example, a CD by the traditional flautist Michael McGoldrick which features Indian dance guru Talvin Singh playing tabla on one track. Would that come under the remit of the standing committee on traditional arts, or the standing committee on innovation in the arts?
"I think that's a confusing debate, I genuinely do," says Ó Murchú. "Traditional music is organic by its very nature, and there doesn't have to be a contrived development of it."
Contrived development, of course, can produce undeniably exciting combinations - especially in an artistic climate where fusion, rather than fission, is the order of the day. The saxophonist Gerry Godley, whose Improvised Music Company has brought many jazz and world music acts to Ireland, would like to see more - not less - interaction between musical genres in this country. "Traditional music is not an area that I work in directly, so I can't say anything about it - except that it's my music, too. I think it's very important that 'traditional music' isn't something that's hived off and just played in bars in Doolin. Am I any less Irish because I play the saxophone, an instrument that isn't indigenous, in a musical tradition that started 100 years ago in New Orleans - does that make me any less Irish than somebody playing jigs and reels in Gus O'Connor's? And of course the answer is 'no'. We're Irish first and musicians second.
"So the fact that traditional music has been singled out for some form of special treatment is, to me, a kind of cultural apartheid. Because it either says that traditional music is more important than other forms of music and must have its own way of interacting with the Arts Council, or it says that it is weaker than other forms of music and needs special pleading."
What is actually needed, he says, is a bit of lateral thinking. "Jazz is a bit like two cells in a petrie dish, dividing all the time. It's almost viral in its rate of change. Traditional music, on the other hand, is glacial - it evolves very, very slowly. I'm interested in what happens when these two genres of music meet. Tensions create new genres, new ideas - and we shouldn't be afraid of this.
"Take post-devolution Scotland. Musically it's a very live place right now, and I think the reason for that is new thinking, new organisations, starting from scratch. There's a tremendous amount of dialogue between traditional musicians and those from other disciplines - rock, dance, jazz, whatever - and that's very healthy."
It's not just musicians who are concerned about the splitting off of traditional arts. "This proposal seems to be at odds with the Arts Plans, which are trying to recognise the cross-fertilising ways in which art is made, not trying to ring-fence one art form," says Willie Walsh, artistic director of the Project Theatre. "The fault lines that those standing committees draw are far too prescriptive. But if they have to have standing committees, there should at least be a level playing field. That one committee has a funding function is very peculiar.
"However, I'm optimistic. There's a new Minister who has indicated that he will be receptive to change, and it's up to those of us who have a problem with the legislation to propose an alternative, rather than to fingerwag."
As the legislation approaches committee stage and is passed into law over the coming weeks, Realpolitik will almost certainly replace ideological argument. In the meantime, the debate appears to be engaging more and more artists and musicians - not normally known for their interest in politics.
In a foreword to the new website of the Glór Music Centre in Ennis, Co Clare, which went online last week, the fiddler Martin Hayes writes: "Tradition and innovation are not exclusive. Nobody had ever played like Joe Cooley before he did. The same is true for Tommy Potts, Michael Coleman, Willie Clancy, Paddy Carty . . . the list goes on and on, and includes many of the names that define the music. The polarities of tradition and innovatio n should not be kept apart. They are both integral parts of the music. Music that innovates without true respect for, or understanding of, the tradition is as shallow as traditional music that merely imitates the past."
He might be writing a manifesto for the anti-arts bill lobby - so is he? "Not at all," says Katie Verling, director of Glór. "I didn't ask Martin to write on this particular topic, although it's one we discuss - at length - any time we meet up." Verling, however, feels the time for talk is over and has put her own suggestion to the Minister. "It's one of many suggestions, and I don't know what will happen, but I do know that you can't talk about tradition without talking about innovation. You can't have one without the other. So what I'm proposing is that traditional arts and innovation be put into one standing committee. If you put the two together, you have a really interesting committee, and one with real policy strength which would be a real help to the Arts Council."
The flower that bloomed in the spring? Looks like it has plenty of life left in it still, come late autumn.
• The Comhaltas website is at www.comhaltas.com. The Glor website is at www.glor.ie
