Can you recommend me good and catchy polkas to play?
Thanks in advance!
Martin
Hi Bothrops
You could always give these a go.
Two sweet polkas from John Brosnans ‘The Cook in the Kitchen’ CD
ABC courtesy of http://www.thesession.org/
‘John Cliffords’
X: 1
T: John Brosnan’s
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Dmaj
D>E FA|Bc d2|B>A FA|B/c/B/A/ FA|
D>E FA|Bc d2|BA FE|D2 D2:|
d>c BA|Bc d2|B>A FA|B/c/B/A/ FA|
d>c BA|Bc d2|BA FE|D2 D2:|
‘Brosna No2’
X: 1
T: John Brosnan’s
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Gmaj
G2 g>e|dB Be|dB GA|BA AB|
G2 g>e|dB Be|dB AB|G4:|
ga/g/ fg|ed Bd|ga/g/ fg|e3f|
g2 fg|ed Be|dB AB|G4:|
g2 a2|b3a|gf ef|g3d|
ef/e/ dB|ef/e/ dB|dB AB|G4:|
Nick
Good polkas?
Can you say oxymoron? 
Grrrr 
I’ve heard this one way too often 
No, really, I really like them a lot.
I remember how, after watching Water from Well DVD, I thought - wow, that bits of dance tune in the house sound kickass. And when I got the CD later as well and learned the tune…yummy.
I can remember three great Polka sets.
The first is on the Chieftains’ Chieftains 5 - it’s called 3 Kerry polkas - the first one being Egan’s polka (as well as having million other names), the second one is Murroe polka (my favourite), the third one’s name I don’t know.
The second one is on Chieftains’ Water from Well CD - Ballyfin polkas - the first one being Murroe again (but much more lively than on C.5, in my opinion), the second one Ballydesmond polka, the third one St. Mary’s polka.
The third set is on Paddy Keenan’s Na Keen Affair - consisting of Herb Reid’s, She said she couldn’t dance and Shooting the bull.
And on Micho Russell’s Ireland’s whistling ambassador, there is a very nice one, being called Steamrollers/MacTeige’s - and in my opinion, it very similar to the Murroe polka (and maybe even being the same tune, played in different style). And both names sound cooler than Murroe, I’d say 
Do you know, when i saw this earlier, my first thought was to say “oxymoron”. But then I thought, “No, I’m better than that”.
Oh, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Anny-hoo …
… you meant something like “Military Intelligence”, or “Married Life”, I suppose …
Heh heh. That’s actually the first set of polkas I learned on the B/C box. You probably know that the Chieftains in concert often invite local players to come up on stage and play with them, and I got picked for the Ballyfin Polkas, because Paddy wanted a box player for the set. But I’d only been playing box for a few months! So I practiced the hell out of the polkas for a few weeks before finally losing my nerve and begging off. Paddy himself ended up playing box for the show, and he was actually quite good. 
To this day I’m still a mediocre box player, but I can crank out the Ballyfin Polkas in my sleep.
Of course, it’s a well-known fact that there’s really only one Irish polka in the world, with many different names. You may think there are different polkas with different notes. But play enough of them, and you realize that they all sound exactly the same.
Thanks a lot, people! I’ll find out about all of those and see if I can learn a few
Cheers,
Martin
AAAArrrrr .. polkas
What I do is wait for the polkas to start and just play along with them - they are nice and easy - only thing is to work out if they are in D or G. These tunes were made for whistlers - and they are all happy sounding
Only one I know the name of is the Kerry (naturally) because a nice Kerry girl showed me how to play it .. on account of that’s the only whistle tune she knew from school. .. interesting story that - her and all her gay friends got me to drive them from the session pub across the river to the pub where they were staying .. we were all .. erm .. quite inebriated at the time and when the cops pulled us over and breathalized me, they noticed all the 10 or so Irish girls stacked in my Fairlane and, after I told them where we were off to, allowed us to walk un-booked. .. Funny thing that - all the cops ended up at the bar in the pub we were going to. Since every cop in town seemed to be totally occupied discovering that the girls were all gay, I took the oportunity to go back to my car and drive back to the sesh it was a good night.
And who sez “No good deed will go unpunished”???!!! - Can’t go wrong with polkas!
The song “If I had Maggie in the Wood” has a nice polka melody, and it’s on one of those records - 5/Boil the Breakfast Early, I think.
That’s hilarious. Let’s hope the cops don’t remember that it was you who led them astray.
Now, that is precisely how unfortunate events and nightmares of early childhood (ehm, not sure about that) can absolutely change your point of view on something - and it explains your warped view on polkas 
You’re right - these are nice polkas as well!
But it’s on album no. 8. And there’s a nice live version on Chieftains in China.
You may be right, Pyroh! Except for the “early childhood” part … 
There’s a great polka called Julia Clifford’s in the Mel Bay book The Complete Irish Fiddle Player, or something like that (Peter Cooper). I don’t think it’s the same tune called Julia Cliffords listed on The Session.
http://www.amazon.com/Bays-Complete-Irish-Fiddle-Player/dp/0786603291/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c#reader
If that link doesn’t take you to the tune inside the book, go to Amazon.com, put in the name of the book, click on “look inside” and then search for Julia
Clifford’s
This book has a lot of really great tunes, btw, and most of them are very suitable for whistle, mandolin, etc. Plus some terrific pics of old trad players. I recommend it highly
John Ryan’s is a fun one.
the Ballydesmonds
Ballyhoura Mountains?
Jenny Lind
Scartaglen
Sweeny’s
And Mitch, great story, that!!
Hi Bothrops,
Polkas are some of the most beautiful tunes and are also some of the most difficult tunes to play right. There’s a lot of posts here recommending or insulting polkas, but the key to learning good and catchy polkas is to listen to good and catchy players playing them well. Any time you find people denigrating polkas, it’s almost a certainty that they don’t play them right. What’s more, they’re dismissing a type of tune that’s as irish as any other. Might as well make fun of jigs or reels!
Julia Clifford was mentioned. I’d strongly recommend listening to the holy trinity of Kerry fiddlers: Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford and their teacher Padraig O’Keefe. Along with Johnny O’Leary (box), John Clifford (box) and of course Billy Clifford (flute).
The easiest to listen to and get on the whistle is likely Julia’s and her son Billy’s recording “Ceol as Sliabh Luachra”. The great thing about this recording is that 7 of the 18 tracks are polkas. And they’re some of the nicest, catchiest and just plain beautiful polkas you’ll hear. Keep in mind that what makes polkas is how they’re played. They have to have the right rhythm, swing and pulse. You can take an american song like Yankee Doodle Dandy and make it into a fine polka or slide by playing with the right style.
Now, I’m going on about Kerry polkas, because that’s the style I like the best. There are equally good Clare and Northern polka styles, but they’re all different. The two most common are likely the Kerry and the Northern (Sligo / Leitrim) styles. For Clare, I’d listen to Mary McNamara, for the northern ones John McKenna and Harry Bradley.
By the way, many of the Sliabh Luachra polkas either lost their names early on, or never had any at all, so most of the time they’ll just be named after their source. So you get all those players above showing up as tune titles all over the place. This happens with slides quite a bit, too. The same goes for all irish tunes, but it’s especially common with polkas and slides.
Well, there’s the whole sense of humor thing, too … But good info, Nico.
Jackie Daly and Matt Cranitch are two other contemporary players to listen to.
And even that’s a morass for the unwary. The aforementioned Julia Clifford was also known as Julia Delaney and Julia the Weaver, those being her maiden name* and father’s profession, respectively.
*Or vice versa.
In fact, I dont dislike or even dismiss polkas. I have fun playing them. But … they’re definitely not “as Irish as any other [tune type]”. They’re called ‘polkas’ for a reason. And they haven’t been around in Ireland for anywhere near as long as jigs, for instance, which can be shown to have been present in Ireland since Medieval times. Jigs didn’t come originally from Ireland either, but they’ve been around in Ireland for one helluva long time. I think reels have been in Ireland for a pretty long time as well. Polkas? Nineteenth century. As far as I know …
Thinking of folk history: An interesting aside is that the Polka became one of the root styles that formed Australian traditional music (along with barn dances and walzes). Sometime this week, I’ll dig out some of the dots and render them into ABC.