Here’s a question that I asked on a thread on the irish Traditional Music forum. Just thought I’d see if anyone on this side has any ideas on the topic.
When did the “nos” become “sean”. Who coined or when was the term “sean-nos” coined.
Another example of something called “old” was a language or a version of medieval norman english that was still spoken in north county dublin untill the early 1600’s and later still, in south east wexford until the 1860’s. In its decline it was called “Yeoladh” or ‘the old’ in its norman form.
There’s no connection between yeoladh and sean-nos except to say that when both were considered to be in decline the were called ‘old’.
Maybe thats not a fair analogy because maybe whoever called it sean-nos percieved it to be old when a lot of songs sung 100 years ago were not that old at all.
O’Neill in his writing, mentions the ‘ancient’ music of Ireland but no sean-nos.
So could the term be dated to after the 1920’s, or was it a term that local Irish singers used all along but was just ignored by the Conradh na nGaeilge/Gaelic League spin doctors like Grattan Flood et al. Like when all of a sudden Union became Uilleann because basicly the latter didn’t sound Irish enough.
I’m not offering explanations at all but asking the question of who and when. Any theorys out there.
Personaly I believe that this style of singing and those kind of songs to be Irelands ignored classical music. Just like India has its classical music consisting of ragas etc. and Indonesia has its Gamelan which is a high respected form of music in the eyes of the government and the people too.
Those poets and songwriters of Ireland from 1650ish till the 1840’s (ish) composed lyrical words comparable to Shakespear, Milton, even Homer.
A much higher platform should be raised for the proponents of this elegant art form regardless of who first called it what.
The popularity of Sean-nos singing - A Bluffers Guide
by Anthony McCann Issue 24 June/July '98
"But where on earth did the term come from in the first place? Donncha O Suilleabhain’s history of the Oireachtas, the major annual Irish language festival, which includes competitions across many disciplines, reveals that the term ‘sean-nos’ was first used in competition in 1904 as a translation from the English ‘traditional singing (in the old style)’, to differentiate it from the more prevalent parlour-room vibrato style. Its obvious association with a pastoral nostalgia and an implied ‘authenticity’ would suggest some association with the romantic zeal of the Gaelic Revival (especially post-1893), a term applied ‘from without’ by English-speaking, urban-based enthusiasts who required a label, a frame of reference with which to juxtapose their modernised, ‘sophisticated’, ‘nos nua’/‘new way’ existence. The popularity of the west of Ireland in the revival and the largely accepted association of ‘sean-nos’ with Connemara would support this, if tentatively. "
Tommy, since you live in the US, have you noticed the amount of times people here pronounce ‘sean nos’ as “shawn” nos? It bugs me and I try to correct folks when I here this at parties and such. People usually just blink a few times and then wander off to find the beer.
The other thing about sean nos is sometimes I am struck by the similarity in the ‘feel’ of it with some of the traditional/religeous singing of the Middle East.
Hya Elbogo Uilliam here…try “sharn”,
the rule is with consonants in Irish slender with slender(sh) broad with broad (s as in sit).A foda (é) over the consenant draws the letter out…so e and a sounds a bit like ar ye will be
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Tommy is quite correct..
Shan is the Connaught (Connachta) dialect.. Sharn is the Ulster(Ulaidh)dialect…
Connachta which is the favoured dialect to use these days,would be a safer bet to use than An Mhumhain(Munster),or Ulaidh(Ulster)… unless of course ye are in Munster(An Mhumhain) or Ulster(Ulaidh):boggle:
There ye go Elbogo no need to feel like an ass,your hounds will understand ye
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Thanks Uilliam,
That great stuff! I’m sure that the term has had been used at Oireachtas Cheoil meetings in the early days of their meetings. After all it is an translation of a term that would have been used a lot by the old CnaG cronies.
But I would agree that it probably was the 1940’s when the term became a name for the genre and used by singers in the various Gaeltacht areas.
Tommy,
There was a debate going on a while back in the Journal of Music in Ireland about a possible link between “sean-nos” singing and Middle Eastern and North African singing.
Bob Quinn, who made a tv program in the late 1980’s called Atlantean, wrote in the JMI, his theorys was that in Ireland in the early christian-pre-viking days there was a great amount of sea traffic from Ireland to UK, France, Spain, into the Mediterrainean and on to North Africa. This is where traders found this unaccompanied style of singing and brought it back where the monks took it up and it survived albeit on western coastal pockets where Vikings and Normans and Cromwell couldn’t/didn’t bother go to.
Myself, I thinks thats hocus pocus. No-one can tell who was singing what in North Africa 1500 years ago. Ship owners had better things to be doing than learning songs in those days. Much later sea shantys were encouraged on board ship to relieve the monotony of the days work. But 1500/1400 years ago 99% of the crew were more than likely slaves and if you opened your mouth you got shagged over board.
Nowadays if you put a Barbar from Morroco singing a camel herding song beside Val O’Flathertha singing Roisin Dubh there are definitly similarities. But you could hear unaccompanied singing from 50 other cultures around the world and there would be strong comparisons to be made. Also, a lot of these indigenous peoples from all over the globe have a lot in common. New Zealand Maori, Persian Kurds, Romanian Gypsies, Tibetan sheep herders, Galician fishermen, Connemara fishermen, etc. They never had anything happy to sing about! Those and other cultures have had shag all happy to sing about and you never heard a sad fast song. So there will be similar sounds in a lot of indigenous cultures singing.
Jeff, as regards pronouncing sean,
Uilliam and Tommy are correct. Different regions have different dialects of the Irish language so if you were around Donegal you would hear the “r” sound in sharn nos, sha as in Cha in Champagne.
In Connemara you’ll hear the shan (Chan) version. Both spelled sean.
Nowadays if you put a Barbar from Morroco singing a camel herding song beside Val O’Flathertha singing Roisin Dubh there are definitly similarities. But you could hear unaccompanied singing from 50 other cultures around the world and there would be strong comparisons to be made
Very accute observation. A type of skepticism that I have rarely seen. Even in Ethnomusicological studies
Reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit where he’s talking about whales being DJs of the sea. If you took a record of whale songs at 33 1/3 and then sped it up to 45, it just might sound a bit like sean nos singing…Maybe Darach O Cathain with a bad cold…
Another interesting, slightly related “Afro/Celt” link can be found in Scottish Gaelic psalm singing–which is, to my ear anyways, perhaps the most spine-tingling, eerily beautiful music you’ll ever hear. Too bad all the accompanying sermons are strictly about damnation…Anyway, this type of singing used to be fairly commonplace across large swaths of Christendom, but with the exception of the Protestant communities in what remains of the Scottish breac-Gaidhealtachd, it’s pretty much died out. Some research was done in the late '80s to try and find the closest relative to Gaelic psalm singing style and it turned out to be this form of psalm singing found among Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. Obviously no direct connections there, but further proof that people in far-flung corners of the world do occasionally find similar ways of expressing themselves.
Which reminds me of the Madagascan music I heard, which consisted of an accordianist and maybe some percussion. It sounded ‘almost’ like Morris/English music but with a latin swagger, but the phrasing was all out of kilter. All I could picture was some English sailor trying to persuade the locals that he was more use teaching them English Dance music than feeding them… Sound like he didn’t get too far with the tune somehow…
Scottish Psalm singing in Gaelic and Sassenach…enjoy
PS it is not extinct but alive and well.
I care not for the Sassenach singing but the Gaelic will blow ye awa…!!
ye will be