I found it here: http://fridayharborirish.com/comhra/viewtopic.php?p=59&sid=b2de4bf37b23165461a20a59da5fc84c
from this conferance ;
http://homepage.eircom.net/~imusic/Crosbhealach96.html
This is a talk delivered by Tony McMahon at the Crossroads of Irish Music Conference in Dublin, 1996.
[ Please see above link for text of article. - Moderator ]
Any thoughts on the matter?
Stop being annoying.
Don’t post the entire article, that’s against the rules. Post a link. Post your comments.
Sheesh.
Well, the Chiffboard rules, such as they are, are a bit loose. But yes, it’s best to follow Fair Use netiquette - quote excerpts as appropriate, and link to the source.
Trouble with linking to articles, is that sites disappear. discussions become impenetrable and useless as future reference because the original link has died. . This is why I posted the whole article.
What is fair use netiquette?
‘This’
that is a great article, though i dont agree with him, but then again i wasnt really arround much trad music in the 90’s - espically not at the epicentres in dublen and the like.
ill write up my disagreements when i have some time
Lame reasons.
These are supposed to be discussions, not sources for “future reference”, and certainly not back-up locations for posting someone else’s work and words without their permission.
Dale has said quite explicitly (albeit on a now disappeared forum) that he does not want to see the whole article. Copy a sentence or two to help make your point (what is your point by the way? As per my previous post, you have yet to offer your own thoughts on the matter), but don’t copy someone else’s essay in its entirety and then fail to do anything with it.
Besides, you’ve already been knocked down for this on thesession.org. One would think you’d have learned your lesson already.
I actually think it’s a thought-provoking essay and I agree with quite a bit that he said, however since you’ve offered nothing to discuss, I won’t bother trying!
To flog a dead horse, I’ll repeat myself one more time so that it’s unmistakeable and unmissable: What are your thoughts? What do you have to say about this article?
I think its an interesting article, thats what I think. No i ‘wasnt knocked down’ on the session because of this, you are mistaken.
Nico, I have no need to justify myself or my actions to you. If the moderators have a problem its up to them to make that known. Surely it is not your job to enforce the forum guidelines? which according the MTGuru are ‘loose’ If it annoys you why not just walk away? I trust you will refrain from attempting to tell me what to do in future. Thank you.
I feel the article is thought provoking and If you or others choose to think about it then my aim is achieved. I aim to bring it to the awareness of members of this forum, what they choose to do with it is up to them.
I agree that before one has a hope of innovating in any meaningful way, one should have a grip on what the tradition is at its core roots, to be a perpetual student of that, have a fire in one’s belly for it, and be able to not only appreciate the Pure Drop, but relish it and play the Pure Drop for for itself, for the love of it, and as vehicle of communication par excellence - not as if it were, against today’s “needs”, only a stale and primitive thing and that there were something glitzier you’d rather be doing. I personally cannot regard innovation on its own as an infallible guide to the future. It’s just a way of reinterpreting the tradition (and sometimes it just doesn’t work), but it isn’t The Thing Itself. It can’t be.
This puts me in a bit of an uncomfortable position, because while I’m an exponent of the Pure Drop and no question, in a band environment I’m also one of the glitzmongers, and intentionally so. To assuage my misgivings, what I do try to accomplish in presenting music arranged for more general public consumption is to still refer to the tradition when departing from the Pure Drop. In other words, I want it to sound nevertheless as if it’s traditional. I’m not sure how well I accomplish that, but it’s my guide, and I hope it serves well enough. But there is no way on Earth I would ever call what I do in a band situation “traditional”; I call it traditionally informed.
As to what innovations eventually become absorbed into and part of the tradition: so long as the Pure Drop tradition remains a living one, innovation will be a matter of the tradition itself embracing the new over time as it feels befits it, as we see from history has been done. Me, I’m in no hurry. I’m too busy learning what’s already there, a rich trove indeed, to entertain with any sympathy the questionable notion of changing the tradition “for its own good”.
It’s a lovely day in San Diego today. Sunny and 65F, humidity around 60%, with a light breeze. The forecast calls for patchy fog overnight, followed by clearing and sun in the afternoon.
A perfect day for some delicious hummus. One of the appetizing recipes in the Chiffboard Hummus forum would really hit the spot, with fresh, warm whole-grain pita and Kalamata olives.
Thinking of painting the ceiling beige? 
Maybe. But Ceiling Cat keeps staring at me and creeping me out.
O noooooz! Itz teh ceiling kitteh, watchin ovr ur dizkushin.
Hai, ceiling kitteh. I haz a innovayshun, let mi sho u it.
One critic’s opinion about a performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLDbGqJ2KYk&NR=1
Probably too traditional.
sad…I’m outta here
shame to see the this thread de-railed I founbd the article very very intresting. I would like to weigh in before somone posts more cat macros with a disclamer - i have been involved in debates like theese in other forums for other genres so my experience may not be transferrable; and while i have growen up in the presence of ITM, i have only been involved in the ‘behind the seens’ world of the player for a year. As such i havent seen the tradition ‘move’ and my points are conjecture based on my studies and my experience with other more popular musics.
I dont thinkTony McMahon’s points are aimed to discredit innovation or experimentation in the field of Trad, infact he has said as much, so his points are a little bit aquard - he is suggesting that populist folk is commercially motivated, a view which most of its composers will disagree with.
Nanohedron hits the crux of the matter - if a musician goes to create music inspired by folk, without a long history of involvment with ‘the Pure Drop’ and then the musician goes on to label his on music Traditional Irish Folk or somthing like that- That musician is abusing ITM in order to add a stamp of authenticity to his own work. Even with a long inolvment, marketing any hybred music as Traditional music of any kind is false. Traditional implies historical.
I think McMahon’s cynisism about the abiltiy for this music to spread is over-stated. In my own experience ideas spread within a genre due to them being ‘in fashon’ a group consensus which unchecked by artistic innovation would lead to democratic elavator music.
Traditional music is proof to that for a few reasons:
Firstly ITM isnt a genre of music, its a Tradition - it existed before recording and before mass-media democracised popular culture. Thus its measures of authenticity are not dictated by the ‘audience’. in ITM like in the classical tradition authenticity is dictated by the performer and participant. However, unlike the classical tradition, ITM is an aural tradition, thus it is perfectally valid to say that ‘this is how my grandfather played it and i play it the same’.
Secondly, ITM has a very unusual concept of audience, which i still dont fully understand and is probably due in part to how the purpose of the ‘session’ has changed over the meny meny years - another thing i dont fully understand. However the outcome of theese two unknowens is that the audience are also participants. A session is perfectly good in a kitchen with the only audience being the performers. So the ‘stakeholders’ of the tradition are simultainously its consumers and its performers. The performer is the audience, this is unique to folk, and probably unique to ITM
Finally.
Even in the commercialised culture, and even though it probably wasnt the intention, the media for ITM has been the pub session. Even (perhaps espically) now that recorded music has become the primary mode of diffusion, ITM is still measured by the session (theres a pogues cover of the wild rover where the band bang pint glasses off a table in the chorus - setting the song in a pub). So long as sessions are still informal, free to participate, social, pub gatherings, i doubt any ammount of capital or market forces or fashon will be able to assimilate it.
So to conclude. McMahon is looking at an unnatural tendril of ITM in the commercial world of telivision and music, of cource there will be distortions in the tradition in theese locations, because its no longer a tradition, its a genre, it a band, its ‘celtic music’ and all of theese things have externally ascribed authenticity, a profit motive, and demographicly decided sucess (via the free market). McMahon is stating at the edge of a fractal here - if you start looking at the boundries of a genre or tradition, you end up spending an infinate ammount of time trying to draw an ever-more-complex deviding line.
The article has prompted me to take a little more care with the tradition, not that its fradgile, far from it, but by mucking about on its fractal edge i am missing out on the warmth and beauty of music which transends art and burrys itslef deep into our culture and presses down into that rich soil of tradition. - my computers, keybords and piles of unsold albums dont greet me warmly when i get home and ask me how my week was, they dont buy me drinks, and they cant play morrisons.
Thankyou chris.
Although tradition and innovation have been the obvious focus of these discussions I feel that his points here;
<<I think there is one basic question that must be asked - what is music for, what is its value, what can it do for us ? Is it an aural carpet , a sort of ear chocolate to soothe our nerves in pubs, traffic jams or shopping centres?
Or , is it a gift to humanity of such proportions that words can do little justice to it ? Is it to be reduced , drained of the veiled voices of Ireland, electronically scrubbed clean, packaged and presented as a commercial commodity whose value is measured in record sales, TV Tam Ratings ? And in the case of public performance, is its true potential the generation of unthinking roars of conditioned applause?
What on the other hand is happening when a performance sends that shiver up the spine, brings a tear to the eye , when it sharpens and quickens both spirit and emotions to the point where the individual lonely heart is at one with what Tommy Potts called the eternal harmonies ?
If this then is the true power and purpose of music …to bring about a sublime change in the climate of the individual mind by uniting our most tender and sensitive feelings in an orientation towards the supernatural… and I believe it is… what then is the use, the value of Irish Traditional Music in particular?
Is it right that it should be structurally mangled , speeded up out of all proportion, layered and sweetned with carpets of accompaniment, beaten into multi-cultural rythmic patterns , ‘improved’, developed or damaged, depending on where you’re coming from… so as to make it as digestible as possible to an international record-buying, concert going public?
It seems to me that for those who have ears to hear, this music of ours possesses the power of magic : it can put us in touch with ourselves in ways no other Irish art form can do. It can touch the pulse of ancestral memory, allowing us to redefine our dreams of what it is to be Irish. It can bring the lonely famine landscape to life, it can soothe the trauma and trouble of existence, it is possessed of the veiled eroticism of tenderness. It can adorn a moment of joy, it can sharpen a moment of sorrow. It is a gift of nature, dispensed with the abandon of wild flowers.>>
he is leeding the question somthing shocking there! - almost put me off the article.
the thing about music is that is objective - the individual makes the decisions about it. Boulez said somthing along the lines that music has no power to create any emotional responce, the emotional responce comes from the audience. In this environment leading a question like that is bad voodoo, as you can darn well bet that there are composers out there writing some traditional irish jazz funk who have put a lot of thought and soul into their music. Not all hybredization is for the sake of profit.
McMahon’s views of Traditional Music are valid - as i have said at length, but i think he has a blinkered view of the motivations of those working between the lines, they may not be traditional irish musicians, but they certanly arnt hartless musical market consultants either. - He makes this point himself that he is friendley to innovation, but your quoted passage makes me think that he really really dosent like them even if their intentions are artistically sound.
Everyone’s entitled to his opinion; me, I’d like to hear Alec Finn’s.