I've been doing a bit of scrounging around found a good explaination of Comhaltas written by Harry Bradley on 'thesession' discussion site. The whole discussion can be accessed here http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/6697

But this the comment in question, I think its pretty accurrate enjoy! (also this was written in 2005 before the whole Cluain Tarbh debacle).


Re: Comhaltas Critics
The problems that most educated interested parties that I know have with CCE are loosely as follows:

1. The leadership. Larry Murphy has obtained himself life- long leadership of the organisation. This was not the way that CCE was set up, and it was certainly not the way that early enthusiasts like the great Breandan Breathnach wanted to see the thing going. Murphy has a long history of abusing his position there for political canvasing, He has dragged ITM by popular association with CCE into politically and morally murky territory by taking visible and audible stances on such contentious topics as Irish politics, abortion and music copyright. Regardless of what you think on these subjects, it is folly to drag a large and largely well meaning organisation into these areas... many probably just don't care what is said in their name of course. The late Sean Ried, that truly knowledgable,humble and humane visionary could not stomach what he seen in CCE as a growingly sectarian 'cultural' movement in the 60s. We have some very intereting letters on the subject from his collection in the NPU archive.

2. Presentation. The CCE 'talk'. Its tough, old school, nationalistic/ bordering on republican rhetoric. It is not very knowlegable when it comes to actual music but is full of glorious, nationalist aspirations for it. It is also deeply paralised in a distant past where the music MUST be saved as part of a nationalist agenda using victorian methods (ie. repetition, competition, empire building). Their identity from top level is built largely on a seige mentality that may seem superficially just when you look at how the traditional arts have been neglected by the irish governments since the Irish republic was formed... but their answer to the situation is to clam up consider themselves sole custodians of the traditions where they attemp to get control of any funding that may be going for ITM as was the case recently. Overkill in other words. At top level they are also insular, have delusions of their self worth and much of the editorial type comment they release in their rag is aggresive and paranoid. As a totaltarian organisation fishing for certain things they are also extremely manipulative, albeit in the clumsiest and most blatant ways with the worst sort of self promotion rhetoric and propeganda.

3.A few years ago Larry Murphy was appointed to create an official report on the state of ITM with a view to it being funded. Needless to say his report (which was really an infantile essay on how great CCE are) was shot down by many free thinking parties and individuals. The Irish Times letters page (among other places) became a battleground of words where people such as Nicholas Carolan of the Irish Traditional Music archive, Terry Moylan of NPU, Fintan Vallely, John Moulden and other music intelligentsia appealed for the report to be jumped on and slowly burned as the kindling that it was. Instead of realising that his 'report' was hopelessly flawed, innacurate, unfair and completely devoid of any understanding of the art forms 'on the ground' Larry instead went on the war path standing by this thing that a secondary school child would have written on a bad day claiming that he was victim of some dark, shady conspiracy against him. The truth was simply that the report was short sighted, selfish and not at all representitve of the needs of ITM. People were'nt happy with that.

4. Without going into the considerable details, there was recently a whole running battle over here when many (rightly) felt that CCE were going to recieve undue and unrepresentitive control of funding ITM due to some of their foot-in-the-door political wranglings. The attempt was to take funding of IT arts away from the general Arts Council of Ireland and ghettoise IT arts as some sort of stand alone freak. I was at the gates of the Dail to hand a petition expressing concern at this with among others, Paddy Moloney of the Cheiftains, Christy Moore, Paddy Glackin and representitives of ITMA, NPU and others. The objections from artists and intereted parties ensured that the stitch-up that we fully expected did not come about, but the situation is far from resolved in a funding sense and it will be a long push yet to secure a fair amount of support for the whole of the irish traditional arts.

5. And yes, CCE, or rather Larry Murphy or a like suit wearer signed a deal with IMRO. CCE and IMRO seemed to think that if the latter gave the former 375,000 euro then the latter could have exclusive rights to Irish music traditional arrangement royalties (trad. arr. as you see on CD sleeve notes). How they decided that CCE owned these rights to sell is still a mystery? They effectively sold Irish music! As usual they did not consult members or the rest of the ITM community on these trifling matters.

Money, power and control. The problem is at the top and that is where the criticism is righly aimed by scholars and experts such as Breathnach, Vallely, Carolan and from mere minstrels such as myself.

To quote Breandan Breathnach himself " CCE is an organisation with a great future behind it." Not for the first time I wish that he was alive to keep them in check, or maybe he is better off at his well deserved rest.

Regards,

Harry Bradley.'

I think its a good explanation of the cce set up at the moment.