IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990822
On Friday next Fleadh Cheoil na hireann opens at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, the forty-seventh since the event's inception in 1952, and only the second to be held in this town. More than a hundred thousand visitors and musicians are expected to attend, fifteen hundred will take part in a hundred and fifty or so band, instrumental and singing competitions that provide the ultimate merit awards within Traditional music. Several thousand of the participants will come from outside Ireland, many of these from England, Scotland and the United States. Indeed it is the US that provides the most recent accolade for achievement in the music, for Mick Moloney this summer becomes the sixth Irish American player to be given recognition under the National Endowment for the Arts scheme. Involving a $10,000 National Heritage Fellowship, this was instituted to give dignity and recognition for achievement in the Arts, including Folk and Traditional arts. Past Irish music recipients have been singer Joe Heaney in 1982, fiddler Martin Mulvihill in 1984, Michael Flatley in 1988, Jack Coen in 1991 and fiddler Liz Carroll in 1994. Moloney has been given the honour among a quite amazing, diverse panel of unsung expertise that also includes a Hanson (Mass.) tap dancer, a Wisconsin needleworker, an Indian tabla drummer, a Ukrainian weaver, a Maine boatbuilder, an Ozark fiddler, a North Carolina Gospel singer, a Dakota Storyteller, a Haitian drummer, a W. Virginia steel drummer, a California basket-maker and a Washington 'Horse-Hair Hitcher'. The selection process for the NHF is meticulous, outside any structures of favouritism, and absolutely free of political control - so much so in fact that the Congress right is aiming to have it axed this year. Mick Moloney was born in Co. Galway and became a moving force in the ballad scene in Ireland of the 1960s when he played in the groups Emmet Folk, Parnell Folk and The Johnstons. He emigrated to the US in 1973 where he his extrovert energy has been expressed as college lecturer, arts administrator, professional musician, and radio and television broadcaster. One of the earliest to study Traditional music academically from within its community, he took a PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, his dissertation on Traditional Irish music continuity and change among emigrants is due in print later this year. Best known in Ireland perhaps as prolific contributor of album liner notes, and for his performance on forty-odd albums, in 1977 he founded the Philadelphia Folklife Center and since 1982 has been co-ordinator of a major W. Virginia Irish festival. He has hosted folk music shows on National Public Radio, is producer too of Irish-interest TV documentaries, but his major work - in 1978 - was the he co-production, writing and narration of 'Across the Western Ocean' - an NPR series on Irish music in America. Mick lectures on songs of emigration at the Merriman School, Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare tomorrow.
İFintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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