A new winter school is raising the profile of traditional music in the counties around Carlingford Lough, writes Siobhán Long
You'd be forgiven if you suspected that traditional musicians are a bunch of cap-'n'-gown-wearing academics, such is the plethora of summer schools and winter schools, competitions, feiseanna, workshops and master classes that have swamped the calendar in recent years. Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy set the bar high back in 1973, when it embarked on its annual summer fest of tunes, songs, and the occasional high step or two. Recent arrivals range from Donegal's Frankie Kennedy Winter School to Ballyferriter's Spring School (aka Scoil Cheoil an Earraigh), Castleisland's Patrick O'Keeffe festival, Cavan's deliciously titled Nyah Traditional Arts Festival and Strokestown's Féile Frank McGann. And that's not to mention the slew of international festivals luring musicians to such exotic climes as Edinburgh, Lorient, Québec and Milwaukee. Traditional music has certainly come a long way from the crossroads from whence it has steadily two-stepped its way towards Carnegie Hall and beyond, in recent years.
In the past, the Cooley peninsula has earned a colourful reputation for everything from cattle rustling and second-hand car dealing to picturesque hillwalking, but it's buried its music so far beneath its bushels that it's going to take more than the wiliest of winter schools to draw the attention of listeners beyond the confines of its Border country. Counties Louth, Cavan, Monaghan, Down and Antrim might be close geographically, but they might as well be Ulan Bator for all the daily communication that they engage in, or at least, used to engage in - until such niceties as the Belfast Agreement began to seep beneath the skin of the region.
Lately there's been something of an entente cordiale, with local musicians gradually coming to the realisation that tunes and songs could be swapped without fear of a loss of identity or, worse still, of a note going astray, or a lyric going awry.
Carlingford Lough is ideally situated to cradle this musical awakening, fingering as it does the counties whose borders are finally dissolving in the wealth of tunes, songs and dance steps which they share. Celebrating common ground is what the inaugural Scoil Chairlinn is all about, according to its co-founder (with Gerry "Fiddle" O'Connor), guitarist, singer, champion lilter and Londoner by birth, Seán Ó Roideáin, the centre manager of Carlingford Community Development's Foy Centre, which hosted the winter school's grand concert.
"We developed the winter school in partnership with St Oliver's Primary School, and with the Cooley Peninsula Tourism Association", Ó Roideáin reports, the seeds of cross-fertilisation evident in the eclectic range of partners who signed up for the challenge. "What we're hoping is that this will be a catalyst to stimulate the playing of traditional music across the peninsula. There's a specific regional style here, that Gerry O'Connor's one of the principal exponents of, and we want to make sure that that's passed on to future generations".
"Historically this was the Kingdom of Oriel", he continues enthusiastically, "but in terms of how traditional music has been transmitted in the past, people from north Leinster didn't get to meet up with people from south Ulster. This event has provided a unique opportunity for people from Bundoran, Carrickmacross, south Armagh and south Down to meet up. And what we're hoping now is that new networks begin to develop from here on."
Rose O'Connor, (mother of Gerry), has taught fiddle over five decades in Dundalk, and her proteges have included not just her own son, (a founding member of Lá Lugh and Skylark), but the renowned young fiddler, Zoë Conway, whose debut CD ushered in a new generation of musicians steeped in local geography and schooled in a musical university of life that whispered of a maturity well beyond her years. Rose is delighted with the advent of a local winter school, celebrating local music, a music that's fuelled her own playing since childhood - and still does - as she coasts through her 85th year. With more than 500 jigs, 500 reels, 100 hornpipes, 34 set dances, polkas and slow airs, all transcribed in her own hand, Rose knows not only the price of a good tune, but the value of it too.
"This school is a marvellous idea altogether," she declares. "I've told all my students about it, because it's a great chance for them to learn more tunes, and to play with great teachers. Mandolin, banjo, accordion, fiddle. Sure there's no end to the music that's there. We didn't have the luxury of that when we were first starting out." With 52 students, ranging in age from seven to 65, enrolled in classes on fiddle, banjo, mandolin, accordion and tin whistle, and travelling from locations as disparate as Virginia in Co Cavan, to Dublin and Belfast, Seán Ó Roideáin feels confident that the music of the region is destined for greatness.
ODDLY THOUGH, THE winter school's dance presence, from Scoil Rince Ard-Rialla, ran the risk of undermining the credibility of the music. With a pair of lead dancers decked out in dance costumes akin to a diabolical cross- fertilisation of the worst of Las Vegas excess with the horrors of Dante's Inferno (bathed in blindingly luminous colours and bedecked in flamingo-pink plumage), Scoil Chairlinn momentarily strayed off course, only to be lured back on track by a gathering of the finest musicians including Desi Wilkinson, Joe Sherlock and Mick Callaghan on flute, Andrew McNamara on accordion and Gerry O'Connor on fiddle.
The shortage of sessions in Carlingford's local bars (apart from a lone session on the opening night in PJ O'Hare's, and a lunchtime session on Sunday in the Milestone Bar) was a reminder of the peripheral role that live traditional music still plays in the peninsula, but Gerry O'Connor is optimistic that local tunes will again hold forth in the region, with just a touch more cosseting and cajoling.
"What keeps me going, and what keeps the music alive, is cross-fertilisation," O'Connor insists. "That's what keeps me playing much the same kinds of melodies, but with different colours. Boundaries are being pushed now in the best sense. People are opening doors, and seeing possibilities that they mightn't have seen before. Music is constantly moving and shifting, and there has to be room for everybody. I think Ceol Chairlinn is just one piece of the puzzle. Our music is like a mist that you can move, and twist, and pull and shape it. It's so flexible and pliant."
Seán Ó Roideáin sees the nurturing of local talent as a primary responsibility of this year's and future winter schools. "We really want to increase the number of players and teachers locally, and to put in place the infrastructure which will sustain traditional music across the peninsula in the long run", he says. "By bringing on local teaching assistants to work with Gerry [ O'Connor] and Desi Wilkinson, we're investing in the future development of tutors as well as players in this region. Our links with Fintan Vallely and Dundalk IT bodes well for traditional music in the north east too, I think. The success we've seen with our first festival this year can only auger well for the future."
For details of the 2007 Ceol Chairlinn, contact Seán Ó Roideáin at 042-9383624 or info@carlingfordbeds.com
