Edward said, in Culture and Imperialism, writes: "No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things . . . "

But how are we to connect what we are with what we are becoming, even as cultural, economic and political globalisation continues to accelerate us into the next millennium? It is this process of "becoming" which seems to me to be the important one. While the point of origin is always a sacred one, the process of becoming must supersede this, in that it is a process which creates new and dynamic sacred spaces within which our voices can grow and speak as they are called to do.

"Linking the local to the global" is a catchphrase now, but it is one which for me is full of meaning. My attention was drawn last year to a "cultural village" architectural concept which the Italian architect, Renzo Piano, designed in New Caledonia off the coast of Australia. It is a strikingly beautiful series of buildings based on the local tribal huts of the Kanak people. Someone described this kind of architecture which was at once local and global as "glocal". As I thought about the word - especially its hardness and almost musical aggression - I was drawn towards a different amalgamation of the two words local/global into "lobal". Quite apart from its softness, "lobal" carried resonances of the lobe of the ear, of a kind of listening.

Because "lobality" listens to the process of becoming, because it is the dance at T. S. Eliot's "still point of the turning world", it leads us towards a kind of "real presence" where creativity resides.

Traditional music in Ireland (and I can only refer in passing here to existing emerging Irish voices in jazz, classical music, contemporary dance, and of course traditional dance) is flashing with intelligence during these final days of the millennium. A sonic encoding of the dynamic of Irish identity itself, it reaches back through archive, academic research, and traditional listening even as it reaches out into a new coming. It strains and poises on "the still point". It exudes confidence, betrays itself occasionally with an arrogance, retards itself sometimes with excessive commercial show - but it remains a swirling gyroscope of Irish cultural life in its general sweep.

Having said that, I have witnessed in Irish musical life in recent years that combination of fear and prejudice which Said alludes to. Sometimes the dynamic of a tradition can disturb old haunts, challenge established settings, seek to replace old gods. At its worst, the reaction against this can breed a cultural fundamentalism where outrage is tainted by fear. At its best it can help to redress an emerging imbalance within the tradition by counteracting crass commercialism or by challenging dishonest political manoeuvring within institutions. It is in finding a balance that a culture reaches towards its healthy aspects, and it is fundamentally within the individual that this balance emerges. The encouragement of choice seems essential to finding that balance. The continual opening up of other ways of doing what has been done before seems to keep tradition alive.

Is it possible to honour tradition while at the same time allowing an opening up of new ways of doing things? The answer in Ireland as we reach the end of the millennium is a resounding "yes". Even as our young musicians and dancers shine with inventiveness, institutions such as the award-winning Irish Traditional Music Archive at Merrion Square in Dublin - the largest such archive in the world - gathers in the produce of past and present generations, documents it electronically, and sets it up for perusal by traditional musicians of future generations. At the same time our universities continue to take ownership of the study of traditional music in a manner which is the envy of colleagues in Britain and further afield. It is this emerging combination of the gathering in of past produce, the research and analysis of its sonic and social meaning, and above all the recognition of the centrality of the creative process itself within the living tradition - something which by definition has to be greater than the very tradition which houses it - that maps out a fertile ground for the forging of new and true identities.

I write during the Christian season of Advent, when the First Coming (a birthing) is celebrated, and the Second Coming (an ending) is evoked. But Christian theology speaks also of a Third Coming in between the two - the Coming (or Becoming) which is present to us in the waiting. The arts in Ireland and throughout the world when they are at their most vibrant, engage us at the deepest levels in this becoming.

The Advent of traditional music - and of the arts generally - in Ireland is a joyous one. It has birthed on this island, it looks forward towards a global homecoming as we share it with others and allow them to make their own of it, and it seems to me in its best moments to be living in its own real presence.

Prof Micheal O Suilleabhain's most recent album of compositions is , released on the Virgin label. He is the director of the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick