She said that among those features are the fact that the traditional music scene is an ‘incredibly tight-knit community with a lot of unregulated situations.’ This can mean that ‘your abuser is your fiddle teacher, a family friend, a well-respected musician, or in your friend group.’ We realise now that although the nature of abuse isn’t unique to the trad scene, there are certain endemic features that act as enabling mechanisms within the scene, mechanisms that facilitate and almost promote abusive behaviour, but that also make it hard to talk about or address it. The speed at which the movement gained traction was the thing that surprised us all… hundreds of people, the vast majority of whom were young girls and women, coming forward… It was soon clear that many knew that abuse was happening on some scale, but that nobody wanted to speak up or felt that they could speak up about it. Speaking about the Mise Fosta campaign, which began online in 2020 to highlight abuse and harassment in the traditional music and dance scene, Ní Nualláin said that the sector has still not addressed the issue and that there has not been enough support for young women. Time and energy spent on this work has been and continues to be at the expense of our own craft, while perpetrators continue to earn. However, we have also been subjected to significant amounts of abuse and backlash, and a closing of ranks. She also said that, in highlighting these issues, the group had received significant push-back from the sector:įor almost 4 years, we have worked tirelessly, as volunteers, to raise awareness and to address these issues and are very grateful for the support we have received to date. In Casey’s statement, she said that, after Fair Plé was founded in 2018, to initially address inequality, it became clear that, ‘Inequality in representation was being supported by a workplace culture which turns a blind eye to harassment and assault of women.’įrom the outset, our members began receiving, unprompted, confidential disclosures of harassment and assault from women across the scene, so much so that it was clear an endemic problem existed. In their statements, Dr Casey and Ní Nualláin spoke of how vulnerable women are in the folk and traditional music sectors because of the informal nature of the scene and the fact that it has no clear channels for reporting abuse. The meeting was prompted by the publication last month of an Irish Theatre Institute report, which found that of 1300 people surveyed in the arts, 70% have experienced harmful behaviour. Last July, an RTÉ Investigates programme highlighted the issue of sexual abuse in the traditional music scene, and in March of this year Dr Úna Monaghan published research into the area. Representatives from both organisations, the singer Dr Karan Casey from Fair Plé and musician Anna Ní Nualláin from Mise Fosta, spoke at a Joint Committee meeting in the Oireachtas last week (17 November) that was called to discuss the working environment in the arts.
Fair Plé and Mise Fosta, the campaigns that have arisen due to inequality and sexual harassment in the traditional and folk music scenes, have called for anti-harassment protocols to be implemented to protect women and vulnerable people working in the sector.