One of the most common introductions to a tune , you hear from pipers is that “I got this from the playing of blah blah”. So this means that the same old tunes are being played over and over again . Considering that O’Neill’s alone has a thousand tunes and there are loads of other published tunes , some of our more talented pipers should play some unheard or at least lesser known tunes.The only piper I ever heard introduce a tune by saying that he got it from O’Neill’s was Liam O Flynn.
Wouldn’t it be good if a piper brought out an album of tunes that are not on any other pipers album.
May I suggest Jerry O’Sullivan’s “O’Sullivan Meets O’Farrell” (Vol. I & II), all tunes taken from the O’Farrell Collection, which you would be unlikely to encounter at your local session (very fine playing as well!).
Many pipers do though! And not just pipers, lots of musicians are plumbing the depths of manuscripts. But not just manuscripts, old recordings and old musicians, too. I just recently learned, and I know a couple other musicians who have learned, a version of Banish Misfortune from a cylinder recording of Edward Cronin, for instance.
Look at Brian McNamara’s recordings - he’s brought out a lot of tunes from a manuscript of tunes collected from Leitrim. Many musicians have recorded Ed Reavy and Paddy Fahey tunes, learned either from manuscripts or recordings or from the men themselves. There are many, many new “old” tunes being added to the repertoire.
Also, your second statement in the OP absolutely does not follow from the first. Just because someone says “I got this tune from the playing of ****” doesn’t mean it’s one that has ever been (commercially) recorded before. It’s entirely possible that it’s from a home tape, or a field recording, or from a friend who came over and played something…
Anyway, it seems like you’re just complaining about the fact that it’s an oral tradition… Mentioning who you got a tune from is part of the package - it’s almost expected because it’s expected that you’re part of the tradition. You just need to pay more attention to all the people who are bringing relatively obscure tunes back into the tradition.
one thing to bear in mind is that there is endless possibilities with tunes, they can be reshaped and reinterpreted ad infinitum so even if it’s the same tunes you’re hearing again and again there’s always something new about them - i would venture to argue that in the session circuit there is a tendency to ignore some of the more familiar standards in favour of newer compositions - it’s our job to strive to mine a tune for all it’s worth and add something original to it
It seems to me that even when someone says “I got this from the playing of Willie Clancy,” it’s still different. I guess that’s why I for one find endless fascination in listening to different versions. It’s fun to try to find the influences and the variations. Plus I’d much rather hear good tunes than new tunes for new tunes’s sake.
There’s probably a good reason why some of the classics are so popular and never die. Some of them just have it…if you know what I mean. Personally, I don’t care where they came from, how old they are, who played them, who wrote them, or who collected them. I like them for their intrinsic value. There’s a few old traditional tunes I could play all day just because of the way they are magically put together as a tune. I never get tired of them.
When the likes of the Goodman Collection were written, few traditional musicians would have been able to read music. This is not at all uncommon today, with even a prejudice against using notation for learning tunes.
Thus a bias towards hearing the same old same old, with new additions as inspiration from the likes of Mick O’Brien, et al, as new recordings come to the fore.
Ah that old chestnut. In my book, the normal usage is “oral tradition”, because it is passed on by “word of mouth”. Clearly, in the case of instrumental music, this is in a figurative sense, and is related to other traditions which are more directly “oral”, such as singing or story-telling. Nevertheless, this “aural tradition” thing is, as far as I can see, something which just came originally out of either someone deliberately using a punning verbal trick to make the point that you have to use your ears, or someone just mistaking the proper usage.
I like the older (as I think it is), and therefore, in my book, correct usage , because I like the emphasis it places on the tradition being actively passed on, rather than being sucked down, as it were, by folks who are just hearing it. I might even go as far, on a grumpy day, as to wonder whether, if you’re only coming to the tradition by hearing it, rather than having it actively passed down to you, you can be said to be part of the “tradition” at all. You’d just be a mimic, wouldn’t you?
We’re only playing with words here so its really not that important , but I think its a nice thing to do ,to correct someone when you know they are wrong.
You can look at it whatever way you like and in my book its this way ,and you can twist words to make them mean whatever you want but the fact remains you hear tunes with your ears(aural) and as we’re talking about instrumental music here the mouth(oral) has nothing to do with it.
If we were talking about storytelling or even Sean Nos singing it could be argued that its oral .
RORY
For what it’s worth, I always enjoy Rory’s “atom smasher” approach to the various topics he explores. I like the way he’ll ask a seemingly “inappropriate” question or make an ITM “politically incorrect” point and see how much flies after that. I think such queries make us look at this subject from different and often better vantage points.
, because I like the emphasis it places on the tradition being actively passed on, rather than being sucked down, as it were, by folks who are just hearing it. I might even go as far, on a grumpy day, as to wonder whether, if you’re only coming to the tradition by hearing it, rather than having it actively passed down to you, you can be said to be part of the “tradition” at all. You’d just be a mimic, wouldn’t you?