Born again Scouser,
Just to set the record straight
"Comhaltas is corrupt and who needs it anyway'"
This is not my attitude to Comhaltas - Irish music needs all the friends it can get, and I have the deepest respect for the work carried out by branches such as your own, and for the rank-and-file membership who have kept the music alive when it could easily have disappeared. My antipathy towards CCE is purely reserved for a leadership which I believe has treated such branches and such people with contempt.
My first introduction was through the branches and anything I might know about the music came from such people. The first people we recorded here in Ireland were founder members of Comhaltas - they are the ones who inspired us to carry out the collecting we did, and they were the ones who were largely responsible for us taking the decision to live here.
I was part of the London Branch which was expelled for not obeying a political directive, and we have just seen similar behaviour with regard to Clontarf Branch - surely nobody can be happy with what has happened there and how it has been handled (I don't really expect an answer to this one).
My present attitude to CCE was summed up perfectly by Martin Ryan's posting on 31st July.
My concern here is on a question which has been raised on numerous occasions on this forum - that of competitions.
When I lived in London I saw the the initiative of players stifled and the heart ripped out of the music in order to please adjudicators. I saw the children of friends turned away from the music forever because competitions were the driving force behind many of the branches.
Elsewhere somebody said that competitions "are a bit of fun if you don't take them seriously" - a bit like telling an Everton supporter that "it's only a game" after his team have been thrashed 6-0 by Liverpool in a derby game (or the highly unlikely case of the opposite happening).
Competitions destroy everything that is good and communal about the music; they stir up bitterness and rivalry and introduce aspects into the music that should not and need not be there; I've seen it happen time and time again. They kill the love of the music as surely as Woody Guthrie's guitar "killed fascism".
However, this is no longer an issue as far as traditional music in general is concerned; Irish music has now found its own feet and is thriving purely for the love of it; as you rightfully say "CCE is no longer the only game in town". The question of whether or not to hold competitions is purely an internal decision.
I wish yours, and every other branch the greatest success, however you choose to approach the music, but whenever the suggestion of introducing competitions outside of CCE is raised, I can't promise to sit on my hands and say nothing.
Best wishes,
Jim Carroll