First published on The Journal of Music on 12 January: https://journalofmusic.com/reviews/late-late-out-date-session

At the end of the Late Late Show Trad Special on RTÉ One on Friday evening (9 January), the host Patrick Kielty presented Dónal Lunny with the show’s inaugural Trad Music Hall of Fame Award. From the beginning of this now annual television special, a large group of fifteen renowned musicians had been playing and singing centre stage, and Lunny joined them for the final set, the reels ‘The Green Groves of Erin’ and ‘The Flowers of Red Hill’, from the Bothy Band’s first album. It was at this moment that the show redeemed itself. Celebrating Lunny is important, no matter if it’s for the second time, following his RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award last year. The show ended on a high. 

But what had been happening up until then was troubling.

Half-way through the show, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh made an important point about why traditional Irish music is vibrant today. It is because the community ‘let it breathe’, letting people take their own approach over the years and ‘whatever worked stayed; whatever didn’t work, didn’t stay’. But what happens if the music moves on, but the media doesn’t? 

The Late Late Show Trad Special evolved out of the TradFest festival, which takes place in Dublin every January. I have watched parts of this television show over the past couple of years, and I often wonder how other traditional music festivals around the country must feel about this rather cosy publicity event for TradFest. TradFest’s artistic curation has always been rather thin, with a lot of repetition of artists each year. It seems that the main reason it receives such a huge primetime push is because it is in Dublin. 

But traditional music today has such depth that if you bring together a sample of the musicians playing at the festival – Zoë Conway, Tara Breen, Louise Mulcahy, Lisa Canny, Gerry O’Connor and a dozen others – they will be able to carry the Trad Special evening no matter what happens. The format of the show is simple: songs interspersed with tunes, like a pub session, and yet I am not sure if any of these musicians would actually join in with this particular session if they came across it. The Late Late Show Trad Special is like 2am at the Willie Clancy week when the session goes over the edge – good craic, but the subtlety fades. Even a late-night session at a festival is preceded by some intimate tunes and solo singing, whereas the Trad Special is mainly 2am all-in, all-in. There was very little space for the music to breathe, and you can forget about the Irish language, which played no part at all. And for all the talk of the vibrancy of the tradition today, there was no showcase of the next generation on the night.

There were some nice moments: Zoë Conway taking off on ‘The Green Groves of Erin’, Peggy Seeger singing ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, Eleanor McEvoy playing her song ‘The Secret of Living’ with Wallis Bird, Ní Mhaonaigh and Aoife Scott, but it was the treatment of traditional music that was out-of-date. The musicians had to play every ad-break in and out, often the same tune. And every time they played, the floor manager was encouraging the audience to clap along, even before the musicians had established a rhythm. It was painful at times – the same approach that the Fleadh Cheoil show uses on TG4. There was also a drummer from the Late Late’s house band playing in the background, just like a hundred years ago when traditional musicians would turn up at a studio or broadcaster and be presented with an unsuitable accompanist.

It feels like we have been dealing with this kind of haphazard approach to traditional music for a long time. The music moves on, but the media environment doesn’t. Kielty interviewed Lisa Canny about the success of her brilliant all-female band Biird, which is inspiring young audiences and touring with Ed Sheeran this year. But given the band’s progressive approach, why is their latest video sponsored by Guinness? When are we going to leave this kind of stereotyping behind? 

One also has to ask if RTÉ and TradFest have a responsibility in how they presented the diversity of backgrounds in traditional music. Nigerian–Irish musician Segun Akano was left quite isolated and it exposed him to racist comments online. It is sad to even have to mention this.

Of course, there may be young people at home and online inspired by the evening, because of the musicianship. I can still remember U2 singing ‘Springhill Mining Disaster’ on the Late Late Show’s tribute to the Dubliners, and I’m sure it opened my mind up to folk music. But audiences at home on Friday may also have been frustrated and wanted a little more nuance, some variety, a greater effort towards curation throughout.

As the evening went on, the increasingly blank expressions on the musicians’ faces told us something: they didn’t spend decades working on their music to be landed in an ill-thought-out group live on television. They know what many know, that traditional music is capable of much more, when it is given the chance.

The Late Late Show Trad Special is available to view on the RTÉ Player. Visit www.rte.ie/player.