Sir, - I have been reading, with interest, the controversy over IMRO trying to collect royalties from sessions. We have two organisations here in America, BMI and ASCAP, whose sole purpose is to collect royalties due to their artists from public performances - to the joy of some and the misery of others.
What does all of this mean for the "session" as a institution? Probably not very much. The academics have been saying that traditional music is dying for the last few hundred years, and each century has produced its organisations to "save this music". The fact is that traditional music is much larger and stronger than the sum of its parts and will survive whether or not royalties are paid, pubs open or close, or local musicians sell out to the big Pop industry.
When I first came to Ireland in 1971, all of the sessions were at someone's house. A few years later, as the sessions started to move into the pubs, one heard: "That's it! that's the end of Irish music". Now we are hearing that if the sessions are forced out of the pubs: "That's it! that's the end of Irish music". If the sessions are driven from the pubs, they will simply surface somewhere else; perhaps even for the better, and Irish music will continue as it always has done. - Yours, etc
Chapel Hill,
North Carolina,
275160 US.