IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
981227
1998 - commercialism, standards and horse changes
Close on a hundred 'Irish' albums were released in 1998, these in a broad range from Tommy Fleming's parlour polish, M’che‡l î'Sœilleabh‡in's orchestral 'Becoming', Antonio Breschi's piano-base 'Portrait', to the stark sincerity of Queally and O'Donoghue's 'Trip o'er the Mountain'. Popular music paraded native colours too - the Corrs uttered the 'cœpla n—ta’', Coolfin threw in the full bucket of galaxy performers with high drama, flawless designer-sound. Liam O'Flynn united pipes and synthesiser woven among Arty McGlynn guitars Charlie Lennon challenged Michael Flatley, singer Cathie Ryan sailed yet further mid-Atlantic. L‡ Lugh too embraced modernism but emphasised song, Solas pushed their tough, busy stylishness to the limits of the genre. For instrumental 'album of the year' toss between gut-wrenching Beginish and the singing flutes and voices of Cran's 'Black, Black'. In song, Sean Garvey's 'Out of the Ground' and Sean Tyrrell's 'Orchard' are equally profound contenders. Setting this professionalism off vividly were a small number of 'own-label', self-productions that proclaimed the centrality of solo/melody, what has for most of this century been seen idealistically as 'traditional'. Sligo/US flute player Kevin Henry contested the Micho Russell mantle with 'One's Own Place', Dan Healy too with The Wyndy Turn, the McNamara's of Leitrim with a superb 'Hidden Treasure', the young S’ona with 'Launching the boat'. Strongest among these was Tommy People's 'Quiet Glen', cryptically coded to stab the pike at the dishonesty of brash commercialism, thereby requisitioning confidence for the small-scale artist in a product-led stampede. Yet this was so outstanding in its unadorned melodic sweetness and skill to garner the fiddler the TnaG national award. That trophy indeed is perhaps symbolic of the year, for up to now the only 'national' standards recognisable have been the All-Ireland Fleadh's, meritorious in allocation of status, but eschewed by, and representative only of, little more than the previous year's under-eighteen-year-old winners. Hot on TnaG's heels came the launch of the Harcourt Hotel and Celtic note music shop's own 'young musician' crock of gold, with a generous prize fund this also marking a serious interest from IMRO. For the year that was in it, Frank Harte's '1798' was a contemplative, serious work, the G—il’n's 'Croppy's Complaint' spread a wider net, but RTƒ's 'Who Fears to Speak' more honestly represented the 'respectable' song-genre. Indeed it was martial resonances of '98 song that provoked Harry White's June book 'The Keeper's Recital', blaming them for the absence of a strong Irish school of 'Art' music, but in the process failing to notice the in the course of which he overlooked the mere peasant music attested to in Hugh Shields' July collection 'Tunes of the Munster Pipers'. With close on 2,000 sessions and a dozen major gigs weekly, epoch-marking administration changes mirrored this 1998 enterprise too. òna î Murchœ joined An Comhairle Eala’on, Dermot McLaughlin was replaced there by Maura Eaton, Ciar‡n Carson's NI Arts Council job was filled by Martin Dowling, and CCƒ teamed with the Royal Irish Academy of Music in a grading scheme.
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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