Irish music and me.

Trad Irish Music
1

It’s been nearly 4 years since I started playing whistle and attempting to learn Irish music. Last year at a old-timey/bluegrass concert here in town I realized why I have such a hard time. It’s not learning the notes, it’s not learning the ornamentation.

When I listen to the music we in the States call old-time or mountain music and bluegrass or especially when I’m at a festival, concert or jam my mind sort of expands. It’s hard to describe but it’s like my essense of “me” goes away and my conscience becomes a part of everything around me with the music at the core. To say I “feel” the music is inadequate. It penetrates to a level beyond feeling.

When I listen to Irish music performed by the masters I hear that very feeling in their music. I can tell they’re not just playing notes but something is coming up from somewhere else. That “essense” is what’s missing from my understanding and playing of Irish music.

It’s understandable why, when people ask questions on the board like, “how do you know when to put in a roll”, or “how do I know if I am fitting in at a session”, the answers are so varied. How can you explain something beyond explanation?

I never tried to aquire or learn how to feel American old-stuff, it just happened. So, is this soul-depth identification with a kind of music something we are born with? Is it something so deeply associated with our cultural experience and cultural memory that attainment cannot be artificial? Is it something we learn?

2

That “essence” doesn’t come in a bottle - to a great extent you inherit it.
Yes I suppose you could say that you are born with it!!

I believe we can learn an appeciation and feel for a culture other than
the one we grew up in - but we can never fully know something unless
we have experienced it first hand.

A lot of ITM is about feelings which are bound to the land, the country,
the weather, the lifestyle, religion, and culture. Some of the subtle nuances
in the music are about reflections of these experiences.

This has been the subject of several posts in the recent past.

3

This has been the subject of posts directly or indirectly for years but you hit the nail on the head.

4

What about us non-Irish musicians? Since I have first started playing (about a year less than flyingcursor), I have always been able to “get” Jigs (of all types), way better than I understand reels or hornpipes, and Polkas took me a long time also (and both sides of my family have people who emigrated to the states from Poland).

My point is, some people are good at it and some aren’t, it has nothing to do with where one’s family comes from.

5

Mmmm..

When I listen to Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs and people like that, I just know that I will never be able to play like that.
I can do a reasonable, on a very good day, impression but it ain’t never gonna have the soul that the Doc has.
I can play a mean whistle, what I lack in technique I make up for in feeling, so maybe it is a deep roooted cultural expression of what it means to be American/Irish/ whatever.

One of your better posts Fly :wink:

Slan,
D.

6

Like Flyingcursor, I get caught up in old-time music, although even there I’m aware of a sense of difference–since “old-time” is generally taken to mean the old-time music of the southern US, and all of my family history is in the northeast. So I couldn’t sing along with Tommy Jarrell and sound anything like him (assuming I could sing at all) without sounding affected. But there is a northeastern style–you can hear it in George Wilson’s recordings, or watch it in action in the contradance scene in the film version of “Ethan Frome”–which, with its combination of Irish, Scottish, and French Canadian tunes joining with some of the old-time stuff as well, seems to make perfect sense to me, as well as making sense with the geography and history of the place where I’ve lived most of my life.

There have been some enlightening posts by Peter Laban and others on this subject over on the flute forum, and they got me thinking not only about the difficulties of learning the arts of a culture you haven’t lived in, but also about the possibities of looking more deeply into the culture of the place where you do feel at home.

(For anyone interested, Simon Bronner’s book, “Old Time Music Makers of New York State” is a good place to start.)

7

I believe that being born into the culture and the traditional landscape associations is a big and powerful advantage but not to the extent that such advantage excludes others with talent and sensitivity from tapping in and expressing comparable ethnos.

There are different routes to essence in a music. There are the traditional reflections of essence through the language and human culture associated with the particular place. There is also a deep seated human, primeval sensibility that informs the soul’s entrainment with new landscapes.

I, myself, have heard ancient songlines in the Australian bush even though I am not indigenous Australian. I recall once coming into town to get supplies and an old Aboriginal man, a stranger to me, came up to me and greeted me as “brother” and hugged me warmly in the middle of the street. And, no, he wasn’t seeking alms. In retrospect, I imagine he could feel what I had been hearing and felt fellowship.

Talasiga sings,

Listen to the song!
Seek not from where it comes
But hear where it takes you!

8

How eloquently even poetically put!!!
I would have to agree completly.

The reverse is perhaps also true. I have noted how
very many Irish people, even those from ethnically
rich areas like the “Gaeltachts”, lack appreciation
and the ability to hear the “essence” in the music,
being content with the mere shell of the outer form.

9

I see your point. Maybe that the same as

Like JS I don’t hale from the southern mountains yet I have some kind of bond with that kind of music. Maybe because I spent a large part of my early life living in various parts of the southern US?

10

The specific evocations of landscape are not limited to particular nation states or even climatic region. About 35 years ago I was hiking in the talasiga country in tropical Fiji with an elderly Scotsman. This was in the grassy highland country on the so-called dry side of the main island. The Scotsman excalimed at the remarkable similarity to the Scottish Highlands where he had grown up and yet we were in a tropical place here. You know, in my mother’s village in that countryside, sometimes we would breakfast and hear on the English language radio program Appalachian music on banjo and suchlike and looking out over the hills and horses and the mist over the river it all seemed to fit even though I never been to Appalachian Mountains.

But then, if you must, why not go and live in Dingle for a while? - in a lonely hut in Kerry County and practise your ITM there. There are Gaelic programs on the radio with lovely raw ITM and people who never ever answer your questions straight. And if you get homesick for America you can always go down to the Bay and observe the Fungi hysteria among the tourists.

11

I am more and more convinced that you must be touched by the Fairies to play The Music correctly. You have to channel Tir Na Nog. This can be done anywhere, anytime, by anyone but never consciously.

12

Tír na n-Óg? That’d be Hennepin Avenue hereabouts. :wink:

13

Some might say the lot of us are “awa’ wi’ the faeries.”

14

I think it mostly has to do with what music you have listened to a lot. I spent many years listening almost exclusively to bluegrass music. I wasn’t raised with it at all. But I can go to a bluegrass concert or whatever and I guess I feel like I just sort of know what’s up. I don’t usually have to strain myself to figure out what someone is up to unless it’s something pretty unusual. I can hear what is better and what isn’t so good without thinking about it I guess. I’m not a musician, I’m just talking about listening. But I reckon you have to have the sound inside you before you can make it.

Sort of just the opposite with Irish music. :laughing: I still can’t tell which end is up there. Because I haven’t listened to that much of it. If I listen alot and still can’t tell which end is up in, oh, ten or fifteen years say, then yeah, I guess you need to be Irish.

I have heard bluegrass bands from Germany, Slovakia, and Nova Scotia. They all sounded pretty good. I would have to listen to them without knowing ahead of time where they were from to see if there was a difference. They were pretty darn good—not the best, but as good as many US bluegrass bands that aren’t the best. I think they’ll get there. Just need to keep at it.

15

I agree with Tony about the converse being true as well … I live in Kentucky, and I bet 1 in 40 people around here really listen to true Bluegrass music.*

It’s the kind of stuff that’s just lying around; part of the landscape, I guess, so we often don’t realize how special it is. Much as, I suppose, a lot of us don’t appreciate our homes & culture until we leave?

Shoot, our state marketing folks can’t even see the simple nobility in just being “The Bluegrass State” as we were always casually called – instead, they keep insisting on trying to be something else with zippy slogans like “Unbridled Spirit”, etc.

When the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) convention and awards were hosted in Louisville, I heard a lot of people express surprise at how many visiting Bluegrass fans and musicians traveled thousands of miles … even from Japan … for the convention. Meanwhile, locals couldn’t be bothered to drive 75 miles for it.

Along the same mildly ironic lines, a friend of mine is a regional powerhouse of a 5-string banjo player who knew and played with Bill Monroe as a lad, mentored Bela Fleck as he was coming up, has played at hundreds of festivals, and has been in bands that were nominated for international awards including Grammys.

Here, he’s just Mr. Steve who also has to work in the guitar shop to support his family.

But when one of the bands he was in (the Dillards) toured Ireland some years ago, he was treated like a rock star!

Funny, that.

*(I should say that ‘country’ music, however, is another matter entirely)(and rap … well! It’s everywhere!)

16

I don’t beleive a natural understanding of music can be rationalized completely but I do agree that a lot of it relates to what you listen to. For example, I listen to mainly Irish and Scottish traditional music and my saxophone teacher comments that that shows in my attempts to play jazz (in other words, when I run out of ideas for variations on a peice, I revert to Irish-style ornimentation). Though I am quite inexperienced and limited in what I can play, I find that I don’t conciously think about it as much as I do for jazz (I might add that I don’t play that well either).

I do beleive a fair bit of it relates to an emotional connection I will not pretend to understand.

17

I don’t think there is a possibility of a “reverse”. Advantage is a potential. Advantage needs to be utilised. All Irish born in Ireland have the “advantage” I speak of. That they don’t all use it doesn’t mean the advantage works in reverse. It just means the advantage is lost on them. It is not the advantage that breeds lack of musicality or appreciation of it.

It is not logical to attach a reverse connotation to the advantage.

18

Aw givus a break here wilya!! Semantics is not my strong point. :boggle:
Would ANALOG be a better word? My way of of putting it: “d’ya-know-wha-I-mean”

19

I know what talasiga means… :wink:

20

Are you sure you’re Irish?
:confused: