The New World

Ten years ago we were terrified the millennium bug was going to descend like the wrath of God. But in many ways it was an idyllic time – especially if you were a musician.

Back then people still bought CDs, the music industry was turning a healthy profit and, provided you were good enough, there was a realistic chance of getting signed by a label. How things have moved on. When MySpace launched in August 2003, no-one could have foreseen the fundamental way in which it would change how we listen to and find new music. Although it has been overtaken in popularity in social networking terms, having a MySpace page is still an essential first step for any musician dreaming of the big time.
In the music industry as a whole, the internet could be said to have had a damaging impact. However, its effect on the trad scene has essentially been positive.
The idea that bands can "buddy up" and that their fans can find out about each other has had a revolutionary effect, with artists able to organise tours overseas by finding like-minded musicians with whom they can share gigs. The issue for Irish bands is our frankly crap standard of broadband. No-one wants to listen to your song or watch your video if it only loads in fits and starts. That being said, things would seem to be slowly getting better.
In terms of actual music, many well established bands have had a decade to remember. These big old hairy mammoths – The Chieftains, Dervish, Lunasa and Kíla – have managed to adapt to the new climate. Flook, whatever the reason, failed to survive, falling asunder a year before the end of the noughties.
Post 9/11, life for touring musicians naturally got a lot tougher – especially for bands, traditional or otherwise, travelling to the US. A host of new airline charges for baggage hardly helped either - hauling your musical kit around the world isn't quite as easy as it once was. That being said, this has been more than off-set by the new opportunities offered by the internet.
Different bands used the web in different ways. Dervish went down a treat with online listeners of National Public Radio in the US. Kila took advantage of our newly globalised world to hook-up with kindred spirits all across the world.
Festival-wise, there was lots to be positive about also. Belfast’s magnificent Open House event brings together the Irish roots music community with performers from around the world, and still manages to grow even more vital by the year. South of the border, the annual Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival attracts increasing numbers of the world’s best roots and traditional players and provides a forum where players can get together and exchange tunes and techniques. Baltimore, West Cork has its Fiddle Fair, Clonakilty its Guitar Festival, Armagh its Piping Festival, all of them growing year-on-year, adding to the platform already provided by the longer established festivals such as Rostrevor’s Fiddlers Green.
While traditional players in Ireland have managed to keep their heads above water in difficult times, folk music has seen an explosion in interest, becoming part of what is considered the mainstream. The enormous international success of Damien Rice and Glen Hansard has put Irish music back on the map. While established performers like Christy Moore and Declan Sinnott continue to work with undiminished vigour, there is a spectrum of vital musicians from Damien Dempsey to David Geraghty also chiselling at the coalface internationally.
The original folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s was fuelled by a generation discovering Irish voices such as Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem. It was fuelled, too, by the social upheaval of the era, the opposition to the Vietman war and the civil rights movement. For folk music to flourish, a new generations of players must find within themselves the same anger and indignation. The '60s generation of angry young men and women are now angry old men and women and the last decade has seen them rail against the inequities of the modern world, whether it is Bruce Cockburn writing in Baghdad at the height of the war or Buddy Miller pulling Dylan’s ‘God On Our Side’ into ghoulish focus as Dubya sent the troops in. But will these performers still be there at the end of another decade? Neil Young is 64, Bob Dylan is 68. We can’t look to them forever. So strap on a guitar, strap on a banjo, strap on a ukelele for crying out loud. Just get out there and make some raucous, righteous noise.