I’ve had the opportunity to listen to a few relatively recent All Ireland winners lately, some flute and some pipes. After listening to the standard of these winners, it has made me wonder about the general worth of the title nowadays.
All the musicians I heard were technically sound as they should be if they are in such a competition. However the playing uninspiring and simply boring. One flute player for example, kept on sticking to all the “safe” breathing spots in a manner that caused the phrasing to end up totally conservative and uninspired.
In general there was no sense of spontaneity, no character to the music of some of these winners. No nyaah associated with powerful Irish trad music.
Merits and demerits of official competitions in the music aside (for another thread perhaps), I can understand how these titles provide a channel for recognition in the ITM community. However whether this recognition is due is another matter. I feel it is doing the music no favours, giving All Irelands to musicians of that level of musicality. The playing of All Ireland Winners is supposed to exemplify what good ITM is about. And if this kind of sanitary playing is what organisations are recognizing as good, and encouraging younger musicians to look up to, you’re going to end up with a drop of overall mean musicality.
Does anyone have any comments regarding this issue?
I was wanting to have a discussion on this subject myself sooner or later after hearing a few clips and some of the musicians featured on the bloom of youth RTE series. Hearing there opinions and influences also was very enlightening. I found (big shock) that the ones I enjoyed really went after older players for influence. And then ones I didn’t like were extremely CCE based and extremely influenced by players like Matt Molloy and Kevin Crawford and the big band sound. (don’t get in tissy, Matt Molloy is the greatest ever but too many people try to sound exactly like him and not one of them have succeeded. Kinda like Micheal Jordan compared to the Bryants, Lebron’s etc).
As in that clip of James Murray floating around, I feel that there is too much influence in playing fast and technique and not nearly enough focusing on style and the tunes. And also like James Murray in the clip. I can’t tell some of these players apart because so many flute players, fiddlers and pipers all sound the same.
Eld, have you heard clips of people who are entering and not winning who sound better to you? If you are right about the standard of winners falling, that could be a matter of rewarding technical precision more than soul and spark, but it might reflect a lower standard in the entrants. I would imagine that these things are cyclical. I would expect technical competence to come along all the time but people with something of their own to say to come along only occasionally and at unpredictable intervals.
I was listening to some stuff on the Fleadh Ceol na hEirreann on the radio yesterday. One thing that struck me was that all musicians were referred to all the time as ‘performers’ as ‘20.000 performers roamed the streets of Letterkenny today’.
One commentator was talking how it used to be the one style that the adjudicators were after, individuality was not appreciated. He went on to say that was no longer the case. I wouldn’t agree with him on the last one.
Have you listened to many older recordings of the A.I.* ? Have you heard the current A.I. performers outside of competition?
I ask because maybe what you’re hearing is just the influence of competing. The performer might be playing it clean and safe for the sake of getting the prize.
Just a guess.
Cheers,
Aaron
A.I. = All Ireland though the allusion to “artificial intelligence” is not missed.
I feel there is a quite definite ‘Comhaltas style’, the organisation favours a certain image and that shines through in the fleadh big time. There’s always a tv series with music from the Fleadh, interestingly in each half hour programme there’s always one three minute item with people whom I think of as playing nice music.
For my part I have Aaron. And as far playing it clean and safe. I’ve heard from a friend of mine and a reliable source that sometimes the winners at fleahds make mistakes when they are playing and sometimes have to start all over. So I don’t think it is about playing safe. I think it’s about the downfall of style and the immergence of the standerd session player.
With regards to eld’s initial post. What are the options? Do away with the comp altogether because it’s not like they can just go out and say “sorry, there just aren’t any suitable candidates for the title so go home?” I can think of many years in the NBA when the competition wasn’t as good but they still gave the best team a title at the end of the year.
I have to disagree with you there on the lack of stylistic difference in the CCE.
The branches all have their own particular slant, depending on where the original members came from in Ireland. The 4 local branches all have thier own mixture of Donegal / Antrim / Sligo / Roscommon / Scottish influences and if you can hear it in thier playing.
On the other hand if you are talking about competing then they are looking very hard at the technique and the mechanics of the playing, you must still be musical, but that is only part of what they are looking for.
The quintennial International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition will be held later this year, and I was reminded that the awards for “Best performance of a mazurka” and “Best performance of a concerto” have not been awarded since 1985. Simply put: Nobody since 1985 has been good enough to deserve it.
Competitions are always like this once they have been around for a while. When the judging is spotty and subjective everybody screams at the organization to make the rules clear and fair for all. The judging is forced to eventually leave out any notion of what sounds “good” or “right”, and is left with nothing but mechanical playing and technique. I would not look to these competitions to be anything more than running a machine through a test lab for performance. In the end, what sounds good remains with the ear of the listener.
Well that’s fine if you want to disagree. I had an oppurtunity to sit in a session this summer with Kevin Henry of sligo and one of the young players from the same county. I talked with this young player and she was very CCE orientated and began learning and playing as a part of that orgination. Nowadays she plays in the very typical modern style and listening to her and Kevin Henry up close together it was like night and day between them. Really amazing actually. And I have heard this similarity outside of these particular example.
However I haven’t heard everybody! So maybe you are right and I’ve just missed how the CCE has heald on to traditions and styles of the various regions. But I highly doubt it due to the amount of listening I’ve done.
I totally agree with you that the CCE has done nothing much to preserve the regional styles.
What the young players pick up are the regional styles that the teachers in the branch have. Around here it is a mixture of the Donegal, Sligo, Antrim and Roscommon styles that predominate with a leavening of Scottish and Cape Breton from the younger teachers. Personally I think that a distinct style of play, for the second and third generation Irish players in South West Scotland, is developing from this mix.
I would make the assumption that that is true for the US as well.
I have not heard the other contestants in the competition and the clips I heard were in a non-competition context. So I’m not sure if its the judges not selecting for musicality or if it was an overall drop in standard. Either way I don’t think it makes a big difference, the bottom line was that the people I heard recently, who were awarded the All-Ireland sounded rather insipid. Although I don’t look to All-Ireland winners for inspiration I am concerned if younger players look to these as exemplars of the music, perpetuating the cycle of musical blandness.
Isn’t the aim of an All Ireland to exemplify what good traditional music sounds like? I think whichever style you play, be it Donegal or Kerry, an experienced musician can tell if there is character and that spark of spontaneity to your music. And I would expect the judges to be experienced musicians who have done their share of listening of various styles.
What would interest me is if the judges actually comment on this trend, if it is an overall decrease in level of musicality? I think if this be the case, the issue should be addressed in one way or another. Or do they really admit they are powerless in selecting for anything else other than technique?
Large cultural institutions of any kind tend to have a homogenizing influence. I’ve met chefs who say they can go out to eat and tell by the menu and presentation where the restaurant’s chef went to cooking school. My brother went to the North Bennett Street School in Boston, a school for woodworkers and luthiers, and he can easily spot other graduates’ cabinetmaking at fine woodworking shows. Some fiction writers talk disparagingly of the “Iowa Writers’ Workshop Style,” and graphic designers can often tell where another designer went to art school by looking at their work.
The really great artists, writers, musicians, etc. either don’t need to go to these schools, or else they go and learn what’s useful to them while steering clear of the ruts in the road and maintaining their own voice and creativity. It’s the same with business schools. I read recently that there are only four MBAs among the chief executives of the top 50 Forbes 400 companies.
I think Comhaltas has value and has done great things, but the homogenizing effect is an unfortunate and perhaps inevitable outcome. And I think many of the greatest traditional Irish musicians have no interest in competing or being part of the CCE world, and thus the competitions reveal only the “best” of one particular subculture of Irish music.
A piper I know who is a member of a CCÉ branch went to a class held in NYC on how to become a judge for CCÉ-sponsored events. The instructor was from Ireland, a fiddler judge, who announced at the outset that he couldn’t stand the pipes, and proceeded to give the standards for fiddles and dance only. I think that kind of re-inforces what Brad and Sean have related above.
Eldarion says - “I’ve had the opportunity to listen to a few relatively recent All Ireland winners lately, some flute and some pipes. After listening to the standard of these winners, it has made me wonder about the general worth of the title nowadays”.
I can say -
“I’ve had the opportunity to listen to and play along with a few of last weekend’s All Ireland winners lately, some flute ,fiddle, and whistle”.
Although they’re from Glasgow, Mairead McManus and Katie Boyle won the Senior All Ireland Duets yesterday. I heard them at the Willie Clancy week in July, and had assumed they were Irish until I heard them speaking. Excellent musicians, the pair of them.
Also at the Willie Clancy week 3 years ago I sat in a session with a young flute player called Edward Looney, from Kerry. Yesterday he won the Senior tin-whistle, and also mouth-organ, both at the age of 18.
None of these musicians could ever, based on my experiences, be described as “uninspired” or “boring”.
Now if I were to extrapolate this in the way Eldarion has, would I not be justified in arriving at the exact opposite conclusion about the worth of an All Ireland title ?
Now if I were to extrapolate this in the way Eldarion has, would I not be justified in arriving at the exact opposite conclusion about the worth of an All Ireland title ?
Maybe, or maybe you don’t share the excellence of taste that Eldarion has.
Murphy Stout, you have never heard kenny play, I have. If you had, then you wouldn’t have made this statement.
Kenny please post a clip of your playing and clear up this misconception.