What do you call it when Mr. Hefner gets circumcised?
Ignorance is bris!
…(A) Hugh bris.
Hell, I do that, only in my case it gets called a brainf*rt.
And then there’s the pint/jar factor … even the greatest of the greats weren’t/aren’t necessarily immune there!
Anyway as a way to keep this topic going here’s Kithcen Girl:
X: 1
T: Kitchen Girl, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Amix
a4g4 | efed c2 cd | e2 ef gaba | g2 e2 e4|
a2af gagf | efed cdef | g2d2 efed | c2A2A4 
AB=cA BAGB | ABAG EDEG | A2B2=c2d2 | e3f e4|
AB=cA BAGB | ABAG EGAB | =c2A2 BAG2 | A3B A4
Which is like Nightcap in that it seems to start on the second part. I think Desi Wilkinson recorded it.
What other tunes start high,
I can think of some scottish tunes that sound this way
I play that tune. Didn’t know it was called Kitchen Girl. I don’t think of it as a reel, though. It seems like some kind of fast march to me. I don’t know where it comes from either. It always sounds American to me.
I played Kitchen Girl way back when during my fiddle-playing days. I think it was a staple in the American old-timey repertoire. It worked its way back into my piping repertoire as part of a set that I heard on Youtube, Kitchen Girl/Wes and Maggie’s Ceili Croft/Ramnee Ceilidh.
It’s old timey, but I would say Scottish roots.
You can hear Desi do it on Spotify.
It’s like Nightcap in that the parts sound reversed (in reference to most Irish tunes) but the better for it
I don’t know the tune, so just going by the ABCs, rhythmically I hear something strongly akin to a fling in the Irish sense of the term. Yet I agree that it sounds probably American from the Scots. So, maybe a Yank Scots Irish tune? There would be no surprise or rarity in that. The American tradition doesn’t even have fings in name, though, does it? So what does one call it? *
…Jeez, never mind. Just now on YouTube I heard 3 different settings of it as a reelish, a polkoid, and a flingy thing. Here’s a slower fling-type version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcm-ZMI8V3Y&feature=related
Yep, totally a Yank tune. And I agree that the tune sounds right started with the part that’s in the upper register. 
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- BTW, it should come as no surprise that I’ve been told by a native Irish musician that I overthink this stuff.
Yep, old time(y) American fiddle/banjo tune. With Scottish roots, like many of them. I used to play this on clawhammer banjo. Those opening A - G chords are fun.
You’re kidding me, Nan-man! Haven’t you ever played a contra around here? It is played at each-and-every contra in these here parts, as if it’s some law or something 
t
I confess I have somehow managed to be - and still remain - thus impoverished. Wouldn’t know such an event for what it was if I saw it in person. In my deplorable ignorance I used to think Contra dances must be fundraising events for Nicaraguan expats of a certain political persuasion.
You overthink this stuff. 
Toadally agree about those opening chords. I tend to play them double-stopped on fiddle, VERY loud, and separated. Sometimes I play them a crotchet late, so syncopated and in answer to the chords everyone else is playing. (I think that’s another one of those places where it’s ‘traditional’ to do that with this tune.)
I think it entered my consciousness when the Boys of the Lough paired it with the New Riggit Ship on Good Friends, Good Music, in 1977. They had a whole bunch of guest musicians on that album, but I can’t remember who was on that track, and Google is no help. The tune is associated with Virginia old-time fiddler Henry Reed.
And now the English. 
Look, someone has to be an obsessive nerd around here. For me it’s dance rhythm categorisation. For you, it’s…well, I’ll find something to needle you about.
I am enjoying the “What is it?” discussion quite thoroughly.
This discussion occurs in many categories of music and it owes itself to the fact that music is art, but can often be easily measured and categorized. I have always found these debates to be very stimulating. Ultimately, in music, what matters is how it sounds and feels and the rest is great fodder for chatting over a pint, a wine glass, a cup of coffee, etc.
Latin dance and/or folk music can also fall into this debate quite commonly. As a bassist, I know the rules dictating the rhythms and feel as well as tonal movement for Salsa v. Boss Nova v. Rhumba v. Marengue and so on. But that doesn’t change the fact that there a plenty of songs that are not easily classified even when knows the rules. But it’s no matter as the song sounds great and makes you want to move.
Irish, Scottish and American Folk music have similar classifications and similar “rules” for making the classifications, but again, what sounds good and feels good is what really matters and it is what makes it art.
The beauty is, none of us are wrong, unless the tune sucks.
But part of the joy and the discipline of learning to play traditional Irish music is that this music was designed to make you want to move in a certain way – in other words, it’s dance music, and music for very specific types of dances at that.
The Breton flute player Jean-Michel Veillon has said that in order to learn how to play traditional Breton music, you really have to learn the dances first, because there are very subtle rhythmic shifts in the music that you can’t hear unless you understand the steps. And it’s true: it’s very easy to play Breton tunes in such a way that they are undanceable. Is that a crime? Maybe not from a purely musical standpoint, but I do feel the music loses something fundamental in the process, and the musician misses out on a deeper connection with the music.
This debate is frequently cast as one between die-hard traditionalists who are opposed to the idea of change versus free-thinking adventurous musical spirits who want to take the music in a new direction, free of ideological fetters and rules. But it’s a lot more complicated than that, and as someone who made a 20-year transition from experimentalist to traditionalist I have to say I feel a lot more satisfaction, joy, and creativity by working within the tradition than I did by using traditional music as a point of departure.
I guess I can also say that I’m firmly in both camps myself, these days. I started out the diehard traditionalist you describe but now I have equal room for the other more contemporary and experimental thing, too. The freedom of it is fun, and even risky, which to me is part of the appeal. But when I’m playing traditionally, that’s exactly what I’m doing, because there’s a particular value and beauty to it, all of its own universe, and on its own terms. And the idea that it’s dance music - that is, functional - always underlies my sense of what I’m doing. So I suppose that’s why when I wear my traditionalist hat I obsess over the fine points, and I find those tunes that are in grey areas that you can’t easily pigeonhole particularly fascinating for that.
Sometimes that’s because they’re in a little pigeonhole all of their own. Like Good Morning to My Nightcap, for instance.