Does the Tradition need bodyguards?

Trad Irish Music
1

How is the Tradition as an entity considered?

Is it fragile? Does the use of whistle in country music weaken it? How about movies like Titanic, where Irish trad and “Celtic” music get a bit mixed up? Or Enya? Or Connie Dover, for that matter, who tends to research out the links between the vocal part of the Tradition and American Old-Time music?

Should one of the functions of a traditional musician be to protect the tradition from those who are less enlightened? And what is the qualification–do we base it on technical proficiency? Years playing trad? Years playing trad in Ireland? Being Irish by birth? Living in Ireland?

Sometimes it seems to me trad music is growing in both acceptance and popularity. Is this illusion? Is it in fact in decline? Have commercial recordings caused or assisted this decline? Or the popularity of bands like the Chieftains? Has the Internet helped or hurt the tradition?

How about Star Trek and Picard’s whistle? Does using trad instruments in non-trad settings somehow weaken the tradition?

This is not meant to be criticizing or tongue-in-cheek. I am genuinely curious about how people feel these issues, and am hoping to start a polite and mannered dialog about them.

–James

2

James,

I think this in an interesting topic. I’d agree with you that ITM is thriving right now, and I think cross-pollination of instruments and the popularity of such things as River Dance, the Chieftans, Enya, the Pogues and other semi-trad or Irish/Irish influenced performers has helped greatly.

I’d be willing to bet that many of us who grew up outside of Ireland with parents who were not carrying on a family legacy of ITM came into the ITM fold through round about ways. Personally, I listened to the Chieftans, Thistle & Shamrock show, and caught quite a few performances of Scartaglen (Connie Dover, Roger Landes & Kirk Lynch - am I missing a 4th member?) since they were our local celtic band. However, it was Tom Dahill playing locally that really sucked me in to the world of ITM. His box and fiddle playing showed me a different side of Irish music. Plus, he is one of the nicest fellows you’d ever care to meet. I remember the night I decided that I wanted to learn more about ITM. It was a blizzard, yet Tom, being the hardy northerner, made it to the pub. There was only 4 of us locally who drove through the storm. Instead of deciding not to play, he sat down at our table, and we had a nice little sing along. He lamented the fact none of us had a whistle or anthing to play along with, and it was the next day I went out and bought my first Clarke Original in D.

I guess where I’m going here is that “celtic music” and ITM musicians playing in non-ITM settings are like the “gateway drugs” to ITM. However, it’s the true trad players who take the curious and lead them deeper into the world of ITM.

All I think “the Trad Police” do is drive away the curious and those who might, with time, embrace the tradition.

Eric

3

I think the tradition is pretty robust. Sure, there are commercial pressures that have created an offshoot of this music that’s tailored for mass consumption, but there are still plenty of people drawn to the pure drop. Do easy-listening music and “lite” rock threaten the tradition of rock and roll? I don’t think so. They just attract people who like that kind of music.

There will always be more people listening to the latest hot band than to home tapes of Tommy Reck or Joe Cooley. Traditional music in its pure form tends to be an acquired taste, and it’s never going to appeal to the masses. But I also don’t think it’ll ever die out, nor do I think that pure traditional music will be affected much by modern influences. You can still find lots of people playing traditional music the way it was played before Planxty and the Bothy Band and the Chieftains, and I bet 100 years from now that will still be the case.

4

Cross-pollination has always been the name of the game, long before recordings and broadcast media made rapid change frighteningly inevitable. “The” tradition is right, because one tradition overlaps with another. Tinwhistle came into it from mid 19th-Century England, as did the concertina. Flute came in from classical music, as did the Italian violin. Modern guitar came from Spain, via wherever. Pipes, in some form, have been in the tradition since the dark ages. And the accordion also comes from the 19th-Century. It is true that the tunes in Ireland, and many of the songs, date back for centuries. This is also true of the American and English tradition, and ballads and tunes have traveled across Scotland and England and America, to the extent that it is often anybody’s guess “whose” they really are. But they don’t exclusively belong to anyone.

5

Jim, I think your use the word “dialog” is a bit of a Freudian slip. :slight_smile: So, I think I owe an answer.

I want to go back to something I posted a while ago. I was responding to Weekenders. Here is an excerpt of what he said:

That is how I take your question about body guards, Jim: How do you deal with people saying that this or that is crap, shouldn’t be done, isn’t the style, and “don’t try that at our session”?

(You feel your age when you start recycling your own posts. :slight_smile: )

6

Bloomfield,

I think there is a lot of value in knowing the tradition. I have spent years trying to learn it, and don’t plan on stopping now.

But again, I am amazed at the diversity of the older recordings.

I also think there is great presumption involved when most folks say this or that is or isn’t traditional. There are a few people I would trust on such a judgement–very few, and most of them not regular contributors here.

That’s not a put-down, just an acknowledgement that C&F, while wonderful for what it is, does not really represent a body of authority on Irish traditional music.

To know what is indeed traditional requires more than competence or even virtuosity at an instrument–it requires more than years of study–it requires more than dedication and commitment and long hours of listening. It does indeed require all those things–but they are not enough. Not nearly enough.

When we have both been at this music for fifty or sixty years, let’s have this discussion again, and see what we think by then. :slight_smile:

Best,

–James

7

You lost me there. I mean it sounds interesting and gives me that shiver down the spine like I am trying to find the dusty tome of arcana at the bottom of the crypt. But I don’t think knowing the tradition actually requires even playing an instrument. Just listening to the real stuff or especially dancing to the music, I’d say, could make you as competent a judge.

And dedication, commitment, and long hours of listening seems to sum it up pretty nicely. What else is there that makes them “not nearly enough?” If you say “birth” now, I’m going to have to laugh and that wouldn’t be nice, because you told me to be “mannered.”

8

No, as I’ve written elsewhere, I don’t think birth has a thing to do with it. Culture helps but isn’t an insurmountable stumbling block–obviously, if you’ve come up hearing and playing sessions in pubs you are going to start out further along than I did, for instance.

My point is you can do all of these things–the listening, the playing, the dancing, the commitment, the hours–for an entire lifetime and have only scratched the surface of what’s there. Also the teaching–a vital part of the tradition is passing it along.

And just having scratched the surface isn’t enough to let either of us stand in judgement.

That’s why I say, lets give it the rest of our lives, and when we are the geezers, let’s have this discussion again.

–James

9

Hi Jim, this is a really interesting discussion. However I’m a wee slow in the absorption department and I might need some help grasping a few points, that may have already been previously debated…

Why isn’t someone qualified to discern/judge if something is Irishly traditional even after lots of listening and absorption of the pure drop? Does it mean that no one is qualified to say what is not traditional unless they’s a geezer, and why?

Secondly, I would like to be enlightened on what “geezer” refers to here. Does it mean being chronologically endowed, or does it mean a good traditional player, or both? Does someone have to confer the rank of geezer on you before you are one?
Thanks!

10

Well, actually, when it’s traditional music, or even just folk music, who is qualified to make definitions on where the boundaries are?

What would qualify you? Having been a recorded artist? Studied it in music school? Wrote a book about it? Length of time playing it? Locations you’ve played in? Musicians you’ve played with?

Would even being a “geezer” (whatever that really means) qualify someone?

When it comes right down to it, isn’t traditional music somewhat subjective? You know it when you hear it, you are certainly sure when something isn’t it, but how do you define its boundaries, assuming you wanted to?

That’s my point–these aren’t light questions. You could write books about these questions and still not answer them.

Best to all,

–James

11

Jim: I’m puzzled why you should raise so many questions and then, when people attempt to respond you tell them that they are virtually unanswerable. If that is the case, why did you ask them? What were you hoping to hear?

I’d add that of course judgments about something like traditional music are subjective. They are nothing more than opinions, in fact, and it continually amazes me that people assume they are anything else.

In a field like this, advice is often given. That advice might in some cases be misguided, but it is usually well meant, and of course it is always based on the opinions of the person giving it. As I see it the recipient is always free to disagree with it, ignore it, disregard it, write it off as useless prejudice, or fail to comprehend it for a while or for his or her whole life.

Personally, I’m very grateful for some pointed advice that was given to me when I was starting out in traditional music. I didn’t consider that the people who gave me such advice were trying to impose anything on me - I assumed they were trying to help me (and indeed they did - even if the point of what they were saying in some cases only dawned on me years later).

What interests me is why you should use the term “bodyguard” in this context, which is a somewhat belligerent term for (I assume) people who give advice and opinions of the kind I described above.

Has someone upset you? If so, why don’t you just tell us or have a good bitch about it?

12

My apologies if I’m coming across as belligerent or argumentative…didn’t mean to.

Nope, no one has offended me–just seeking opinions, and hoping to discuss them.

Sorry if I came across too strong–sometimes it’s hard to discuss things we are passionate about on a message board. Passion doesn’t carry well in a text-only medium.

–James

13

EDIT: While I was writing this, StevieJ & peeplj have posted again. Jim may be too polite to say it, but I think the “body guards” were triggered by a post of mine in another thread where I said the following:

But it’s all a passionate and amiable exchange, and Jim assures me that bears no hard feelings against me (but wouldn’t let me marry a daughter of his, either). :wink:



Jim, I think we’re are getting into it a little deeper and see where we have different views. That’s great and productive, and I’d hate to leave it until we are geezers.

I agree that, since ITM is folk music, its boundaries are hard to define (although I dare say you wouldn’t have an easy time defining “Baroque” or “Modern Classical” music, either). I agree that it’s subjective.

But I don’t agree with the conclusion: You make it sound like it’s either definable in cold, clear, and objective terms, or it’s forever mysterious and ellusive, except for the insights that old age brings us along with dotage and dentures.

I think that there is a core of the tradition that can be described in pretty clear terms. I don’t mean a definition that you would write down in books (you mention that many books could be written without giving a satisfactory answer, which, by the way, makes ITM no different from most other subjects). The people who have tried to show me the core of the Music have made me listen. They have played a tune for me or sent me a clip. They have leaned over at the session between tunes and told me that “we like to vary it a bit each time around, you see.” And they have told me anecdotes about the players who have the music. (Like how Martin Hayes said to Martin Rochford “I got it all from you, Martin.” That should make anyone interested perk up and go find clips of Rochford’s playing.)

Around the core of the tradition, there is blurry zone where growth and change happens, and where people who know will disagree or have preferences. This again is like many, many areas in life. Philosophy, law, business, social sciences, art: most everything worthwhile has to make do with a degree of fuzziness. This is not a problem of ITM or of folk music.

Thing is, it’s not a problem at all in ITM, unless you are trying to look in from the outside. Once you have the music, you seem to stop worrying about it. Those players whom I know who have the music would rather have a tune than talk about delineating “The Tradition” (although they have a very clear idea of it I think). It’s not about defining boundaries, but about grasping the core.

For some reason that I don’t understand there seem to be a lot of people who are just starting out who have a need to validate their preferences. The “misleading music” thread was posted because the guy wanted to hear that the music he liked was good and real and THE music. The people I know who are offended that some ITM musicians consider O’Carolan to be outside the tradition are offended by that because they like O’Carolan, and not because of their knowledge and experience with the character and history of Irish traditional music. I could add more examples here, but I won’t because anyone who has read Chiff & Fipple (or other sites, like thesession.org) knows these arguments.

Now take a look at it functionally: The argument that “it can’t be defined and therefore it’s mysterious and open-ended” is often used (and not only in ITM) to disqualify whatever attempt at explaining or describing the core the other side makes. “You can’t define every last bit/I’ve once heard XYZ doing exactly the opposite, that shows that ITM is a free-for-all…” goes the build-up. Then comes the deep breath, followed by “therefore you are a snob, stuck-up, and you want body guards for the music. We don’t have to listen to you” (sometimes phrased more politely). You can watch for it in almost any Is-This-ITM? discussion.

14

And I’m not the only one who is passionate, evidentally. :wink:

If you say the Chieftains et al don’t represent the core of the tradition, I have to agree–I tend to think of this as the “public face” of the music, but I do feel it has done a lot towards increasing public awareness and acceptance of Irish music.

As to learning from their recordings, if you live where you actually have a long-standing local session you can go to, then the session is the best way to learn–sessions are the core of the tradition, at least as far as I’m concerned. But if you don’t, as many of us don’t, then learning from recordings is still better then just trying to learn from sheet music.

Although learning from recordings has its own set of problems, not least of which is that they are too far out of reach for a beginner’s ear to even follow. But that’s another subject for another thread.

And Bloomfield, I have no daughters, but if I did, I would certainly advise them not to marry such disreputable characters as musicians! :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: I like you fine, Bloo–you quit’cher worryin’ 'bout that! :slight_smile:

–James

15

I would agree that learning from CDs is better than learning from sheet music, that’s for sure. I would say that the problem with learning from CDs is that many “irish music” bands arrange their music a lot, and turn it into something that’s far from being traditionnal. For example, Seamus Egan and Solas make lotsa arrangements on their stuff, and it doesnt come out as music you’re going to hear in a very traditional session.

I knew an irish fiddle player, and she did learn all of her tunes from CDs since she didnt go to many sessions. She was very good, but when she’d sit in a session in Miltown Malbay, she’d be the only one playing, and then others would play and she’d be quiet. Why? Because CD music seems to be a different “culture” than session music, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

I think that everyone can at least buy a tape recorder, attend a session or two somewhere, and then try to learn from the recordings. This is what I usually do when I go in Ireland. I tape a lot, and today I’m still learning from music I recorded last july…

16

Well, you have to start learning somewhere. And, really, not everyone can attend a session or two somewhere. How is a true beginner even going to know the sessions are there, assuming the closest session is driving distance?

Sometimes I think it is a real testiment to the addictive power of Irish trad that any of us who don’t live where sessions are close ever learn to play it at all.

Best,

–James

17

I guess a good irish teacher is something else to look for if we don’t have sessions around, or the other way around. But I have to admit that without a teacher and/or sessions around, choices are limited.

There are also good irish music learning CDs out there. I’ve got Walton’s Best 100 Irish Tunes, and the tunes are played in a very traditionnal way, slowly but with lotsa swing. This could be a very good alternative to band CDs, I personally think one would learn much more from these.

18

I can’t speak with any authority on what the tradition is (though I just came across this article, which may be helpful). In another thread I’ve been asking about the nitty gritty musical elements that make up the tradition. I recognize, though, that those elements can’t be separated from a whole social side to the music, which I am beginning to experience in a small way as I meet and play with other musicians. If the tradition were just the nitty gritty musical elements, maybe it would seem snobbish or prickly to ‘defend’ it. But it’s become clear to me that the core of the music has as much to do with the bonds and memories of family, friends, and community as it does with triple tonguing and long rolls. And although it’s something that has to be experienced first hand, I can honestly say that I didn’t even know I was looking in the wrong places for the tradition until I read this post by Peter Laban:

It is four years this week since Junior Crehan was laid to rest outside Mullagh church. A year after his death a tree was planted outside the place where he played every Sunday night, in memory of himself and the other departed musicians that used to played there.

Earlier tonight tribute was paid to the great man, music was played outside, Junior’s daughter Ita and Angela, PJ Crotty, Jacky Daly, Kitty Hayes and myself played some of Juniors compositions, Caisleann an Oirr, Struthan a’ Chait and of course The Mist Covered Mountain, which itself was standing just so in the dark a few miles away. There was an interesting moment when an English car came down the lonely country road, turned the corner to see us playing in the headlights, it drove on a hundred yards, turned and the people inside sat listening, wondering.

Anyway, there was a thread about what is at the core of the music. I was thinking about that when we were playing tonight, the night was about Junior, who was at the very core of it. He passed his music on and shared it freely with anybody, no matter where you came from. He gave his tunes and encouragement unreservedly if you had a commitment to the music. He believed the music belongs to those who play it and cherish it, who keep it in their heart.

Inside we played for the sets, as we do every week, there were six of us playing, accordion, concertina, fiddle two flutes [Eamonn Cotter joined later during the night between himself and PJ there was some serious flute playing going on] and myself on the whistle. The dancers were whizzing about, it was fun. Later there were songs, a recitation, Tim Dennehy read one of his poems and sang a song. On the way home I dropped a few people off, Kitty and her concertina at her hilltop farmhouse, another old singer at her cottage below. Mount Callan still sitting there, covered in mist. The people and the music, the fun the sadness. Isn’t that what it’s all about.

My own experience is probably like many others’. I got interested in ITM through the Chieftains and, when I joined C&F a year and a half ago I had only a beginner’s understanding of ITM: the music I listened to most was that of the so-called “supergroups.” In my usual reserved ahem way I sometimes swooned about such music, and even had some ideas, which I tested out with a handful of listeners on the board, about adding harmonies—even counterpoints–to the traditional tunes. I sought opinions from a variety of people, including those I knew to be ‘traditionalists.’ From them I got an honest response, exactly what I asked for, which boiled down to: it’s not my taste, but if you dig it, go for it. Hardly a bodyguard mentality. Nobody ridiculed me (that I know of :wink: ); nobody told me I would harm the tradition in any way (in fact one person said that the tradition was hearty and would absorb changes that fit and discard what didn’t); nobody bounced me from the pub. But not only that: the traditionalists I engaged in this conversation were very generous in inviting me to listen to this or that recording; in sharing their thoughts and experiences; in holding open the door to the kitchen so I could peer in and listen to the music being played around the table. I had the same experience with my teachers here in the Chicago area: they listened—even with enthusiasm—to my musical ideas, and then just quietly kept inviting me to sessions, and sharing the stories of the music, and the musical personalities, they grew up with. And little by little I began—really just began–to understand what people may mean by the tradition—a collective memory made precious by the ties that bind.

To go back to Peter’s post: I think about the English people in that car, because I am mainly an onlooker myself. Those people could drive on by, never paying any attention. Or they could turn the radio up in their car and hear only their music. Or they could stop, as they apparently did, and listen and wonder. Or they could get out of the car and sit close enough to see the mist covered mountain in the smiles and tears of the players, and to hear it in their jigs and airs. Those weren’t bodyguards playing that night, it seems to me; they were caretakers, friends and family and pitches and rhythms intertwined.

Carol

19

Beautiful post, Carol, and spot on at least according to my limited understanding. I like it that you mention the social & cultural aspect of the music.

Thanks!

20

Very nice, Carol.

I’m about halfway through readin Ciaron Carson’s book Last Night’s Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. I know it’s mentioned here on C&F fairly regularly, but thought I’d recommend it again as probably the best (that I’ve read, anyway) literary evocation of the experience of the music. It’s a fun and engaging read, and organized almost as sets in a session are: it’s a sort of hodge-podge of scholarly research, personal reflection, poetic indulgence, biographical sketches, and so on. It holds together beautifully.

A bit from the book, where Carson is painting a picture of Seamus Tansey and moves from a discussion of his unique style into the man’s place in the tradition:

But Tansey is his own man too, and knows he’s good. All great musicians recognize their ancestry and pay respect to it, and they know the thing is bigger than the sum of individuals: it progresses in a multiplicity of exponential steps and fractal variations, and stepping on a butterfly way back there in the past will have an unforeseen chaotic implication for the present or the future. Because a note was bent back then, the whole tune has taken on another bent or warp or woof, and sometimes, someone will put in another bend that gets back to the source, just as the flooded Mississippi breaks its banks and takes a straighter, faster course betwenn its hitherto meanderings. The river-bend becomes an oxbow lake. Whole towns are abandoned.

It’s all in flux. In bars in towns called Memphis, Thebes and Cairo, the river-pilots gather to discuss their current Nile, or what was current yesterday, and prognosticate its future course, the shifting of its underwater reefs and bars and snags. To be a river-pilot you must have a photographic memory, or rather a filmic memory, since the images are never static: soundings must be taken all the time. The pilot scans the water constantly, reading it for change, for dissolution and establishment of hazards. He manipulates the big clock-shaped wheel with handles calibrated at five-minute intervals, negotiating time and tide, while his leadsmen chant out the soundings: ‘M-a-r-k three!. . .M-a-r-k three! . . . Quarter-less-three!. . .Half twain! . . . M-a-r-k twain! . . .’

Musicians, borne on a spate of music, take their soundings; hearing something new, they search the memory-bank for parallels and precedents, getting its approximation, its relative shape. A rough internal course is plotted out before embarking; fingers mime the notes. Then the details – little snags and twists – are filled in, or attempted. Some people are better at this than others, and some tunes are easier to ‘lift’ than others; some put up resistance. . . . But of course the instinct is instructed by years of listening. We drift on in the wide, swift current of the music, trusting to our memories and to past associations.

I find myself enchanted by this book partly because of Carson’s ability to stretch out and compress time through literary devices, much the same way music can stretch time out or squeeze it close together. For me, Irish trad (and blues, and some jazz and classical) does have this effect of, especially, drawing time out, or removing one from “real” time completely, so that the short, fast tunes feel leisurely and comfortable, or at least inhabit a leisurely and comfortable space, time unhurried and fluid and always connecting to its own past.

Those river-pilots of the music learn to negotiate the tradition, and to improvise with changes, but always have a clear and deep respect for the river’s power and its essential nature, its inherent character, its place in the world, the things it carries with it in its current. I know I’m just an apprentice bargeman – if that, maybe just an observant passenger – but hearing the music played as part of a tradition, as homage to time and place and companions, is what connects me to this stuff, what draws me in. The tradition doesn’t need bodyguards or gatekeepers; it’s bigger and older than anyone who’d guard it, I think, and anyone qualified to guard the thing is probably too busy playing and sharing the tradition to bother defending it. The tradition can be negotiated, but not really defended – or confined – any more than a river-pilot can defend or confine the current that draws him forward. The trick is knowing which pilots to follow, who are the ones who know how to follow the river without striking hidden reefs and snags and sandbars.

Or maybe that’s a crock. It feels right to me, anyway. Now I’m going back to hanging out at the dock pub with all you people, to listen and learn and try to figure out who to accompany downriver next time. It probably won’t be the braggart with the “new improved unsinkable ship”.

–Aaron