Nomads No More

After years of doing the organizational equivalent of sleeping on a friend’s couch, the Celtic Arts Center has finally found a home of its own.

In a perfect world, the nonprofit cultural center would be located in a Celtic landmark of some sort--an ancient stone tower would be grand. In fact, the center now occupies leased space in an East Valley strip mall, at 4843 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Valley Village. Still, executive director Tom MacNamara says, the new location, officially opened March 24, is a welcome change from its previous shared digs in North Hollywood’s Raven Playhouse. There, a supportive landlord couldn’t make up for the fact that the center could only use the space when someone else wasn’t.

The Valley Village location has been renovated since the group took over Jan. 1, MacNamara says. It now has a first-rate floor for Irish dancing. A sound designer was brought in to perfect the acoustics, important both for concerts and the center’s weekly jam sessions with Celtic musicians. There is finally room to hold a full complement of classes, including instruction in the tongue-testing Irish language, Influential Women of Ireland, Tin Whistle 101, and other Celtic subjects, some, obviously, more annoying than others.

There is a place to buy and lift a pint of Guinness. And the center now has a 61-seat theater--three tiers arranged in a semicircle so you have an unobstructed view from any seat in the small house. This weekend’s program includes a tribute to the Irish patriots of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

But, best of all, the organization now has access to the space whenever it wants it. “It’s ours,” MacNamara says, doing the Irish American equivalent of kvelling. “It’s 24/7.”

From its founding in 1985, until recently, the Celtic Arts Center was run by Sean Fallon Walsh, an Irish American actor who succumbed to prostate cancer last April 24 at the age of 65. Originally located in Hollywood, the center celebrated Celtic culture in myriad ways, including staging plays from the ever expanding repertoire by gifted writers of Celtic extraction. Somewhat Celtic celebrities such as Sean Penn dropped in from time to time.

That phase of the center’s history ended with a fire on New Year’s Eve, 1992. Before finding a temporary home at the Raven, the organization occupied such profoundly unsatisfactory quarters as a rectory basement in Los Feliz.

As MacNamara explains, the center is properly called An Claidheamh Soluis (Irish for the mythical sword of enlightenment) Celtic Arts Center. Its weekly jam session, called a sesiun (pronounced say-SHOON), is “the longest running traditional music sesiun on the West Coast,” he says.

The center also books concerts featuring Irish, Scots and other Celtic music. The concert series is the responsibility of David McNabb, a Valley resident of Scots ancestry who’s stocky enough to toss the caber in local Highland games. McNabb was recruited by the late director to bring more Scots and Scottish Americans into the organization.

As McNabb explains, there are seven major Celtic groups, or clans, who lived in what is now Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, the French province of Brittany and Galacia region of Spain. He has tried to make the music program as diverse as possible, with limited success.

There are more Irish bands locally than other Celtic groups, McNabb says. So far, he has been able to book Irish, Scots and Welsh musicians, but has found no Breton performer or Manx trio to make the program truly pan-Celtic.

“We try not to emphasize the differences as much as the similarities of the seven Celtic clans,” says McNabb. He notes that Celtic festivals--as opposed to strictly Irish or Scots gatherings--are proliferating, suggesting that Celtic ecumenism may be a trend.

“Pretty much everyone who comes has a strong interest in Celtic culture or music,” McNabb says of the membership. But that doesn’t mean they’re all of Celtic heritage. An African American fiddler is a regular at the Monday night sesiuns, and little girls of all ethnicities now sign up for Irish dance.

Forty-two-year-old MacNamara, who is the only member of his immediate family not born in Ireland, is pleasantly surprised by the recent popularity of all things Celtic. The success of Riverdance, a stirring reinterpretation of traditional Irish dance, was a contributing factor, he says, as was Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winning Scottish epic, “Braveheart.” The recent emergence of Ireland as a world economic power--the so-called Celtic tiger--has also spurred interest.

An executive at the Game Show Network, MacNamara proudly displays the words CELT MAN on his license plate. “Here at the network I’m the resident Irish guy, and it’s great,” he says. “It’s cool to be Irish, and not just Irish.”

MacNamara is pleased that membership in the center has jumped from 75 to 150 in the past few months. And he revels in learning more about Celtic culture. He is currently taking the center’s course, taught by an attorney, in traditional Brehon law, the justice system in ancient Ireland before English common law was imposed. Let’s just say that, in the Brehon system, the wronged couldn’t have too big a barn. Settlements were typically made in livestock.

But what MacNamara likes most about the center is the traditional Celtic fellowship it provides.

For more information, call (818) 752-3488.

After more than two years, the Spotlight column is coming to an end. In lieu of a long, self-indulgent farewell, let me just say how much I have enjoyed writing for you every Friday. Because of your feedback, I have had the sense, denied to most non-columnists, that my 22- or 23-inch essays have landed in an inhabited country and fallen into the hands of willing, even eager readers. I’m still talking with my editors about my next assignment at The Times. Whatever it is, I will look back on the Spotlight column with pleasure and gratitude. Goodbye, and thank you.

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Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.