Traditional & Folk 2005: The Chinese celebrate their year of the dragon, the rat and the cat with annual festivities. In traditional music, 2005 might well be considered to have been the year of the solo singer.
It's as if we've finally managed to slow our pace sufficiently to actually listen to the pinprick subtleties of the song once more. Cúl Aodha's Iarla Ó Lionáird is a singer whose startling interpretation of old songs is the ultimate elixir for sean nós, and his ability to conjure new songs to nestle effortlessly alongside their elder brethren injects them with the additional DNA that they desperately need to survive.
His rare live performances with his own band have stilled audiences hungry for something to tickle their palates, which were running the risk of growing jaded from the familiarity of the old. Ó Lionáird is sean nós's greatest chance of not just survival, but of thriving robustly well into the future.
Sean nós singing enjoyed renewed vigour elsewhere too, with Armagh-based singer Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin adding further to the canon by writing a swathe of thought-provoking and highly original songs. True to the spirit of the music, she invited Ó Lionáird to join her, opting to collaborate rather than compete with the finest male sean nós singer we have in this country. Proof that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.
Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, honoured by TG4 as Traditional Singer Of The Year 2005, stilled her audience at the Cork Opera House with a magnificently-chosen selection of big songs, including Úrchnoc Chéin Mhic Cáinte.
Although she's forced to tip-toe around the hazards of asthma (the drug treatments for which threaten the longevity of her voice), Ní Dhomhnaill's soulful reading of traditional song, whether from Ireland, Brittany or further afield, is unmatched: filled with balletic grace and beauty, her voice still somehow manages to soar and swoop like nobody else's.
Liam Ó Maonlaí temporarily shrugged off his Hothouse Flowers identity recently, to take possession of his own sean nós repertoire, and it proved to be a remarkable re-invention of a singer whose voice found new expression in the belly of the beasts that include Na Connerys and Sadbh Ní Buruinnealadh. Roots have proven their primal worth for so many singers this year, with the result that audiences have been spoilt for choice, and singing clubs such as the Clé and the Goilín in Dublin, and Cork Singers' Club fuel appetites ever further with their weekly sessions.
Mercifully, 2005 delivered gallantly on the promise of the past two years, in terms of government funding for the Traditional Arts. The Arts Council's adoption of the Report of the Committee on the Traditional Arts (delivered with great aplomb and responded to with more than a little mean-spiritedness from Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann) led, after some haggling, to the appointment of Liz Doherty as Traditional Arts Adviser, who in turn secured substantial increases in funding. Doherty's Deis scheme has gone on to bolster a plethora of local music projects across the country, and in the process has restored much faith among practitioners and punters alike in the willingness and ability of the Arts Council to make a significant impact on securing the long-term health of the tradition.
There were a few disappointments strewn along the way this year, mostly in the form of ragged live performances that failed to live up to their billing.
Kate Rusby, one of England's finest interpreters of folk song, and a not-inconsiderable writer too, delivered a stock standard performance at Vicar St, and disappointed at least this punter who had witnessed her ignite the rafters a year before in the Village.
A handful of less-experienced Irish musicians revealed their naivety with flabby, loose-limbed live performances, but one suspects that even one night's worth of audience seat-shuffling may be enough to rattle them into shape before their next incursion on stage.
Highs
This year's highlights straddle a wide spectrum of musical forms, and my eardrums make no apology for this. Bruce Springsteen's creativity and storytelling power were spellbinding, both in studio and in concert. So too was Bob Dylan, recently witnessed in full flight in the Last Waltz-like environs of Brixton Academy. Traditional Irish music aficionados would do well to note Mr Zimmerman's insistence on reinventing old standards, shot through with that trademark Dylan barbed tongue.
Cross fertilisation was alive and thriving in Liam Ó Floinn and The West Ocean String Quartet's performance of Neil Martin's no tongue can tell. Their performance of this in the National Concert Hall set pulses racing and imaginations into overdrive with pipes and strings colliding and coalescing unapologetically. Meanwhile, Mary McPartlan, the Bessie Smith of traditional music, stilled audiences with her eclectic repertoire, and showed the wisdom of planting one foot in the present while the other treads adventurously into the past.
Lows
Two lows: Kate Rusby's pedestrian performance in Vicar St which whispered of a performer who's at risk of becoming a parody of herself; and tardy sessions that kick off much later than billed: respecters neither of bus timetables or early deadlines.
