Blado, thanks for that. Do you have any recordings of yourself, I’d love to hear them, if so I will give you my email and maybe you might send them as an attachment. Thanks.
Philo, great stuff, glad to hear you had a good time. Do you play yourself ?
Total amateur, but I try to play a bit every day, keep one in the car and the whole syndrome…repertoire of about 30 tunes, mostly jigs and reels…a slide,a fling…handful of airs (one is called a lament, but I won’t go there).
(one is called a lament, but I won’t go there)
Which you still did ofcourse
I initially meant to say I didn’t know of ‘many’ tunes that could be classed as a ‘lament’ and I realised Lament for Limerick, Owen Roe O’ Neill, maybe Staker Wallace would confuse matters but in reality most slow pieces in Irish music you’ll hear will be song airs, Sean-nos or otherwise. Pieces from the older harping tradition, they can confuse things a bit so I’ll let them rest. The odd surviving Caoineadh is probably as close as you come to a ‘lament’ proper (and even there for example Caoineadh na dTri Mhuire is probably better described as a song dealing with the grief of the three Mary’s at Calvary). Closest instrumental ones I can think of are the ones Padraig O Keeffe played, the ones for O’Neill and O’ Donnell.
Philo, good on ye, I think a lot of us started out pretty much the same way.