Niamh Parsons concert in Portland- Trad question?

Trad Irish Music
1

Went to see Niamh Parsons tonight in Portland, it was a great concert!
She was everything I expected, great voice, just good traditional ballads.

We were talking afterwards, she mentioned that a lot of the Itrad musicians are commenting on the lack of interest in the music, and she wanted to know how I felt, if I thought it was true. Mentioned that after Riverdance, when there was a surge in interest, not many artists put out new material, but instead, did what they liked to do best, play in concert.
That there is a lack of exsposure to the music. The musicians are getting having trouble making ends meet, niamb says she tours for a few weeks and come back with $1,000. She also mentioned that she could be singing “Danny Boy” and cleaning up, but didn’t want to go that route!
I know in LA the Itrad musicians hardly come around anymore, there isn’t much interest there. We had Jonney Cunnigham there and 80 people showed up. I wonder how much longer they will be able to battle the airlines and customs to get over here and play?

She was staying in Seattle, and Andy M Stuart happened to be booked in the same hotel, so they have been having a great time!
Just a thought on the times… :sniffle:
Jon

2

I can hardly see the point of that statement as post riverdance every man and his fecking dog is putting out CDs to make a quick penny. Fair play to them a they seem to sell but saying there’s a lack of material put out seems strange at a point in time there’s more recorded material available than ever there was before. So really, if you’re suffering fro mlack of exposure it’s by choice, not because it’s not there to be had.

3

Peter, that depends on where you are. I know there are scads of new CDs coming out at Claddagh and Custy’s and Cló Iar Connachta etc. but they are not appearing here. Only those who know to go actively searching for these albums hear about them. Over here the only thing that is regularly issued as ITM is the same tired compilations of older recordings with dopey names like Celtic Dawn, Celtic Twilight, Celtic Women, Celtic Cross-dressers, Celtic Toothpaste, etc. ad nauseum.

ITM always has been, and continues to be, a very small niche market here, and with no mention of its existence in the press here since Riverdance et al, it has completely submerged again into the realm of non-existence.

djm

4

DJM you always complain there’s nothing thee in the shops, well these days you have the internet and you can ordered any amount of music you want. You go to Custy’s website, click away and a week later the stuff arrives on your doorstep.
At the moment it is so easy that it sometimes seems everybody who can play a few tunes either has a Cd or is working on one. All you have to do is go out there and listen to them. Irish music has always been for a small group of people but at this time there are more people playing it listening to it than ever before so there’s no reason for you to complain at all as afar as I can see. But, as I told you before, you may need to make an effort to get to the material, still, it’s easier to get than it ever was.

5

Peter, you are making my point for me. Yes, I know to regularly scan the web for new CDs (except Custy’s - can’t connect there for some reason) but others do not do this, or know to do this. As Jonathon pointed out, there are fewer and fewer ITM groups coming through, smaller and smaller audiences for them when they do come by, and absolutley no presence for ITM in any flavour in the press or public consciousness anymore since Riverdance faded.

Its fine that you or I may be enthused enough about ITM to regularly make the effort to go out and look for stuff, but that does not win new listeners, or make the market viable enough to keep all these professional ITM musicians in beer money.

djm

6

Well, I can’t speak for Canada obviously, but certainly the high street shops in England (and more specifically Swindon) sound similar to their Canadian counterparts; One might find “The Best of the Chieftains” in amongst all the Celtic-y new-agey stuff, if one’s lucky. There’s more “World Folk” (mostly South American stuff from what I’ve seen) than there is traditional music from the British Isles. I guess the likes of Virgin and HMV have a tough time classifying IrTrad.

But that’s really just the retailers and the distributors cashing in on the mass market teenage pap for the most part, it’s where the money is on the street.

They’re like bookshops in that respect really; you’ll find all sorts of drivel from A Few Big Names on the shelves, but you have to look hard or place a specific order for something that falls outside of their mainstream target audience.

Doesn’t mean the material isn’t there, which I think is the point Peter’s making so I’ll shut up now.

7

I am not sure Riverdance faded, as far as I know they are still going and doing well but I know what you mean. Anyway, people don’t come to listen, maybe that should tell you that what you said in your first post is true, it’s a niche market and only a small number of people have a genuine interest. That’s just the way, still it’s more popular than ever so why complain, it’ll be there for a while yet and it’s there for those who want it.

8

I think that is a key issue in the States. For CDs it makes them more expensive for anybody beyond specialty shops to supply like Celtic Grooves or Tayberry Music. It effects the concert scene too. A concert production group in my area is finishing up its last season because ticket sales (though aren’t bad) just don’t compensate for all of the visa and travel jockeying.

I actually found Celtic Toothpaste to be very refreshing.

Cheers,
Aaron

9

I think what was being driven at here is that while scads and scads of people over in Ireland (and here in the States too) who can play a few tunes are putting out CDs of their stuff, thanks to the costs of recording becoming more manageable, how many of these musicians are full-time professionals who are entirely dependent on making music for their livelihoods?

Okay, over in Ireland, there might be some musicians like the ones that Peter mentioned who manage to scrape by doing gigs in pubs and hotels and as session anchors and things. Occasionally, maybe some of these people will try and tour around the UK and Europe and perhaps further afield, but usually not, it seems. I imagine it’s probably not worth their while. If these musicians can manage to eke out a living at home thanks to a relatively steady tourist influx, then they will, but touring the world is a different matter altogether.

For musicians who have recording contracts with Green Linnet or some other big-fish-in-a-small-pond label and booking agents and all that, I can see how the current market must look grim. Roughly ten years ago when I started to get interested in Irish and Scottish music, I’d go to small venues in Santa Cruz like the Kuumbwa Jazz Center to see bands like Old Blind Dogs and the place would be totally packed to the gills. I think since then, more and more people have just gotten kinda jaded with the whole thing. I think a lot of the groups out there now will have to really re-think their approach if they want to keep making a living doing what they do. So many albums out there right now sound entirely the same to me and when one group sticks a tune on their album that’s really slick, suddenly that tune winds up appearing on about thirty different albums. There is a real dearth of creativity out there right now.

Has anybody else noticed that an increasing number of musicians (particularly in Scottish music) are playing full-time in more than one band? I doubt that’s entirely out of choice.

10

Hi,
When I said that the musicians didn’t put out a lot of new CD’s I was noticing that a lot of big names were doing compilations of older work like Capercaille (who used to be trad) and Altan stopped putting out anything new.
When you went in Borders books in LA there used to be a huge section just for celtic music, now there is a very small section that has mostly compilations. I think that the internet is the place to get music, but I was thinking of the general population getting exposure. Also the shipping charge can add up.
I think the future is downloading the music, where you pay the artist for the music, not the record industry. Some groups are doing this already.
I am visiting my parents in Washington state, and I was talking to my father about this, he said that he liked the music, but even with XFM he can’t get any radio station that plays Itrad on the radio. That means no exposure.
But, I think the bottom line is there is a base of people that like the music, and if that is not big enough to make it worth while for the artists to come here, they will stay home. Niahm Parsons said that the big cities are the hardest, she felt maybe it was appathy… It cost he $125 to take the train down from Seattle, then there is the bar tab… (some may break even :stuck_out_tongue: )
Jon

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I think if you look at the output of traditional Cds in Ireland, you’ll find the vast majority are private releases. it’s very cheap and easy to get a CD done. Ossian or Claddagh or similar will take care of your distribution in a lot of cases.
My point also was that whatever way you expose people to this music, a limited number will be really interested. In ireland or abroad, the audience for tradtional music will always be limited.
parsons hada spot of bother there recently when a place refused to pay the agreed fee, which may have coloured her outlook on things a bit.

12

It’s also interesting to see the number of new releases in August compared to other months (esp.July) at http://www.irishmusicmail.com/
Wonder if the holiday season had something to do with that?

13

A timely posting! Well if I remember it correct interest in ANY music comes as a result of some outstanding performance which always requires an outstanding player or players.

Anyway as far as I can discover the Moloney plan when he did it was original and untried, and it paid off, ie revive Irish Piping which by the 1960s was almost extinct. The next thing, I think, which brought Trad, as opposed to folk music in general, to the the top of the heap was the odd tune being blasted out - often on TW but not always - by a member of an Irish folk group.

Then all during the hiippy years people like Paddy Cronin and Joe Cooley were gadding about here in the USA spreading the bug. I don’t know of one person who heard either of these gentlemen who was not deeply moved by the brilliance of the music that was played.

OC I am not saying that we don’t have talented people, we do!, but as a result of the popularity of Irtrad we have wagons full of musicians copying what they think is great Irtrad music, so much so that I rarely manage to hear a session anywhere with good tempo; next, often folks would be missing out lumps of bars of the music to get more lift - incidently so doing ruined whatever rhythm they began with AND they complain about Bodhran players!; next, most annoying to me who was already spoiled with great TW and Fluting, the lack of wind in the aging bodies of willing but ill equipped artists.

Sometimes it sounded to me like a three legged dog running around a tree. Nothing better illustrates the kind of well meaning but amateur seesioneering than one night I was starting to play the reel ‘Miss Lyon’s Fancy’ on a single row box when the entire house lit off on ‘The Silver Spear’. OC I changed gear but - it did show me that people were not listening.

So we have here a carbon copy of once popular genres, eg Jazz, Bluegrass, Blues etc, with all the same symptoms, less concert attendance, lower sales of CDs, less or no sessions in Bars, and so on.

Pack it in? Not likely, anyway I was playing Itrad when Joe Cooley was still playing football and I bet he never heard of me either!

14

There was a surge of interest over here in Japan after Riverdance, but in most music stores the ITM CDs have been reduced to those ‘Celtic’ compilations that other people mentioned.

Saying that, I never relied on mainstream CD shops when Amazon and other online sellers can get send just about anything to Japan within two weeks.

As a sidenote, I do have a policy of not downloading ITM tracks from those naughty P2P sites. Most ITM releases do not earn big bucks and I believe if we enjoy the music we should support the artists.

Mukade

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Mukade: “Most ITM releases do not earn big bucks and I believe if we enjoy the music we should support the artists”.

…Amen!

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Yeah but, some essential recordings are out of print.

So tell me where do I go to get P2P Irtrad resources?

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I don’t think you will find anything rare, but there are a lot of popular ITM files out there. I will leave the searching up to you.

You would be surprised at what people share unknowingly. I think some people share their main hard drives and don’t realise that P2Pers can download everything on their PCs.

Mukade