F
250 FACÉ (Filí, Amhránaithe & Ceoltóirí na h-Éireann). A performing rights organisation inaugurated in 2001 following a meeting in the Liffey Arts Research Centre in Kildare. The idea of Australian-born guitarist Steve Cooney, FACÉ was sparked by the refusal of management at a Dublin Castle gig to provide water for musicians, but reflected considerable existing dissatisfaction with IMRO. FACÉ saw itself as a democratic forum among poets, songwriters, tunesmiths and musicians in Ireland which would look after their rights and make provision for their family responsibilities through facilitating pension and health care schemes, basic venue rights for artists, and ensuring the efficient, transparent and due repatriation of royalties. Performers at FACÉ’s initial fund-raising ‘benefit’indicate its breadth of appeal, for among them were Andy Irvine, Laoise Kelly, Kevin Glackin, Paul McGrattan, Mary Black, Cormac Breatnach,Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Seosaimhín Ní Bheaglaíoch and Vinnie Kilduff. Dissatisfaction with poor representation of traditional music by IMRO (and with its CCÉ deal which was done without consultation with either IMRO or CCÉ members) impelled a move of better-known, conscientious performers towards campaigning for access to, and participating in, IMRO’s offices. They were also aware that even though traditional music was highly regarded internationally , with successful bands, tour companies and tourism all benefiting from its good will, little benefit trickled down to professional and semi-professional , traditionally based musicians in Ireland. They aimed for full representation for working traditional musicians on the board of IMRO (at a time when musicians made up some 95 per cent of its membership),and pledged to investigate royalty collection, promote digital logging systems and a dedicated Irish-music radio station, expand the role of IMRO, increase traditional music funding, implement IMRO’s Irish-language policy,simplify registration of tunes, address incorrect registration, and to give members more power. Spearheaded by exhaustive lobbying of IMRO members by FACÉ (whose members were also voting members of IMRO) this resulted in Dónal Lunny and Liam Ó Maonlaí being elected to the IMRO board in 2001. In 2004 FACÉ successfully used the proxy votes of its members to maintain their writer/ musician representation on the IMRO board. FACÉ also engaged in some key, on-theground issues, among these the challenging of Clare County Council over buskers’ rights at the Cliffs of Moher, and in 2006 TG4 in relation to traditional musicians’copyrights and moral rights. Operating as a co-operative society FACÉ has been a vigorous pressure group.The power changes which have ensued at IMRO led to greater respect for its traditional-music members and, with the formation of the Musicians’ Union of Ireland (MUI), FACÉ’s ongoing activity receded. At its peak FACÉ (face.ie) represented some 300 of the top names in professional and semi-professional traditional music performance. Fahy, Francis. (1854–1935). Songwriter and poet. Born at Kinvara, Co. Galway, he was one of a family of eight children who had survived out of seventeen siblings. At age fifteen he became a teacher in Kinvara Boys School, the same year as his first play was performed at Kinvara Courthouse as a fund-raiser for the dependants of Fenian prisoners . A poem, ‘The Exile’, was published in The Nation the following year, and he went to join the civil service in England in 1873 where he lived in London. Hugely energetic, and enthusiastically engaged with Irish identity, he was one of those who founded the Southwark Literary Club which aimed to foster passion for Irish culture among the children of Irish emigrants. This became the Irish Literary Society, and later, the Irish Texts Society. From 1896 to 1908 Fahy was president of the Gaelic League in London and wrote many poems and songs concerning Ireland, these often nostalgic , but all celebrating the value of Irish cultural and artistic heritage. Among the most memorable are ‘The Ould Plaid Shawl’, ‘The Queen of Connemara’, ‘The Old Bog Road’, ‘Little Mary F Farr, Lucy 251 Cassidy’ and the original version of ‘Galway Bay’, all of which had great currency in Irish popular entertainment in the twentieth century. His publications include The Child’s Irish Song Book (1881), The Irish Reciter (1882), Irish History in Rhyme (1882) and Irish Songs and Poems (1887). In 2001, sean-nós singer Caoilte Breatnach and the local Francis Fahy Society published a documentation of the poet’s life in the form of an album, The Ould Plaid Shawl, with a range...
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