"....as it would almost certainly trap everything in art aspic."
Not necessarily
Up to compariavely recently Irish music was a poor relation - banned in many pubs, sneered at by the media as 'diddly-di music' and apart from one influential body, Comhaltas (CCE) totally devoid of establishment support.
The 70s and 80s brought a tremendous upturn in fortune; a magnificent traditional archive was established in Dublin, a week long music school, teaching all traditional instruments, with lectures, recitals, concerts and wall-to-wall sessions was held in West Clare (still thriving after 40 years) and youngsters flocked to the music in their thousands. You couldn't, and still can't turn your television and radio on without hearing traditional music in one form or other, academic and performance, of traditional music.., I stress that was 'music', song still has some way to go, but it is infinitely more healthy than it is in the UK
I can go out in this one-street town and hear goodmusic well played in our local pubs 4 or 5 nights a week, some nights having to choose between pubs.
This is still very much the case today, despite the downturn in the economy.
Applications for grants for both performance and research were pushing on an open door - we managed to get an extremely generous one for work on our Irish Traveller collection.
At no time did the grant givers or the arts or political establishment attempt to interfere with the nature of the work that was being applied for, the only condition being that you showed that you were doing what you said you were doing.
The secret of this success was that the trad music crowd got their act together and showed that they knew the difference between Johnny B Goode and The Bucks of Oranmore and drew a clear line between the two; no compromises.
The end result is that Irish traditional music will survive and thrive for at least two more generations.
Jim Carroll