'Who'd be bothering with us at our age and the music so strong with the young people?" Seβn Potts, founder member of The Chieftains, Seβn ╙ Riada's Ceolt≤ir∅ Chulainn, and stalwart of Na P∅obair∅ Uileann, speaks of his generation in the kind of self-deprecating terms you'd expect from an arch underachiever, a player destined to remain forever jettisoned to the furthest reaches of the back-room bar or the haggart. But his resumΘ would put most trad pretenders to shame and his passion would embarrass the Marquis de Sade, if the lurid scribe were ever to venture into the throbbing core of traditional Irish music.
At a time when there is an unprecedented need for heroes and heroines, Seβn Potts, Johnny O'Leary, Seβn Maguire, Vincent and Jimmy Campbell, Peter O'Loughlin and the inimitable Joe Burke carry a collective torch that won't be readily quenched by an opportunistic westerly gust. These are the players who resisted the apathy, the antipathy and the snobbery of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and continued to swap tunes, trade sets and conjoin all manner of unlikely jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes at a time when it was neither popular nor profitable.
TG4, and director, Philip King, together with the wildest box player on the west coast, Brendan Begley, can claim credit for gathering some of the tradition's lynchpins around the fire. Begley, a player with a weakness for the primal energy of the music, recognised that many traditional flag bearers were scattered throughout the country and yet minimal archival material had been gathered. And certainly little tribute had been paid to them. From there it was but a two-step to the commissioning of a six-part TV series - profiles not so much in courage as in tenacity.
Taking its title, SΘ Mo Laoch ("he's my hero"), from the song Mo Giolla Meβr, it was a challenge to which Philip King rose with customary flourish.
"It was a privilege to be invited into the world of the music," he says, "and by its nature, it's an inclusive music. You mightn't necessarily be a player, but you can feel very much a part of the music all the same. These six players, or laochs, play the music from their hearts. It was a central part of their lives long before it was popular or turned into a 'product', and it still exists as a central part of community life where it's played."
An overriding role of all traditional musicians was, as King acknowledges, "to put the music under the dancer's foot". But, he's not so na∩ve as to think that it marches to the same beat as so much other music, moulded for the marketplace. "I've travelled the world," he says, "and you hear U2 and Burt Bacharach and you marvel at it, but sometimes you just walk into a room, you hear a tune, and you know you're home. It calls you in a different way. Seamus Heaney says of sean n≤s singing that 'it goes behind the talking head and it calls you out'. I think that's true."
"I suppose we were conservationists before our time," says Seβn Potts with characteristic reticence, "and listening to the youngsters coming up now, it augers very well for the future."
Potts, an accomplished whistle player, makes little secret of his first love for the uileann pipes. Although he classes himself as a "failed" piper, his vision has been realised by his son, Seβn ╙g Potts, already a piper with a formidable reputation.
Seβn Maguire, Belfast fiddler, teacher (of, among others, last year's TG4 Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Maedbh O'Hare) and band leader with the kind of charisma that would put Glenn Miller in the shade, is nonplussed by the recovery in traditional music's fortunes in recent years. As far as he's concerned, it's long overdue, though often misdirected towards the commercially seductive sound rather than the full-blooded original.
"You've got to love the music to play it well," he insists. "Just like the language: you've got to love it to speak it properly. I'm very proud to say that I can stand up and stake my claim to the music and to think that I have given much pleasure to many people. But how many people can really make any money from this music? Very few. If you were depending on this for a living, you'd be in the poorhouse."
King is quick to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship which the music and the Irish language enjoyed in the past and, while the language may no longer flourish as it once did, its cadences can be heard in the music, he suggests.
"The crossroads where language and music intersect is a very interesting place," he says. "The language, though weak, and gone in some places like Sliabh Luachra, now finds itself in the music. The way the bow crosses the strings of the fiddle, the right hand of the accordion, carry something of the language in them. The rhythm, the cadence and the metre of the language is to be found there."
Vincent and Jimmy Campbell, sibling fiddle players from the Glenties in Co Donegal, are a spellbinding twosome who not only play the music but live and speak it. It's not so much a pastime as a primal force woven into the fabric of both their lives. Vincent wonders whether today's players have such an affinity with the music.
"We learned the music at house dances," he says, "and we learned the tradition as well as the tunes. I wonder if that's what's lacking today.
"Young players learn the tunes and they get the sheet music, and they pick out the bare bones of the tune. There's a gap there that's very hard to fill. Learning the 'bow hand' of the fiddler who came before you, learning how to add your own touch to it. There are so many ways a tune can be played, and it's still the same tune."
Vincent's brother Jimmy harbours another fear, too, that the local accent or blβs of the music will be lost amid the professionalisation of the tradition.
"I would be very worried that all the players would play the same music and that it would get boring," he suggests. "I'd be afraid that the regional styles would be lost. Tunes used to be passed from town to town on a fair day long ago. Now tunes get taught in classes and I've a worry that they'll all be learned and played the same way."
Sliabh Luachra's Johnny O'Leary, the virtual godfather of box playing in traditional circles, is perplexed by the shifting sands that dictate the direction of the music. Like the boundaries of Sliabh Luachra itself (a region which, as Con Houlihan memorably noted, is more a state of mind than a geographical reality, so fluid are its borders), O'Leary sees the music as a potent, organic force, which must shift and change with the tides if it is to survive and flourish. Having the distinction of learning some of his vast repertoire from the renowned Glountane fiddler Patrick O'Keeffe and from the late fiddler Denis Murphy, he's a player who bears all the hallmarks of an ingΘnue who has nothing to prove and everything to live for, through his music.
"I spent about 41 years playing with Patrick," he recalls, "and when I used to listen to himself and Denis, I used to think: 'Where am I going with an accordion after them?' I used to be in dread of all the good players, of falling into a session with them. I hear the young players in Miltown Malbay now at the Willie Clancy Summer School and it's a pleasure to listen to them."
Seβn Potts shares Johnny O'Leary's optimism. "These players were leaders of the art," he says, referring to the musicians featured in the series, "and in all modesty, I include myself in that - not that I was a great player, but my heart and soul is in it, and that's important. I don't subscribe to the theory that the music can't change, as some academics would have us believe. Music changes anyhow. It's a folk music - music of the people: your music, my music, and it changes in a very natural way always."
Change might have been largely intangible as it occurred over the last two to three decades, but Seβn Potts pithily identifies the essence of traditional music's elevation in public perception: "I remember in my young days, if I was going along the road and the tin whistle fell out of my pocket, I'd be mortified as hell," he smiles wryly, "and Paddy Glackin told me that they used to put the fiddles under their coats when they were going for their lessons! You can walk down the street very proudly with your pipes or whistles now. All that has changed - thankfully."
To celebrate both times past and what is yet to appear, the six musicians took to the stage for a grand concert in Dingle, Co Kerry. Their four-hour odyssey on stage was but an appetiser.
Just when we thought that they had vented their energies on stage, they unleashed their full-blooded performances on the stalwarts who soldiered until dawn in the lobby, the ballroom and the back kitchen of the Skellig Hotel. Small wonder that this music is forging so strong a path as it streaks its way into the 21st century.
Seβn Potts captures the emotion behind the music: "The pleasure it gave me, and the sadness and jealousies and petty rivalries - I don't know what I'd have done without the music in my life".
SΘ Mo Laoch, a six-part series on traditional music's elder statesmen, begins on TG4 on Wednesday at 8 p.m.