R - Comhaltas Archive

• • • and now SwedenThe guitar class moved outside in the lovely weather and brought some banjos as well~ fter many years of playingmusic and about four years of7iIrish 'pub music' with the band'Oneapoe', I found my way intotraditional music and with specialinterest for the Bodhran.Like many other tourists I bought oneas a souvenior the first time I visitedIreland and started banging like mostpeople do. But quite soon I got aninterest of learning to play it properly.I found out that the best way was totake a course at one of thesummerschools. I called my friend B.G.the banjo player, and asked him if hewanted to go to Ireland and he said'yes' with no hesitation.At the time we knew nothing about thedifferences of the summershcools so wemade the choice out of what was mostsocially convenient.We called the joe MooneySummerschool and got all theinformation we needed. Now we try togo to ireland and joe MooneySummerschool every year to see new'old friends' and enjoy the music.The idea of a summer-schoolin SwedenTwo years ago we got the idea ofstarting a summer-school of our own.We presented the idea to the Swedish­Irish Traditional Music Association whoalready organises weekly open sessionsat the pub Galway Inn. They thought itwas a good idea and a project teamstarted the work to organise the OrebroInternational Summer-school ofTraditional Irish Music.We had the idea of having th same highstandard of the teachers as the irishsummer-schools and from the verybeginning we all agreed to get allteachers from Ireland. I called byBodhran teacher and good friend juniorDavy and asked him for help. Hepromised to get all the teachers weneeded and bring them over to oursummer-school.Starting a school like this costs quite anamount of money and we weregenerously supported by the countycouncil and the local government, plusthat, some of the pubs in townsponsored the school to get sessionsduring the evenings.Ready for take offAs soon as we found out that theeconomy was OK, we were ready fortake off. I must admit that I hadbutterflies in my stomach passing thepoint of no return. Buying tickets forthe teachers and advertising thesummer-school is a kind of work that'sreally enjoyable, but what wouldhappen if there were no pupils? Thatwas a scary thought. Well, in the endwe got 110 pupi Is and the summerschoolturned into a great success.33------------------------------------------------------------------------------------