FROM THE ARCHIVES:The resurgence of Irish traditional music during the 1960s fed into, and drew from, the success of Comhalthas Ceolteóri Éireann's annual Fleadh Ceoil, usually held on the Whit weekend and periodically known for excessive drinking. The 1968 event, however, was a model of its time, as Michael Heney reported from Clones, Co Monaghan. – JOE JOYCE
WITH A twang and a fiddle and a beat on the bodhran, Fleadh Ceoil na hÉireann burst upon Clones yesterday like an old friend renewing a four-year-old acquaintance. He brought with him his musicians, drawn from Cuig Cuigi na hÉireann, and the by-now traditional horde of initiated and uninitiated supporters, who numbered perhaps 80,000, and who will spend, so one is told, a quarter of a million pounds in Clones this festival weekend.
This is a well ordered, well stewarded fleadh, only marred on Saturday by some heavy showers of rain, which did not return yesterday. Above all, it is a fleadh for the young, and it is a fleadh for the musicians. Not all of the 200-strong force of gardaí, the crowded bars, the smashed bottles and the littered bodies about the streets can hide the fact that yesterday “the real fleadh” was up with 12-year-old Ciarán Crehan, of Dublin, his brother, Dermot, and his little sister, Clare, as they fiddled their hearts out in the old Convent School, high on one of the two hills which make up Clones.
Or that on Saturday night, half-an-hour after midnight, there was another fiddler who brought cheer after cheer from a drenched crowd, as he pranced and strutted about the specially-constructed wooden platform on the old Diamond, massaging his violin beneath an overhead streetlight with the glee and enthusiasm of a newly-crowned king.
More than two-thirds of the competitors at this Fleadh Ceoil are under 18, fighting for the premier honours in Irish traditional music and song. The classical musicians had their outing at the recent Feis Ceoil in Dublin: this weekend the traditionalists are strung out along the narrow hill-climbing streets of Clones, contesting 26 different types of competition.
The atmosphere at the fleadh is typified by the call of one of the adjudicators to his audience last night: “Any competitors that are finished now, go out to the crowds on the streets and give them a bit of your music.”
In the bar of the Hibernian Hotel, a group from the Birmingham Céilí Band, comprising three flutes, a bodhran, an accordion and three fiddles played to a packed room, and a middle-aged woman sitting in the corner playing her fiddle roared out suddenly “Yeeehooo!” to the delight of the audience, who had been shouting it themselves.
There was a session on the Diamond on Saturday night from 8 o’clock until well after midnight. A piece of subtle organisation by Comhaltas Ceolteóiri Éireann got the session under way, and after that the rostrum never emptied as the music freewheeled into the night. Over by Nicholl’s Bar, two old stagers, one from Dublin, one from Roscommon met by chance, and within seconds were swapping tunes, advice and mutual criticism.
In the competition halls, the tape-recorders have been whirring as the musicians put on record, for their personal study later, the airs and melodies of others, which they may have encountered for the first time at this Fleadh Ceoil.
The “Jekyll and Hyde” nature of the fleadh, with the excessive license on the streets, side-by-side with the musical value of the authentic traditional performers, does not worry the organisers unduly. They believe in coexistence, and they have a real success story to tell in relation to the preservation of Irish traditional music.
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