Tag Archives: fleadh

September 22, 2025

Comhaltas: think global, act local

By Darragh McManus

First published in the Irish Examiner, June 2025

“Think global, act local”: the phrase was coined in the 1970s, gained new currency in the ‘90s and remains relevant today. Think global – in other words, big picture, broad view, the important things – and act on an individual and community level.

Its original authors meant it environmentally, but it can apply to all sorts of things. Irish arts and culture, for instance.

As with every other indigenous culture, especially smaller nations’, our music and dancing and language have been essentially under siege for decades in an increasingly homogenised, connected, corporatised global village. It’s further exacerbated, now, by the huge demographic and sociocultural change of mass immigration.

This isn’t to get into the rights or wrongs of that, just to state an obvious fact: indigenous arts and culture are diluted, everywhere and every time, the more non-indigenous people live there.

This is a depressing situation; whenever the world loses any of its remarkable range and richness of traditions is depressing. But that’s what we might call “global” – what about local? What can you or I do about it, here and now? How can we help Irish arts to survive and thrive?

I give you Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. The kind of rare people giving words like “organisation”, “bureaucracy” and “non-profit” a good name.

Comhaltas was founded in 1951 by a group of musicians, concerned that Irish trad was in decline. They now have 400+ branches around the world, promoting and preserving our music, dancing and language.

They run weekly classes, periodic events and celebrations and sessions, and annual competitions. We’re currently gearing up in Clare for the County Fleadh, from Sunday June 8th. Do well in that and it’s onto the Munsters in Cork in July, and who knows? Maybe All-Ireland glory in Wexford this August. As the song goes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Comhaltas have branches in places you’d expect – US, UK, Australia – and some you mightn’t: Colombia, Singapore, Patagonia, Japan. (Irish trad is massive in Japan especially, thanks mainly to Comhaltas. How’s that for thinking global?)

And they’re fantastic in what they do, the definition of “volunteer spirit”; they’re making the world a better place, one local step at a time, without asking or needing to be paid. Though that makes it all sound so worthy and po-faced, and getting involved in Comhaltas really isn’t like that at all.

It’s fun. It’s craic. It’s meeting people and doing things. It’s hefting chairs around a hall for the grúpa cheoil to assemble. It’s handing out wristbands for the Fleadh.

It’s WhatsApp groups and FaceBook photos and driving to rehearsals. It’s toting a harp case through a crowd and hoping to Jesus nobody bangs off the instrument, these things cost a lot of money…

It’s reuniting lost fiddle bows with their owner and waiting nervously with other parents for competition results. It’s negotiating complex timetables so you can watch your kid’s U15 group and still make the finale of the senior sean nós dancing.

It’s realising that sean nós, contrary to preconceptions, is an absolutely kick-ass style of dancing and how did this brilliant artform elude your attention until now?

One remarkable feature of Comhaltas, and traditional arts in general, is how it brings genuine superstars of the genre to the grassroots level – globally renowned names and local involvement.

In my own case, for example, the Kilfenora Céilí Band were formed 30 minutes from where I live. In trad terms, they’re megastars: they’ve played abroad (including the Glastonbury festival), been on the Late Late Show several times, performed at the National Concert Hall and other prestigious venues.

And I know several of them for years – just through normal life, and engagement with Comhaltas. They live local. They teach my kids music and/or steer groups through competition. They’re neighbours and friends. Our children play sport together. One is a teacher in a nearby secondary. (Another is Sharon Shannon’s brother, incidentally; he’s in a neighbouring branch, and there’s great friendly rivalry every summer.)

And it’s mad, you’re chatting to these people about the humdrum stuff of day-to-day and then they might say something like, “Sorry, we have to head off, we’ve to be in RTÉ by seven”. I love that. It’s what life should be about, really: incredibly talented artists, but also regular people who’re deeply engaged on a local level.

It’s the kind of thing you only really get in “roots” music. The rock equivalent would be The Edge teaching your kids guitar at the community hall, or Taylor Swift administrating a WhatsApp group called “Under 12 County final 2025”.

Funny, I was never a trad person growing up, and in fact still today am far more likely to listen to, or (badly) play, rock music or electronica or almost anything else, really, on CD or radio or YouTube.

But there’s something amazing about trad music and dance, when it’s live and in person; when you’re involved to some degree, not just passively consuming. It’s global, it’s local, it’s magical, it’s Comhaltas.

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August 21, 2025

Play your tune loud

By Darragh McManus

First published in the Irish Independent, August 19th

How do you define Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the annual extravaganza of traditional Irish music which came to a rousing crescendo last Sunday in Wexford Town?

It’s kind of like an All-Ireland final, in terms of craic and excitement, community and bonhomie, nail-biting tension and exultation. Only better than that, because there’s music involved. (Sport is great, I love sport, but let’s face it: music is the soul speaking, it reaches far deeper.)

So the Fleadh is like a great gig. Only better than that too, because it goes on for a full week. And unlike a gig, with its inherent separation between performer and consumer, this is much more – pardon the buzzword – interactive.

Run annually since 1951 by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the Fleadh is a mad, whirling carnival of concerts, All-Ireland competitions, buskers, pub sessions planned and spontaneous, classes, workshops – and, this year, the gimmicky but fun “biggest céilí in history”. There’s even an actual carnival, down by the beautiful quays.

So you can step into the Fleadh, engage with it, from many perspectives: musician or dancer (whether professional or hobbyist), casual audience member, tourist, party-goer, trad aficionado, competitor, supportive/nervous parent, or a combination of the above.

If you’re “in the game”, as we were last Saturday (Under 15 grúpa cheoil final; we won!), Fleadh whizzes the best of sport and music into an intoxicating cocktail of artistic satisfaction and competitive edge.

It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old: the Fleadh, as with trad/folk in general, is very cross-generational. The atmosphere, walking around the streets of Wexford into evening-time, was almost overwhelmingly genial, relaxed and peaceable.

You see mammies and daddies enjoying a beer while the kids have an ice-cream, or maybe batter away at a few jigs for extra pocket-money, and think: now, this is civilised. As someone texted me afterwards, watching Fleadh coverage on TG4 was like watching Glastonbury “but with normal people instead of assholes”.

There’s a great volunteer spirit too, as with GAA or Tidy Towns or communities pulling together in the face of tragedy. How nice it was, how heartening, in a cynical and hyper-monetised world, to see armies of people wandering around, bright orange tee-shirts reading “VOLUNTEER – HERE TO HELP”, giving their time for no reward except the pleasure of making someone else’s day a little better.

On top of all that, Wexford itself is a spectacularly charming town and county. No wonder record crowds 800,000 flocked to the sunny south-east for this year’s lollapalooza – finding accommodation was a nightmare! – among them an up-and-coming young singer called Ed Sheeran…

But the Fleadh, and Comhaltas events at county or provincial level, are more than fun and music. This is, very specifically, a celebration and continuation of Irish culture and traditions. It’s age-old, primal, and as vibrant as ever. The ghosts of the past don’t just walk among us, they pick up a fiddle and encourage you to join in.

(Incidentally, not that it matters, but all involved aren’t necessarily Irish – people come from all over to watch and participate. Japan, especially, has an incredibly strong connection, and sends competitors every year.)

You could say the Fleadh showcases the very best of us, in many ways. That’s a term often used, by people with every sort of social or political agenda; often, though, they’re talking about things which are general to humanity as a whole.

Friendliness, warmth, generosity, humour, strong sense of family or community: all wonderful, but you find them around the world. They’re not specific to here, whereas Irish music, dancing, singing, lilting, Gaeilge and storytelling, the Fleadh’s bread and butter, by definition are.

The place is changing, at a pace that feels uncontrollable at times. We have no idea how it will wash out, but one thing is inarguable: the more multicultural any country gets, the more diluted become indigenous arts and heritage.

That’s obvious, regardless of where you stand on immigration and demographic change. It happens everywhere, inevitably; there’s an arrogance in this exceptionalist thinking that Ireland, somehow, will be different.

You mightn’t have a problem with this; some people have zero interest in trad or GAA or Irish bardic poetry or whatever. Personally, I think it would be tragic for the genuinely ancient, globally unique culture of a tiny nation to weaken or disappear.

Again, no Irish exceptionalism here: I’d feel the same at Icelandic or Vietnamese or Inuit traditions being in an equally parlous position. The world is poorer without any of them.

Irish culture is precious, and needs to be protected. Not just by the likes of Unesco, who’ve recognised hurling and camogie as part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”, but by ourselves.

Yet here’s a funny thing: even as Official Ireland seems evermore hell-bent on selling it out – or at least allowing it wither on the vine – for economic gain or a pat on the head from a transnational “elite”, at grassroots level our culture is more robust than ever. The amount of young people learning trad, dancing sean nós, speaking Irish and playing GAA is astonishing, and growing all the time.

It’s like Newton’s Third Law of Motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The more that technocrats and internationalists try to smother the thing, the harder the people push back, through some marvellous instinct of rebellion and identity.

Walt Whitman famously wrote, “I sound my barbaric yawp across the roofs of the world.” The Fleadh is the sound of that in an Irish context. Corporate Ireland hates all this “local” or “indigenous” stuff; they really do think it’s barbaric.

But Whitman meant the word in a positive way, and so do I. Play your tune, folks, play it loud, let the whole world hear it.

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