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E-mailGearing up for the trad music Catskills Irish Arts Week
It is that time of the year again when I am very much in the New York state of mind as the days rapidly approach for another gathering of the trad music universe known as the Catskills Irish Arts Week (CIAW).
The annual celebration of Irish traditional music that takes place in East Durham, New York every July is much anticipated and attended by many from all around the U.S. and Canada and increasingly from Ireland itself as its international reputation grows as one of the key North American festivals devoted to the music and dance scene.
This Catskills crossroads has many programming variants, but its essential core is a celebration of the trad music scene as it has developed over the decades in and around New York City.
Celebrating the 15th year of the CIAW this July, it seems like a good opportunity to give that focal point a very high profile all week as the faithful gather to worship at the wellspring of tradition, Catskill mountain style, and make some new history at the same time.
Most of the readers here know that another hat that I wear is as the artistic director of CIAW, the annual summer school founded in 1995 up in East Durham under the auspices of the Michael J. Quill Irish Cultural and Sports Center.
As one of the original consultants and teachers there we catered to just 60 students or so in the first year, and have watched in amazement as it grew to over 600 in the past two years when a stronger economy encouraged folks from as many as 36 states including Alaska and Hawaii.
Fanatical fans flock every year from all quarters, but it remains THE place where all the traditional musicians around the greater New York area convene and so it marks a very special place in the evolution of the music associated with the area.
Like that Tammany Hall scoundrel of many years ago, George Washington Plunkitt, to whom is ascribed one of the great quotes about political corruption and honest graft, “I seen my opportunities and I took them” I borrowed that philosophy when I put together much of the special programming for this year.
Foremost in the programming will be a celebration of traditional Irish music through the prism of four middle-aged Irish Americans who are direct tradition-bearers themselves, who learned most of their music from the last generation of Irish-born masters who emigrated out of Ireland in the middle of the last century when large waves of immigration was still possible or necessary.
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