Research

Uilleann Pipes
1

Hi,

I am presently conducting research in Ireland on Uilleann Pipes. My primary focus is on how pipers perceive the ideas of tradition and style in Uilleann Piping.

It is really healthy to see the extent to which the love and use of this iconic instrument has spread world wide. My own background is in traditional irish accordion playing ( born and bred in Ireland) but the pipes hold a fascination for me. To take up the pipes must be a vocation!

I would be grateful if pipers here might feel free to give their views and opinions on their ideas regarding tradition, innovation and style. In Ireland the main outlet for playing is in the pub session which at times I think is a pity in that the instrument is not perhaps fully utilised.

I hope that pipers,established and beginners alike will find an outlet to perform and make music on this unique instrument.

-Fionn

2

Fionn,

Is this statement part of your thesis? If that is the case, it is my opinion that you’re interjecting some unnecessary and perhaps some biased opinion here, which may only color the outcome of your research. Just my opinion, you understand…

3

I think that what Fionn was getting at (and what I would agree with if so) is that in a pub session, a piper is likely going to be playing with several fiddle players, a box player or three, maybe a couple of flutes, some fretted instruments and a bodhran. In such a context, even if the piper chooses to use their drones and regulators (and often times, s/he won’t), they won’t likely be heard and the full scope of the piper’s artistry in playing repertoire of a solo tradition cannot be fully appreciated.

Fionn’s inquiry is an interesting and well-intentioned one. I have a few things I think I could say, but I need to mull it over for a bit. I’ll come back to this in a day or so.

4

I think the pub session may be the primary outlet for playing which the non-piper is likely to encounter, but that doesn’t make it the “main outlet for playing”.

A large fraction of pipers have been solo players, since the invention of the instrument…

Bill

5

Hi,

Thanks to those that have contributed to this discussion. The pub session is not my main area of research but I would like to make some observations re. the pub sessions involving Uilleann Pipers.

I am not a purist. The playing of melody is something which is worth noting. If other instruments join ad hoc , is something of the musician piper being lost?

Ironically while instruments such as guitar, bouzuiki and mandolin may be frowned upon in the context of tradition, yet these instruments accompany the solo player and may have much to offer in complimenting the melody maker.

If we situate the Uilleann Piper playing their music accompanied by a plethora of other melody instruments-- something may be lost. I have found the pub scene music producing something akin to polyphony which is not traditional. This polyphonic state arises not from the chordal accompaniment but from the various melody makers interpretating and ornamenting to their own emotional and creative responses. The result may be cacophony?

-Fionn

6

Indeed. Hammy Hamilton has written about this a bit in the context of sessions and ceili bands–I think he called it “the group solo” or something. It’s in the “Crossroads Conference” book, which is definitely worth reading if you’re exploring the thorny issues of tradition/innovation in Irish music (and also worth reading just for Seamus Tansey’s streak of profanity towards the end).

As for accompaniment, well, it depends on the musicians involved. I just got back from a session where I had the pleasure of playing with Nancy Conescu, who’s a terrific guitarist and always a lot of fun to play with. There are some bouzouki players that can be very nice to play with as well. I used to HATE the sound of piano with Irish music–all of that vamping sounded so corny and on a lot of the old records, the piano tends to drown out the melody player. Then I met somebody who played it really well–she didn’t get in the way, knew when and where to emphasize the rhythm (perhaps because she’s also an excellent whistle player), all that good stuff. Generally, if a guitarist/bouzouki player/pianist/whatever can manage to be sensitive to what the melody player is doing, is very familiar with the tunes and can really bring out interesting chord changes or tasty modal stuff that highlight what’s great about the tune, then great. It’s when you get people that really, really want to play just like John Doyle only they don’t have the chops and so they play as loud, fast, and syncopated as they possibly can without really paying attention to what you’re doing—that annoys me.

Mind you, I really do think that Irish music sounds its very best when played solo or in a duet with no accompaniment whatsoever, but tasteful, relatively restrained accompaniment can be really nice. I think a lot of Irish musicians (and especially pipers) get into a state where they’re really embarrassed about whatever it was that got them interested in Irish music in the first place (e.g., some shite “Celtic Rock” band, Riverdance, the soulful allure of Davy Spillane’s low whistle with an assload of keyboard, the softer side of Clannad, etc.) and then try to be intentionally snobby about what they’ll listen to (e.g., only some rare reel-to-reel recording of Tommy Reck playing in his kitchen is fit for listening to, etc.), but I do think that the longer people play Irish music and the more they explore the recordings that are available, the more they tire of listening to heavily-accompanied group playing and head more towards the “purer”-sounding solo and duet stuff. The growth of independent music and the further splintering of the music audience into niche markets has been very favorable towards getting this kind of music more available. Can you imagine an album like “Kitty Lie Over” being made the way it was and getting as much attention as it did if it had been made back in the early '80s?


Okay, on to piping stuff. Certainly, it seems as though many younger pipers (say, under 35) are taking a very deep interest in old recordings. You can’t listen to a radio interview with any of them without them yammering on at some point about how much they love listening to “Ennis, Clancy, and all the rest.” Whether this is really evident in their playing depends on your point of view, I suppose. Some players get slagged a bit for being “too flashy”, but that’s hardly a new phenomenon. I mean, hey, you’re young, you can play fast and do it well; might as well go for it.

The other thing worth noting is that there seem to be a greater number of pipers attempting to inject more of a regional style connection into piping. I think in the past, a lot of pipers have tended to place piping outside of the regional variation loop and instead focus specifically on how tight or open a particular piper’s style is or was, which strikes me as a bit silly. Willie Clancy was from West Clare and that certainly came across in his music just as much as whether he played a tune with lots of tight triplets or not. There are a lot of people taking particular interest, it seems, in a more “Northern” style of playing rather like what Robbie Hannan and Tiarnán Ó Duinchinn tend to be known for, while on the other hand, Mick O’Brien’s playing with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh has a clear Sliabh Luachra bias. This strikes me as a welcome and rather healthy development, particularly since the whole notion of playing in a specific regional style is currently in a state of flux altogether with a lot of musicians abandoning it in favor of a more individual style and a few people trying to emulate an over-idealized notion of whatever the regional style in question was thought to be.

Okay, that’s enough from me for now. Anybody care to say something controversial and/or inflammatory?








(G’wan…You know you want to…)

7

Nothing controversial and I´d like to emphazise two “international” aspects:

  1. The connexion of music/instrument and “locality”: The concert pitch chanter was invented when there was this need for louder pipes. This goes for every instrument.
    I read somewhere that the idea of “mega-sessions” ( :devil: with even several “cymbals” and bodhrans) only came into being when the pubs rooms got bigger. Or just imagine “Riverdance” in a thatched cottage.

  2. The loss of regionality through mass media: In every session all over the world “The Merry Blacksmith” is followed by “The Silver Spear” (or vice versa). Another example from a very different scene: If you went (most unlikely though) into a discotheque (nowadays it´s called a club) (over here, the effects are similiar) you would hear exactly the same music in New York or Timbuktu (and I guess in 50 years´ time also in Bagdad). Of course this doesn´t go for “music” (oomph, oomph) alone: Every big-city-core does exactly look the same. There is no point at travelling to these places any more. The world is getting poorer.

Cheers,
Hans

8

Are you joking ? I was talking with Tommy Keane last year about the younger generation of piping and he told me he’d asked a class of young pipers he was teaching who among them all listened to Séamus Ennis. The result was nobody except his own son !!! :frowning: Can you believe it ?

9

Er … Séamus who? :astonished:

djm

10

Met a piper born and bred in London who described himself as a musician of traditional irish music but not a traditional musician even though his playing to me would not be out of place in any pub session in Ireland.

Is the term tradition off-putting to pipering musicians? The revival of the pipes is really quite recent. It seems that modern day pipers will listen to the likes of Ennis, Kearney, Keenan, Spillane etc. and play what might be described as an individual style with influences.

The question here is “Is there such a thing as traditional piping?”.

-Fionn

11

Some (traditional) musicians can find the term “traditional musician” a bit limiting. The late Scottish musician Martyn Bennett was at times quite adamant that he didn’t want to be considered a tradtional musician making traditional music (as he felt this would be disrespectful to the tradition). Rather, he felt that he was a modern electro-acoustic musician trying to make modern dance music that borrowed from the expressive tonal palette of traditional music. This could be considered a bit surprising, given that he was a native Scots Gaelic speaker with a mother who is a traditional singer and ethnomusicologist and he was raised being exposed to the music and song of the most celebrated Scottish traditional musicians of the 20th century–pretty rare upbringing if you ask me. He was certainly more than capable of playing strictly traditional material and he did so often, but as it didn’t tend to characterize what he normally played in performances and recordings, I don’t think he wanted to misrepresent himself or Scottish traditional music by labeling himself a “traditional musician.”

“Musician of traditional Irish music” is an interesting term and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gains more currency in the future. A lot of us that play Irish music on trad. instruments don’t necessarily limit ourselves to playing in a conservative, strictly traditional environment, so this could be a more useful catch-all term. Of course, coming to a consensus as to what can be defined as “traditional” is likely to always be an exercise in futility.

I think that most pipers today that play professionally or semi-professionally tend to have very individualized styles, though as I said earlier, they may choose to infuse that style with certain traits that are associated with one regional style or another. Listen to a piper like David Power play The Bucks of Oranmore–it’s obvious that he has listened very carefully to the classic Ennis recording and yet what he plays is very much his own unique version. Arriving at a point where you can take aspects of all your various influences and subsume them into an individual style that is unmistakeably you can often take well over a decade at the very least and most pipers (or musicians in general, for that matter) never get that far.

12

I don’t think so, nor do I see any reason why it would be so. However I do understand the reticence of some pipers (usually those with great respect for ‘the tradition’) who are hesitant to describe themselves as ‘traditional musicians’.

The revival of the pipes is really quite recent. It seems that modern day pipers will listen to the likes of Ennis, Kearney, Keenan, Spillane etc. and play what might be described as an individual style with influences.

The question here is “Is there such a thing as traditional piping?”.

-Fionn

While I appreciate the ins-and-outs S.P.‘s post, I think the answer to this last question ought to be a straightforward “yes”. Irish piping (on the Irish/Union/Uilleann pipes, or whatever you please, sir) has some 230+ years’ history behind it, and fortunately for us that thread hasn’t been entirely broken, although it became very tenuous a couple of times.

That doesn’t mean that all players of the instrument are “traditional pipers”, but certainly there are some out there.

Fionn, I wonder about your ‘sample’, i.e. the pipers you’ve been talking to. If they are stage performers or touring pipers, this is likely to influence the answers to your questions a lot. The pipers today who are studiously interested in older styles (i.e. traditional piping) are IMO less likely to be taking them on the road.

In your “Ennis, Kearney, Keenan, Spillane etc.” you run the gamut from traditionalists to modern popularizer - I myself would question whether someone modeling his playing after Spillane was a “traditional musician” in the obvious sense. Keenan is clearly traditional in the sense that he got his music through family connections, i.e. handed-down, and can credibly lay claim to a travelling piper tradition like that of the Dorans. This can’t be said for those Keenan admirers whose style is ‘rooted’ in the Bothy Band recordings :slight_smile:

Bill

13

You should read what Tomas O’Cannain says about tradition in his book “Traditional music in Ireland”. I think it’s very clear and true.
It also raises the question how you learn tunes : from another piper, from your family, from a CD, in a session ?
Do you know that joke : “I learned this tune from my mother who in turn learnt it from her father, who himself learnt it from a Michael Coleman record !!” :laughing:

14

I think you may want to look beyond the “session scene” if you wish to discuss tradtional piping… just a hunch.

15

Someone once told me that the uilleann pipes aren’t a musical instrument. They are a way of life…