Often characterised as a mass cultural and bilingual movement rather than an organisation, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann is a largely voluntary body whose aim is to promote and preserve the integrity of Irish traditional music, song and dance.
It first emerged in 1951 from the old Pipers' Club on Thomas St, Dublin, whose members converged on Mullingar for the first Fleadh Ceoil - a hugely successful round of musical competitions, as well as a festival and celebratory forum for native culture.
The Fleadh became an annual event, and as membership boomed over the 1950s and 1960s, Comhaltas modelled its organisational structures along the lines of the GAA, with local branches, reporting to county and provincial boards, and a national ardchomhairle.
As the fleadhs grew, they coincided with the ballad boom of the 1960s, while the advent of the Troubles often saw the organisation controversially politicised over the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless the organisation has done more than any other single body to ensure the revival of Irish traditional music.
Its activities are legion, and often have a social dimension: music classes, teachers' courses, concerts, performance tours to the US, the quarterly full-colour magazine Treoir, ceilis, summer schools and the annual All-Ireland Fleadh, the final heat of a pyramid of 45 county and provincial fleadhs.
Comhaltas now has 35,000 registered members (although as families count as a single registration, actual involvement runs much higher) in 400 branches worldwide (80 in US, Australia, Britain and Europe), 70 in Northern Ireland, about 250 in the Republic.
