By Paul Keating

Many consider New York City to be the cultural capital of the world, and this coming weekend it will certainly live up to that. Over 4,000 people professionally involved in the arts will be buzzing about midtown Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel and Towers networking for five days at the 50th annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.

The Big Apple over January 19-23 will be a crossroads for the “largest global performance marketplace in the world,” where artists, agents, bookers, publicists and those whose business is the promotion of the arts here in the U.S. will rub shoulders and, hopefully, fill in calendar dates.

Among the 1,000 talent exhibitions or showcases scheduled will be a number of professional Celtic artists who got their act together and the steep cash outlay to make the right impressions before the right people who can help them make a living this coming year and beyond.

Among them this year are Cherish the Ladies, David Munnelly Band, Cathie Ryan, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Dervish and Grada to name the Irish acts, though the Scots are well represented also.

Not surprisingly, those Celtic acts will find great interest among the myriad art houses, concert halls and sophisticated performance spaces and series that will make their investment of time and money worthwhile all across the country and breathe life into their tours. Ironically, though gathered in the most popular city in the world, they will not find this town a Green Apple for their work if recent trends continue.

Despite the huge numbers of Irish people in this town and even more who like Celtic music, regular-sized venues where traditional music can be heard and enjoyed in a concert setting have diminished to the point where you could say the business doesn’t exist.

Since the World Music emporium Satalla closed two years ago, no place has stepped into the vacuum it created. However, the revolving door concept it promulgated to appeal to a number of different world cultures or tastes on the same night continues at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in the East Village.

In both places Celtic music was part of an a la carte entertainment package, which meant very short sets for the performers who were playing to beat the clock and turn over for the next flavor of the evening with separate admissions and drink minimums.

Something is radically wrong when you spend more time traveling to and from a venue than sitting there and enjoying a developing relationship between Celtic performers and their audience in a warm and cozy setting.

Obviously the economics of presenting traditional Celtic music in this town have gone south in a hurry, and it does have a huge impact on the artists who tour, forcing them to outposts in the burbs east and west, north and south where thankfully they feed into the sleeper cells like the Shamrock Irish Traditional Music Society, the Irish American Association of North Jersey or the Philadelphia Ceili Group.

Altan, one of the best Irish trad bands you will ever see in a live show, are playing in Fairfield, Connecticut next month (February 9), and that is the closest venue to New York City on their upcoming month long U.S. tour (www.altan.ie) after a long two-year hiatus. This tells a lot about the economics of playing New York City, where they could once fill Town Hall or Symphony Space (their last New York City stop in 2005).

There are exceptions, of course, because the Chieftains will still turn out a packed house at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center on St. Patrick’s Day mostly with the attendance of the “see and be seen once a year crowd” flying the green banner for a trad concert.

And the World Music Institute, that well-oiled polyglot cultural machine spearheaded by multicultural mavens Robert and Helene Browning, cherry pick the best seasonal acts like Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill (March 2) and Danu (March 24) for their home base at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side and draw respectable crowds who respond to their marketing.

But it is tough sledding for the rest of them, and if the business of presenting traditional music was profitable enough in New York there would be quite a few cultural entrepreneurs ready to take up the regular burden of delivering it.

There is no shortage of spectacular talent out there, but they can’t work for ephemeral guarantees that barely meet travel expenses, much less a livelihood. And if they don’t perform here, they can’t sell their CDs here in any significant way either, and must rely on other markets and the Internet.

The problem lies deeper in New York City. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault, my friends, is not in our musical stars, but in ourselves when we fail to go out and support so many great live entertainers.

Where are all the people who nurtured traditional music over the years in small and large venues around town? Has all their enthusiasm waned, or are they content to sit at home and listen to the radio or the Internet for small doses when they can and for free?

A wise folk presenter who headed the National Council for Traditional Arts named Joe Wilson once avoided New York City for their traveling shows, saying that “It was hard to stimulate the over-stimulated,” opting for less competition elsewhere.

Now there is a troublesome malaise that dominates the Irish music scene, and it threatens to eviscerate the local performing arts community for many touring Celtic artists who more and more are passing New York City by.

Don’t we all deserve a night out on the town in the Big Apple embracing the finest crop of trad musicians ever? Peoria and Podunk can’t have all the fun!

I’m anxious to hear feedback from my readers on this one, and replies are welcome to fromthehob@aol.com