There’s very little interesting in the line of uilleann pipes on eBay these day, however, here’s a selection of CDs that might interest someone starting out. There’s a good mix of new and old pipers and groups. I’ve already got most of the piping CDs, otherwise I’d be bidding.
I just bid, then wondered if I was bidding against someone from the list! The high bid is gopol, and if he is a member of this forum, I won’t bid against him.
Let me know,
Eamon
Very nice collection indeed
Certainly there’s 6 good recordings there, but what’s “Clannad” got to do with uilleann piping ? The other 3 look a bit ropey too. Even though, somebody could be getting a good deal here.
I would say Clannad would be good for learning songs from. If you weren’t raised in the tradition and aren’t familiar with the tunes or the words in Irish, Clannad are an easy introdction. Obviously their arrangements or instrumentation aren’t any use for piping, but the tunes they sang aren’t often recorded, and their versions are simple and accessible.
djm
One slight precision with Clannad: Their style of singing isn’t what most people would call Sean Nos singing. They arrange their songs in what I’ve heard called the Donegal tradition. I don’t know much about it except that it favours several voices, instead of just a solo singer.
BTW, the best Clannad material is their earlier recordings. They got a little too much into the synths in the late 1980s after Robin of Sherwood.
Their style isn’t sean-nós at all. They are just singing folk songs, with an amateurish folk-jazz arrangement. That’s why I suggest it is more accessible just for learning the song melodies. Their Irish dialect is Donegal Gaeltacht. Don’t try to match their lyrics with versions from elsewhere as they won’t match up due to this difference.
djm
There’s a track called Fionnuala’s Bothy on the Bothy Band album ‘Live at the BBC’ in which Micheal sings the song and the rest of the band come in on the chorus and sing harmonies. They say that the song is from the Outer Hebredies but it reminds me very much of some of the early Clannad tunes.
As djm said, Clannad’s Gaelic is from the Donegal Gaeltachdt which has more commonalities with Scots Gaelic as does Donegal music with Scottish music. And if I remember the article correctly, Míchael spent a lot of time in Donegal in his youth as well as studying and recording Galeic songs in Scotland as a young adult. So that may explain some of your Clannad association with “Fionnghuala.” It may also be that style of vocal arrangement was popular in the Bothy, early Clannad time frame.
As far as Clannad goes, the one on eBay is a better one. They hadn’t got too Synth-New-Age and had only strayed from the tradition a little more than the Bothys. But no, there is no piping.
Cheers,
Aaron