The Oireachtas is Ireland’s oldest festival for the literary and performing arts, established to generate a new modern literature in the Irish language, and to provide traditional performers, storytellers, singers, musicians and dancers with a forum that serves both as a measure of national recognition and a focus for continuing their art. Country people who had rarely ventured outside their local areas, perhaps, were persuaded to perform for middle-class urban enthusiasts of the fashion for things Gaelic. It was part of a strategy of cultural resistance that tended to view metropolitan culture as an extension of the colonial machine and that therefore had to be repudiated in favour of models that might be developed from native art forms.
Pearse, rather like Bartók elsewhere, viewed the people’s traditions and particularly music as the raw material for building up a new national voice in all aspects of cultural forms. Others, such as Fr Patrick Henebry, disagreed. Henebry was firmly in the nativist camp, wanting the music to be recognised as a system in its own right, and not as some inchoate form of music that needed refinement and polish to make it acceptable. Pearse recognised traditional singing styles as a ‘peasant style’ while Henebry saw the singing of Gaeltacht people as a ‘national style’. The more vigorous members of the Gaelic League – among whom Agnes O’Farrelly or Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh springs to mind – held that any change of traditional forms was to be deplored and the only form worth promoting and developing was the ‘old Irish style’, soon to become widely known as sean-nós.
Since Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s establishment in 1951, Oireachtas competitions for instrumental music have been eclipsed by the fleadhanna which culminate annually in Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. In spite of this, the gold medals for fiddle playing and piping retain a certain muted prestige. The Oireachtas has become two festivals in the last number of years, one held in May, which includes choral and piano competitions, and the other larger one taking place in November and based on Gaeltacht arts, with Comórtas Chorn Uí Riada, the Ó Riada memorial trophy for sean-nós singing, occupying the central position among the events.
Once, the Oireachtas never left Dublin and was a curious affair with, ball gowns at the Gresham Hotel combining with back-room singing sessions (as Nicholas Carolan has remarked in the Come West Along the Road series). In those days, most of the Gaeltacht visitors stayed in the Castle Hotel in the north of the city and the stories of the sessions of singing, storytelling, lúibíní and agallaimh beirte held in that establishment are now the stuff of legend.
It was here that Gaeltacht people came to know native-Irish speakers from other areas that they had never visited, in an artistic milieu where the Irish language predominated. In those days, the Munster contingent seemed to do rather better than other regions at the competitions. Nowadays, however, Galway holds sway, with the majority of singers in the sean-nós competitions hailing from Conamara and occasionally from the Aran islands.
A recent addition to the event calendar is the sean-nós dancing competitions, now broadcast live on TG4 and surely one of the most riveting and exciting new developments in the Oireachtas in recent years. TG4’s TAM ratings are usually bolstered by its sports programming, but this is one Gaelic broadcast that can aspire to match its popularity. Moreover, it draws an enthusiastic, live audience to see dancers whose footwork, in contrast to the leaping and bounding familiar from the dancing schools, remains close to the floor and decidedly improvisatory. The style has begun to evolve again, with some of its practitioners nowadays influenced by tap and other styles, while still others combine damhsa na scoileanna with damhsa ar an sean-nós. I have heard some critics of this dance form say that the dancers only do the figure on one foot, where the usual practice in Irish dancing is to repeat the figure with the second foot, but popularity ensures that such criticism is not much heeded, and the form continues to draw enthusiastic young adherents.
If sean-nós dancing wins in the popularity stakes, the sean-nós singing competitions are the true endurance test and garner most prestige. Many attendees prefer not to sit through up to three hours of unaccompanied singing (dubbed by one wag ‘death by slow songs’), a singularly intense experience, but instead, choose to access the events by listening to the Raidió na Gaeltachta live broadcasts of all the major competitions. This enables listeners to move about freely, to make tea, and enjoy a greater measure of comfort than the dedicated audiences sitting in the hall itself.
Although many who go to the Oireachtas have very little interest in sean-nós as art, rather like the Eurovision, they are intensely interested in the judging. At one time, when the present writer was himself an aspiring contestant, a panel of six judges, three in the hall and three located in RnaG studios throughout the country, delivered their numerical verdicts, sometimes sensationally, live over the air. Nowadays, however, the marks are kept secret, and only the enumerator and the support staff who carry the marking sheets to him or her know how the marking goes. This is to avoid acrimony, a feature of many past competitions, but less likely nowadays, despite the fact that most singers will be disappointed.
For those tempted to listen, Corn Uí Riada generates intense excitement and will provide people who enjoy good singing of whatever genre with three hours of solid entertainment. Some favourite contenders to watch out for include Róisín Elsafty, Caitríona Ní Cheannabháin, Ciarán Ó Concheanainn, Máire Ní Mhaoilchiaráin, Doiminic Mac Giolla Bhríde and Brian Ó Domhnaill to name only some of those who have yet to win the coveted accolade. Singers who have already won the Corn cannot compete again until two years after their win, but many do re-enter.
If Galway singers form the most numerous group, sean-nós attracts practitioners from the Pale also. Mairéad Ní Oistín, from Dalkey, made history in 1995 when she became the first Dubliner to win Corn Uí Riada, dispelling a long held and entrenched view that only Gaeltacht people could sing sean-nós properly. Recently, Éamon Ó Donnchadha, another singer of Dublin origin, has won Corn Uí Riada three times, placing him among only a small number of singers to achieve such a distinction.
The Oireachtas creates a spontaneous community of Irish speakers, almost allowing a realisation in miniature of the ideal of an Irish-speaking Ireland, or even a truly bilingual one. In this, it provides much need spiritual and cultural sustenance to a beleaguered community, beset by the alluring attractions of Anglo-America, in a country seemingly intent in many respects on realising the tawdry excesses of that culture. The festival, like many Irish-language events, is almost entirely ignored by the English-language media, remaining part of an Ireland hidden behind the ‘shamrock curtain’. Although it displays its stuffy Victorian origins on occasion, the Oireachtas is a vibrant, developing event in the Irish cultural calendar, and one of the most enduring – running every year without fail since its renewal in 1939. So if you’re tempted to travel for it, you’re almost certain to have a good time. Better hurry though, those hotel bedrooms will be full to capacity.
Published on 1 November 2006
Lillis Ó Laoire is a sean-nós singer from Gort A' Choirce, Co. Donegal, who teaches courses in Irish language, folklore and Celtic Civilisation in the School of Irish, NUI Galway. His book On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean: Songs and Singers in Tory Island has just been published in Ireland by Cló Iar-Chonnachta in association with Scarecrow Press.