Last time round, I promised you a full discussion of the contents of the report ‘Towards a Policy for the Traditional Arts’, presented to Minister John O’Donoghue on September 28.
I’d also hoped to talk a bit about the ‘Minority Report’ authored by Úna Ó Murchú and Mícheál Ó hEidhin, two of the five-member committee that authored the report (the other three being Philip King, Jerome Hynes and Glór’s Katie Verling), but have received no response to my Email to the authors requesting a copy.
Even a radio debate on RTRs ‘Rattlebag’ between fiddler Dermot McLaughlin, former traditional music officer with the Arts Council and now chief executive of Temple Bar Properties, and Labhrás Ó Murchú, husband of the aforementioned Úna and director of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, gave no hint of CCRs specific objections to the report. Rather, Ó Murchú devoted virtually all his talking time to an allegation that the report as presented was substantially different from the version last seen by the committee (i.e., the version the two dissenters had refused to sign, and in opposition to which they’d penned their Minority Report). This, he said, was evidence of dark dealings, and should be grounds for a full government investigation.
McLaughlin, never one to mince his words, retorted sharply that Ó Murchú appeared to be “trying to run some kind of disgraceful smear campaign,” whereupon Ó Murchú took said campaign a step further by stating that members of CCÉ had been advised in the past by Arts Council staff to break their ties with the organisation in order to qualify for funding. “This is the second set of bogeymen that Labhrás has pulled out of his back pocket for this programme,” said McLaughlin. “I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about.” It made for riveting listening, but didn’t do much to clarify the precise nature of the issues involved.
Aside from all that, the report makes a large number of recommendations that, if followed through, will have enormous significance for traditional musicians, singers, dancers and storytellers – and the fact that all these recommendations have since been adopted by the Arts Council as official policy would seem to indicate that it’s not a question of all talk and no action.
With the above in mind, the report calls for the Arts Council to seek a commitment from Government to allow it to increase its funding for the traditional arts, “such that, within three to five years, they would be among the top four art forms presently funded by the Arts Council.” Pointing out that “some of the most exceptional and influential practitioners in the traditional arts might not be ‘professional’ artists”, it stipulates that the Arts Council should “review immediately, through consultation with traditional-arts expertise, the suitability of existing awards, schemes and bursaries to contemporary traditional-arts practice.”
In terms of general policy, resources are to be focused on two areas, the first being the traditional artist and the second being the passing on of style and repertoire.
Mobility grants for touring are singled out for special mention, as are “initiatives to develop the teaching of sean-nós singing”, “increased subsidisation of traditional-arts activities in local-authority areas and increased traditional-arts programming through local-authority-supported venues”; special funding for archiving, provision for traditional-arts education both in and out of schools; the establishment of traditional-arts instrument banks; the development of “quality environments for traditional-arts performance” as well as “new opportunities for children and teenagers to perform the traditional arts in social situations”; and support of traditional-arts festivals and events, including those classed as competitive.
It’s also recommended that a recognition system similar to Aosdána be developed for traditional artists, or alternatively that the membership of Aosdána be broadened to include traditional artists. Another interesting recommendation is that the Arts Council “take the lead in investigating the issue of royalties and traditional arts”. Finally, the report demands that a “full-time, respected and high-profile Traditional Arts Officer” be appointed by the Arts Council within six months.
This is meaty stuff, and it’s hard to understand how Labhrás Ó Murchú could possibly contend, as he did on the aforementioned ‘Rattlebag’ programme, that the report represents a mere “recycling of the non-policy that existed before”. A perusal of the attendance record for the fourteen committee meetings held between December 2003 and July 2004 (included as an appendix to the report) seems to indicate that friction arose early on: Úna Ó Murchú and Mícheál Ó hEidhin failed to turn up for a nearly a third of the meetings and “withdrew at an early point” from several others.
Could it be that they were still in a snit over the jettisoning of the controversial proposal in the 2002 Arts Bill to set up a standing committee with funding powers to oversee Arts Council spending on the traditional arts? Surely not ....
Button accordionist Joe Derrane received his National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment For The Arts at a Capitol Hill ceremony on September 30, during which twelve fellowships representing the USA’s highest honour in the folk and traditional arts were presented. The fellowship includes a one-off award of US$20,000. Dobro player Jerry Douglas, one of the new Fellows, performed for the assembled company at a banquet the night before the ceremony, held in the splendiferous surrounds of the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.
In his Irish Echo account of the event, journalist Earle Hitchner quoted NEA Director of Folk and Traditional Arts Barry Bergey as saying that “I’ve got the greatest job in the world, and the greatest week in my year is when I call each of these artists to tell them of this honour.” Let’s hope that our own future Traditional Arts Officer is one day able to look forward to a similar thrill.b

Musicians and singers with news to share can e-mail Sarah on [email protected]