Just listened to Paddy Carty for the first time in about twenty years. What a pleasure. What happened to that kind of playing? It seems to me now that everything is about technique…everything is about some kind of correctness and everyone is merely concerned with imitataing and repproducing some kind of concert standard of excellence that never existed in the first place. I am not in the least suggesting that Paddy Carty and others of similar greatness did not have incredible technique that must have been worked hard for, but they had something else besides which can only be expressed as passion…technique is just a by product, it is tricks and fantasy compared to what is real music.
All I seem to hear about these days is about technique. This type of roll and that type of roll and crans and breathing exercises and the like. One of the best flute players I ever heard never played a roll or a cut or anything else, not because he couldn’t but because he loved the tunes too much and and didn’t have to add anything. He had a voice that was unique and completely within the tradition.
It seems to me from what I see, that the tradition is dying. I remember when I was still too young to work and a (not particularly good) fiddle player told me that after a hard weeks graft nothing made him feel better than playing a tune and listening to a tune. I did not understand him then but understand him now…and what does that have to do with workshops or teachers or tutor books or people ( mostly north americans ) telling you what is or is not the correct way to play? Excellence in music as in most other things does not come from the mind or the bank balance or the level of education..but from the heart… and also, because there is no choice, from the balls.
Irish music is becoming the preoccupation of the middle class. The working class is too busy with karaoke and guitar hero to be interested anymore. The working class as always will destroy themselves…and the middle class will pick up the leftovers and think how quaint they are.
Not trying to offend anyone here. Just thinking out loud with no particular purpose, probabably too much drink as usual, but wondering if anyone has any thoughts that might illuminate my fuzzy thinking.
thanks
Nate
That’s the finest flute record ever made, IMO.
damn rights
It took me a long time to realize, however.
When I first started playing flute, I hunted down vinyl copies of all the pure drop fluting I could find. Montreal then as now had a pretty good irish music community, so they were there to be found. I think I recorded carty on one side of a tape, and Eddie Cahill’s Ah Surely! on the other, and I used to wear a walkman everywhere I went. And then without thinking about it, one day I noticed that I kept on rewinding one side of the tape. There was not a thing wrong with Cahill, except I wanted to hear Paddy Carty more.
What was infuriating was that there was nothing I could hear–nothing impressive about Carty’s playing. Nothing flashy, maybe. He wasn’t blowing me away with obvious technique, but the groove on that record has walls like the grand canyon.
The working class is too busy with karaoke and guitar hero to be interested anymore. The working class as always will destroy themselves…and the middle class will pick up the leftovers and think how quaint they are.
They always were. Somewhere I have a recording of the Dubliners singing the following, about one of the scourges of an earlier day. The music survived Pool; it’s going to survive Guitar Hero.
THE POOL SONG
words by Con O Drisceoil (recorded by Jimmy Crowley)
tune based on “The Clonmel Cows”
May the lord upon high who rules the sky look down on our pubs and our bars
For the people therin both women and men they’re neglecting their pints and their jars
The crack it is bad, the atmosphere sad; every man has a face like a mule
And all he can do is grab an old cue and start playing the game of pool.
When I was a boy, 'twas always my joy to visit the pub each night
There were arguments, scraps and killings perhaps, and everyone thought he was right.
There were badgers and dogs and men from the bogs and young fellas acting the fool
But now there’s no crack for every manjack has his arse in the air playing pool.
To the rural alehouse, after milking the cows, every customer made his way
And there would dwell and drink till they fell, while the fiddles and pipes they did play
The jigs and the reels and the rattling of heels and the polkas and slides were the rule
But now there’s no chance of a tune or a dance ‘cos everyones playing the oul’ pool.
Now this pool, you will find, is a game designed for foolish illiterate louts
You puts in your four bob and press an old knob and a big shower of balls they come out.
They’re placed on the table and then if you’re able to knock 'em into a hole
More money goes in, you sart over again, and you lose every bob of your dole.
In the Irish Free State all the people are beat [‘bate’] from watching and playing this game
In their necks they have cricks that no doctor can fix, and their backs and their shoulders are maimed.
Their arses protrude in a manner most lewd from being hoisted aloft in the air
And their eyeballs are sore and dripping in gore and they act in a manner most queer [‘quare’].
So if you meet an old man whose face it is wan and his eyes have a vacant stare
If his jaw-bone is slack and his head is thrown back, and he can’t tell a cob from a mare.
With his nostrils dilated, his brow corrugated, his manners like those of a fool
Then your shirt you can bet that you have just met - a man that’s gone mad from pool.
Thank you so much. What a truly intelligent reply. Wish I could figure out this quote button thing so I could quote you. You are starting to say the kind of stuff I am too crude to say for myself. Thanks again.
Nate
If those things are all you hear, perhaps you are listening in the wrong places?
Though not, definitely, in the case of the Paddy Carty recording. Have you listened to Traditional Music of Ireland with Conor Tully recently?
I have not listened to it and never have. I will be looking out for it. Thank you for the suggestion.
Ditto all the above; I love Paddy Carty and have thus far made being able to play The Whistler of Rosslea after him a year-long project. However, I have to disagree with you on the technique point – I think he had BRILLIANT technique, and part of what makes it so is how smoothly he integrated it into his playing. If you listen for it it’s all there, but it’s so much a part of the tune’s fabric it doesn’t call attention to itself.
Just my .02, but we all agree he was a genius for sure!
Lazyleft, check your PMs, BTW.
I agree. These days, I hear a lot more than I did when I was a mediocre whistle player with a flute rather than a flute player.
Thank you Kathy for your pm. Greatly appreciated. As regards the last two replies, if you read my original post again I think you will find that I had already stressed that Carty had brilliant technique. That was a given. Any confusion was probably caused by my own mixing of several points in an attempt to clarify, as I said, my own fuzzy thinking. Thank you again.
Nate
I just bought the mp3 downloads from Amazon, ($8.99 U.S.). It’s a favorite already. Every track’s a gem. Thanks for the tip!
I just read a critique of Paddy Carty, written by Peter Laban,which can be found on wikipedia.It includes sheet music for a reel and a sound clip of the tune. God forbid that I should misappropriate Mr.Labans’ comments in support of my own hazy arguments (whatever they even are!!) but he does seem to agree that there is a minimal use of ornamentation in Carty’s playing and in the east Galway style in general. Technique of course is not just about ornamentation and perhaps that is what I am trying to get at here.
It is far more difficult to play a tune well with only a moderate use of ornaments than to play with excessive use. I mentioned earlier a flute player I used to know who played beautifully with no ornamentation at all.I tried for a long time to copy him and failed miserably-but I am still trying. To put oneself aside and let the tune be the tune is,for me at least the hardest thing to achieve. I hear a lot of music now that seems excessively ornamented and includes a lot of very clever variations…but somehow the real beauty of the music gets lost in all of this. Who knows,maybe Comhaltas is to blame.
By the way I just heard some soundclips from an album called ‘Paddy in the smoke’. Found it on Amazon. Great simple playing. Also if anybody knows where I can find a Roger Sherlock cd I’d be greatly appreciative.Thanks.
Nate
For Sherlock, look for Sean Maguire “at his best”. Used to be “Sean Maguire and Roger Sherlock: At their best” as far as I know. It’s on amazon, emusic, etc I think.
looks more like someone misappropriated something from Bro Steve’s site to put on WikiP. I certainly never wrote any ‘critique’ on Carty’s overall style nor would I feel qualified to do so.
Roger Sherlock is best heard on his own recording ‘Memories of Sligo’ I think. That may never have made it to CD though.
Have you looked …or did I just misread something? I shall read it again.
Nate
No I didn’t look but I have never put anything on wikipedia.
Apologies..I wasn’t meaning to suggest that you didn’t know what you may or may not have written in the past. Simply baffled that this kind of misunderstanding could have happened in the first place.
Nate
I have just returned to the wikipedia entry. The article in question is not actually on the wiki site but is given as a link. It is entitled ‘ril gan ainm played by Paddy Carty’. It has a general overview of Paddy Carty’s style of playing and more detailed information on the particular tune being analysed. The end of the piece is signed 'Peter Laban, Miltown Malbay,Co Clare, 5 Jan, 2003.
Again forgive me for missapropriating your name in any context…but you can surely understand that in this particular respect it was not deliberate.
Nate
Don’t worry, nothing to apologise for. I am still before breakfast, much too early to get excited, even if there was something to get excited about, which there wasn’t. I had a look too it is a link to Bro Steve’s site. Just a look at the playing of one tune.