Cruinniú was where the traditional music industry gathered in search of a new direction - toward its listeners, writes Siobhán Long

Now that the Irish traditional arts have come in from the cold - garnering a small but not insignificant 6 per cent of the annual Arts Council budget - Glór's decision to host a conference exploring the myths and realities around making a living in Irish traditional music, song and dance was as timely as it was challenging.

Glór is Ennis's state-of-the-art centre for the traditional arts, built in 2001 and charged with the fearsome task of creating a hub for cultural, arts and community activities in Co Clare.

As its director, Katie Verling acknowledges with a world-weariness, piloting a home for traditional arts in the home of the traditional arts is no easy task. She likens it to bringing coals to Newcastle, such is the ubiquitousness of the tradition in every crook and corner of the county.

Why should punters part with hard-earned cash for a formal concert when they can catch sight and sound of some of the country's finest musicians in a local snug? It's a conundrum facing not just Clare musicians and arts administrators, but the entire traditional arts world, from Donegal to Dunquin.

Cruinniú - A Gathering, subtitled Making A Living In The Traditional Arts, proved an irresistible magnet for all kinds of people with trad associations, direct and indirect. This month's conference was just one of a pair of events scheduled by Glór to celebrate its fifth birthday. The other was a gargantuan tribute concert to traditional music's keeper of the flame, Ciarán MacMathúna.

Cruinniú was where musicians, dancers, broadcasters, journalists and arts administrators coagulated in corners, in between sessions, scratching their heads in search of some simple answers to some very difficult questions. The imponderables included the question of whether there's an existence to be eked out of traditional music at all, and whether the music should be left to speak for itself in the context of a live performance, or whether traditional artists need to wake up to life in the 21st century, and connect with their audiences.

Many musicians bemoaned the fact that it's a constant struggle to lure punters to their gigs. Faced with dwindling audiences, and an explosion in popularity of other forms of world music (championed by acolytes such as Ry Cooder and Peter Gabriel), what does traditional music have to do to survive?

One fundamental issue, largely skirted around throughout Cruinniú, was that traditional music, song and dance grew organically out of an innate desire for self-expression. Commercial success is about as far from its raison d'être as go-go dancing is to Minister John O'Donoghue, who officially opened the event.

Paddy Glackin, fiddler and broadcaster, bemoaned the lack of opportunity for solo musicians to express themselves musically in an age of rampant sonic boom (where, he insisted, traditional musicians have succumbed to the lure of ensemble playing at the expense of subtle interpretation and individual artistic expression). Of course, there's nothing to stop a soloist from playing a tune or a nightful of tunes - just as long as he or she doesn't expect to be at the receiving end of an audience's rapt attention.

Philip King, broadcaster, musician, singer and unabashed lover of the traditional arts, questioned the belief of this particular hack, that traditional musicians must learn to communicate with their audience. He sighed wistfully, invoking the memory of countless Bob Dylan concerts and mused that Mr Zimmerman never burdened himself with much in the way of between-song banter. Undoubtedly true, but traditional music, like all other music forms, has few of its own Bob Dylans (apart perhaps from Tommy Peoples and Paddy Keenan).

The rest are lesser mortals, who owe it to their audience to treat them with the same kind of regard as they give their music. Van Morrison used to make a virtue of his non-communication with his audiences - and that worked, while he was producing sublime music. In recent years, his on-stage disgruntlement has long lost its patina. Even a fleeting glimpse of Bruce Springsteen, Altan's Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, the Buena Vista Social Club's late-lamented pianist Reuben Gonzalez and in latter years, the once monosyllabic Guy Clark's onstage banter, should reassure traditional musicians that on-stage pleasantries will, in all likelihood, enhance rather than detract from their performance.

Record sales have dropped by some 30-35 per cent in the US alone, according to US music attorney, Bob Donnelly. Add to that the fact that, as Compass Records' Garry West declared, 98 per cent of all recorded music in the US sells less than 5,000 units, and you're left in little doubt about the changing face of all kinds of music everywhere - not just the itty-bitty world of traditional music, which is but a blip in the radar of the music business.

With Tower Records in liquidation (though the stores in Dublin and Japan which trade under the Tower name continue in business), and music retailers slashing their shelf space allocation to folk music, Garry West insisted that his greatest challenge, when talking to new and potential Compass Records roster artists, is to manage their expectations.

Even well-established bands such as Lúnasa, who tour constantly and are no strangers to critical plaudits, admit that the going is still tough. Behind the apparent glitz of American, Japanese and European tours lies the stark reality that nobody's going home with vast wads of cash hanging out of their back pockets. What they are doing, Lúnasa's Kevin Crawford admits, is what they love most in life, and managing to make a living out of it, albeit a modest one.

And there lies the rub: loving what you do, and keeping it that way, is never easy, particularly if it fails to pay the mortgage or the child support. So corralling expectations to a point that's rooted in reality is as good a way as any to keep faith in the music, Crawford believes.

Even the Chieftains' Paddy Molony, not a man known for hiding his light under a bushel, admitted that life as a professional traditional musician makes huge demands that would wither the wiliest of trad strategists in the business of plotting a career path from anonymity to stardom. His candid account of three-week-long promotional activity prior to every tour (leading to his record of 28 interviews in one day), of the need to constantly monitor ticket sales, of the Chieftains' forensic attention to the detail of repertoire (after all, he wisely remarked, who wants to listen to maudlin airs or indistinguishable reels all night long?) and above all else, the crucial requirement of every musician: to "manage the managers" would put manners on anyone with an eye trained on the footlights.

Gerry Godley invoked the great Thelonius Monk who, in response to the question: "What's happenin' man?", replied "Everything's happening, all the time." How much more truth is there in that observation now? Traditional music is groaning under the weight of virtuoso musicians and singers, and possibly, on the world stage, struggling to overcome a post-Riverdance hangover. For the first time in its existence, Paddy Glackin pithily noted, its players outnumber its audience.

Maybe that's no bad thing though. If the Chieftains' success is anything to go by, nobody owes traditional music a living. With a rapidly expanded funding source through the Arts Council's Deis scheme, and a wealth of experienced musicians willing to share their expertise with emerging musicians, it seems that those who want to make their career in traditional music need to wake up and smell the coffee - and present themselves to the paying punter with the same respect they have saved up to now for the tunes.

Glór plans to host another Cruinniú next year. See www.glór.ie for details