[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Editorial Observer: Globalization Drives the Economy, but It Still Pays to Be Irish

Sat Oct 23 11:13:43 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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Editorial Observer: Globalization Drives the Economy, but It Still Pays to Be Irish

October 23, 2004
 By KAREN FREEMAN 

About as far north as you can go in Ireland, seven miles
and one stomach-churning ferry ride from Magheroarty, the
ceili was in full swing at the social club of Tory Island.
Lauren O'Boyle sat on her father's lap, dwarfed by the
traditional drum, a bodhran, in her lap. She held a short
stick firmly, thumping the drum in time with the jigs and
hornpipes and reels. As a bodhran player, she wouldn't
knock your socks off. But just wait till she's 10. 

You'd think you would be able to walk into pubs all over
Ireland, the country that put the green in "colorful," and
hear the kind of authentic music played on Tory Island, a
speck of land that offers little besides Lauren's bright
golden hair that isn't hard and rough and shades of gray.
But as the pull of prosperity harnesses Ireland to its
growing European identity, it also tugs it away from its
traditions. 

Twenty-five years ago, the idea of a cosmopolitan Ireland
that would need more than the pubs to keep its musical
heritage alive might have seemed far-fetched. But now
waiters in Dublin seem to come from anywhere but Ireland,
and Filipino nurses walk the hospital halls. For the third
year in a row, A. T. Kearney and Foreign Policy magazine
have picked Ireland as the world's most globalized country.
So the Irish are investing time and money to hang onto
their Irish identity. 

More than half of the two dozen musicians in the room that
night on Tory Island were Dubliners, among them an engineer
and a software developer, a hairdresser and an architect.
They are in one of the more than 400 branches of the
Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (Gathering of Irish Musicians),
and were there to soak up the musical tradition of Tory,
the home of more than 200 Irish-speaking people. 

Many of the same Dublin musicians were in Clonmel, in
County Tipperary, in late August for an annual Comhaltas
(pronounced KOL-tus) competition for 10,000 musicians, most
of them children. 

In both places, there wasn't a "Danny Boy" to be heard.
Truly traditional Irish music is something of an acquired
taste, with subtleties that novices can have trouble
discerning, but it's also the bedrock that commercial Irish
music is built upon. 

Even on isolated Tory, the encroachment of the world is
visible, in modern windmills and solar panels. The
islanders have long since given up their cramped stone
dwellings and turned to tourism and primitive painting. An
incongruously loud diesel generator powers the islanders'
televisions and DVD players - and at least one George
Foreman grill. 

No longer able to count on the old ways youngsters were
taught the music - families and friends would pass on
thousands of memorized tunes - the Comhaltas now uses the
Internet (www.comhaltas.com), and has even committed the
heresy of actually writing down tunes and making CD's
available. 

The goal, said Brian Prior, the Comhaltas's projects
director, is to help aspiring players learn enough on their
own to handle the give and take of informal social
sessions. "Spontaneity and interpretation are important,"
he said, "not playing just as it looks by the dot."
Outreach is so important that the Comhaltas has recently
adopted a five-year development plan that will cost 27
million euros. 

Of course, this is the 21st century, and the economic
appeal of the traditional arts - burnishing "Ireland" as a
brand that attracts foreign investment and tourism - is not
lost on the more practical-minded. The 10 newest members of
the European Union, which are looking to Ireland in hopes
of emulating its success since it joined the union, ought
to take note. 

Eamon O'Cuiv, the government minister for rural and
Irish-speaking areas, drew the link when he opened the
Clonmel festival: "It's good not just for community and
tourism, but for Irish products as well." 

It's hard to miss the links Mr. O'Cuiv was talking about.
Stepping onto Tory Island, the Dublin musicians walked past
a plaque recognizing the European Union's help with the new
ferry dock. And when an Irish marching band strutted
through Clonmel, the traditional flag of nationalism, a
golden harp on a green field, was flanked by the emblem of
commerce, the 12 stars on a blue field that is the flag of
the European Union. 

Fortunately, this is still Ireland. Madonna was in County
Meath for her first Irish concert on the weekend of the
Clonmel festival. The score: Clonmel, 200,000; Madonna,
80,000. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/opinion/23sat3.html?ex=1099555223&ei=1&en=62eb640ba550730d

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