Hill of Tara - Tunes for
Tara
I have just returned from Germany and Switzerland where I
spent a few days touring with the Irish Folk Festival
which is dedicated to preservation of the integrity of
the Hill of Tara. This is an annual five week touring
festival of 30 concerts, organised by Magnetic Music, the
leading Celtic music agency in Germany, which is owned
and managed by my husband, Petr Pandula. This festival
has been running for 31 years and has featured many well
renowned Irish artists such as Altan, Clannad, De Danann
to name just a few. This year the festival features
Solas, Beoga, Kevin Burke, Ged Foley and Alan Burke.
The Magnetic Music team decided to take the step of using
the festival to register a musical protest over the
construction of the M3 motorway so close to Tara. The
festival motto is "Tunes for Tara". At the end of each
concert a seven minute multivision slide show portrays
the beautiful scenery of Tara and illustrates the
proximity of the proposed route of the M3 in diagrammatic
form.
Audiences are invited to sign the petition registering
their objection to the current proposal. I was absolutely
staggered at the numbers of signatures we collected. At
the end of week one of concerts we had collected over one
thousand.
I was ashamed and embarrassed to be constantly asked by
concert-goers (some who were frequent visitors to Ireland
and others who are potential tourists) to explain why
Irish people are going to passively allow this
development to happen when there appears to be a viable
alternative? As another letter writer mentioned (Village,
8 October), societies are judged not only by what they
create, but also what they choose not to destroy. I
certainly don't feel proud to be answering those
questions to some of our astonished European neighbours.
Surely there is still time to reconsider the decision to
compromise the integrity of this unique part of our
heritage.
Mary Pandula,
Dundrum,
Dublin.
© Village Magazine, 10th. November 2005.
