"WHEREVER you go in Ireland, you'll hear music," the lavish blurb for the impending Celtic Flame Festival to be experienced in Galway, Cork, Limerick. And also in Dublin - apparently "situated overlooking the sea" with "fun-filled pubs on every corner", bursting with that persistent, nauseating mis-spelling "craic".
The cringe-making jargon is possibly related to this new, tourist-oriented event being organised via the Tourism Council, from London - by the Irish Tourist Board there, in an effort to expand the season. More than a third of its £300,000 budget comes from the Minister for Tourism and Trade, Enda Kenny, while £75,000 is expected from the European Regional Development Fund. Guinness is the biggest of the other sponsors.
Artists have been assembled by MCD in Dublin, making this a thoroughly tourism-commerce music festival, a new genesis for Irish music. Headline names include Paul Brady, Sharon Shannon, Mary Coughlan, Eddi Reader, Begley and Cooney, Altan, Frances Black, Dolores Keane, Donal Lunny, Brian Kennedy and Mairtin O'Connor. The "fringe" event is really a listing of other happenings in the particular areas, and this has the Garda Band, Sid Laurance Orchestra, Van Morrison, Steve Earle, National Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, the Romanian National Opera and the Tango show.
Running parallel to all this are "pub trail" acts that include The Bumblebees, Nomos and Stockton's Wing, and there is a "gig rig" feature with wonderful bands Tamalin and Kia.
Strange bed-partners these, each one in many ways seeming the antithesis of the other. But despite Euro-rationalism the "Traditional" is an important part of our validation within the EU, and "Celticism" is a marketable commodity - even if only as a condiment. Indeed, as we approach the end of the 20th century, the Romantic cycle of national identity is shaping up to deliver its customary, centennial, cultural climax - just as it did in the 1890s, and before, that in the 1790s. In this process, music is not only a powerfully emotional icon but one that is tangible - and that pays.
Galway, Cork and Limerick get the best big-name value from the Flame's attentions, for in Dublin it is quenched by Guinness's own Temple Bar Fleadh which this year is subsumed into the new (also Government-blessed) St Patrick's Festival. And it is in the regional venues too that the most interesting music potential appears to be in the so called "pub trails" - even if they do run the risk of poor attentiveness, making wallpaper of the music and furniture of the players.