IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
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Jingle all the Way. If 'X'mas is legitimate term then so too must be 'X'ium, if only to soothe battered eardrums. Axiom of the xium for Traditional music is continuity with an ancient artistic past, while keeping the feet in reality. And so, key figure in the public performance of Traditional music will be the Irish Music rights Organisation who enter the xium with a new man in the saddle, and with a clean desk. Bequeathed by outgoing Hugh Duffy, this conceals, however, an unemptied bin. Wearing blinkers and with fingers in his ears, into this Pandora's Box Duffy elbowed all that was mysterious in Traditional music - that which he neither understood nor was interested in opinions on. His axiom was that this music is predominantly a business; it was not his concern that it is an art, driven by 19th century ideals. Yet money sustains it, and IMRO's work in drawing in and protecting the rights of its composers in the present time is Duffy's remarkable, and real, achievement. His role in legitimating 'Traditional Arrangement' (trad. arr.) is of financial value to performers - for the money comes back to Ireland at least. But only for the time being, for anyone of any nationality can also claim 'trad. arr.' on Irish music, and so, in the long term, IMRO have, with the compliance of all of us, and with international standing, thrown out the birthright. 'Trad. Arr.' is a myth in any real sense, for the uniqueness of a performance, if it is worth anything, lies predominantly in the player, not in the notes they play. While it becomes increasingly difficult to compose an actual 'new' tune, instead of dividing up royalties for pseudo 'arrangement' among those who have not composed in any real meaning of the word, IMRO should have been addressing - as is being done in other countries - some method of preserving the notion of a national 'heritage' in music, accommodating international overlaps and borrowings by mutual agreements. Revenue generated from a 'national' stockpile should be ploughed back into music education and promotion. Instead IMRO adopted a commodity approach without consultation with either their own musician members, or with those who actually play music within Comhaltas Ceolt—ir’ ƒireann. IMRO and CCƒ enter the new xium to the music of the cash register, with a paper deal concluded by an un-refusable carrot offered to a spineless CCƒ executive ignorant of the facts who in this matter represent only themselves. But though CCƒ may not speak for professional Traditional musicians, one might have reasonably expected it to hold principles dearer than the 375,000 received from IMRO in return for selling what is not theirs for an annual 1,000 licence fee. Authenticity, copyright and plagiarisation are major challenges to all musics in the new xium. IMRO and CCƒ between them have done a Thatcher on what was painstakingly put in place by the Romantics and ideologically-motivated collectors between the first harp ball at Granard in 1730 and the setting up of CCƒ in 1951. Axiom for the xium they enter is the supremacy of cash. The bulk of Ireland's Traditional musicians go into theirs both invisible in the view of an All-Party report which confirms in print that the majority of them never existed, and, now, too, stunningly ignored by their own organisations.
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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