The Bollywood Brass Band are among the performers at Mayo's Summer Music Series, writes Siobhán Long.

If the term local government conjures nothing more than bin taxes, planning laws and town planning, then perhaps it's worthwhile considering the activities of Mayo County Council's Arts Office this summer. Tapping into the creative energies of their local residents is at the heart of the Council's eclectic summer arts programme, the flagship of which is their Summer Music Series, now in its 10th year.

Anne McCarthy, Mayo County Council's Arts Officer, is responsible for gathering a diverse range of players, including Liz and Yvonne Kane, the Bollywood Brass Band, the Café Orchestra, Pauline Scanlon, Mozaik and the Camerata Swing Band, who will play in assorted venue across the county throughout July.

"Our idea is to provide access for people to music throughout the county and to try something new," she says. "So, someone in Louisburgh, for example, who might never have seen a jazz band, can get the opportunity to go to hear something that's totally outside their experience. They can do it free of charge, and they don't have to travel a four- or five-hour journey to do it either."

Having cut its teeth with a summer music programme which was based solely in Castlebar in 1996, Mayo County Council, with the support of the Arts Council, has been steadfastly stretching and bending its activities to reach the furthest corners of this geographically huge county, and this summer programme will see concerts slated for venues in Westport, Ballina, Killala, Inisturk and Achill Island, among others.

McCarthy views Mayo's Summer Music Series as an ideal opportunity to mix classical, jazz and traditional music with more esoteric genres such as Bhangra and Samba, catering for as wide a range of musical taste across the county as they possibly can. "Traditional music has always been really popular here", she notes, "but we're finding that there's more of a taste for diverse music, as a result of festivals like Féile Erris, the Ballina Street Festival and Westport Arts Festival, all of which programme live music from across the spectrum. I think audiences have really welcomed the chance those events give them to taste far more diverse music forms that they mightn't have gained access to in the past."

Music lovers who might like to sample the artists guesting during this year's series can do so by tuning into their local radio stations, as Mayo County Council have compiled a CD of the guest performers for local broadcast prior to and during the July series. This will surely whet the appetite, Anne McCarthy suggests. "This is good news for the council," she says. "It's a very positive musical presence in the community. This is excellent music, and it's good for people to know that it's available countywide, and that the council sees its cultural activities as an important aspect of what it does."

One of the guests is the Bollywood Brass Band. An English/Asian collective of musicians formed with an aim of bringing the film score music of Indian film (Bombay + Hollywood = Bollywood) to English audiences, this is an eclectic gathering of more than 10 musicians who manage to transform what is often very cheesy music into some of the most energised percussive forces. Unlike many of their more street-cred conscious peers, they will in fact play weddings, parties, anything - just as long as they can crank up the volume and mutate their audiences' pelvises into rhythms they'd previously only ever dreamt of.

Mark Allen, founding member of the Bollywood Brass Band, is looking forward to the chance to play to audiences in the West, having already cut their teeth on Irish audiences in Waterford and Dublin three years ago.

"We play music mainly from Indian films in what is broadly the style of a wedding brass band," he explains. "It's a driving, lively affair that's very much inspired by the style of Indian wedding brass bands, where the whole point of it is to dance and to declare as loudly as possible to the entire village that two people have married. It's bright music, full of attractive rhythms and the best melodies from the enormous Indian film industry. Bhangra was originally a Punjabi folk dance performed at harvest time, but now it's characterised by a rhythmic style of drumming in particular."

Punters who travel to Castlebar on Saturday will get the chance not only to sample Bhangra, but to hear it melded with samba in what the Bollywood Brass Band call Sam Bhangra. "We discovered there are samba rhythms, particularly one called Samba Reggae which works really well with the essential Bhangra beat," Allen says, proceeding to illustrate the rhythmic compatibility down the phone line from London with a series of wonderful tongue clicks and vocal high jinks. "It's almost like a Brazilian version of reggae mixed in with the Bhangra drums which are called dhol drums."

So what does Allen expect the reaction to be from an Irish audience? "Well, I imagine it will be something like what we've experienced in the past, and that's that people will be excited and intrigued by it," he offers. "Sometimes people think it sounds like Cossack music, or gypsy music. But the main thing is that it's very accessible.

The rhythms are strong and the melodies are terrific. We did an interview in Germany recently, and when I had it translated on the Internet, it said that the melodies were like 'earworms'. I like that!"

Summer Music

Bollywood Brass Band - Castlebar, July 2

Rough Deal String Band - Charlestown, July 7

Pauline Scanlon - Achill, July 8

Café Orchestra - Belmullet, July 14

Liz and Yvonne Kane - Inisturk Island, July 16

Brent Parker, Iain King, Maria McGarry - Ballyhaunis, July 20

Declan O'Rourke - Killala, July 21

Anúna -  Ballina, July 23

Mozaik - Westport, July 28

Camerata Swing Band - Louisburgh, July 30

All events are free, but booking is essential due to demand: 094-9047558 or 094-9047560