Stevie and Peter -
I just want to thank you guys for such superb transcriptions. I really haven’t seen anything even close to this good, with the exception, perhaps, of Bernard Flaherty’s “Trip to Sligo”, though even he doesn’t have all the breath marks in… that’s the clincher for me.
The history is wonderful too.
Thank you so much for this. It’s great!
Best,
Chris
Thanks Chris but maybe you should introduce yourself to the works of Breandan Breathnach, Pat Mitchell etc. There is a large body of detailed written music around.
Interesting you bring up Flaherty, I always thought he has some weird corners in some of the tunes, but maybe that’s how they were played for him. He is in my view however very much lacking in tune names, very common tunes go as ‘unknown’ or by uncommon names and I am of the view [and I have said that here often] that his book really would have benifitted from a rigourous amount of editing. That said, it’s a nice collection to have.
talking about editing..typos
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-11-28 12:01 ]
Thanks Peter. I have Breandan’s books, but none by Pat Mitchell. What would you recommend.
As for Flaherty - I think the point of his book was to transcribe the tunes specifically as played by the musicians he profiles. As for the names, you are quite right, many of them should not have gone un-named. My guess is that he asked the musicians who played the tunes what they called the tunes, and most of them said “I don’t know, I just play it”. He certainly could have, and probably should have, done some more research to find the names of the tunes. I also would have liked a bit of history with the tunes. Again, however, I don’t think that was the point. As you mention, there are folks like Mr. Breathnac who have done a superb job cateloging the tunes as well their history. Perhaps Mr. Flaherty thought he’d simply collect the tunes and leave the rest up to others perhaps more qualified for the job.
Best,
Chris
I know, it’s just a bit of a shame as it’s basically a lovely little book just that bit of extra work would have made it really nice.
Check your e-mail Chris
Excellent Peter. I responded by e-mail.
Thanks again!
Chris
Yes, Peter & Steve, thank you so much! I can’t say how wonderful your work here is and it is such a beautiful and amazing thing because it is freely given in the spirit of sharing the tradition. Thank you!
Slightly sidetracking here.
Chris, [and others] I went back t o ‘The Trip t o Sligo’ just to see why I was never completely happy with it.
I think just playing through the contributions by the first player are representative for some of the misgiving I have about the book.
Of the 25 tunes selected from this player
Two come straight from the Canny/O Loughlin/Hayes lp. : Bunker Hill and Geoghean’s reel and can be considered to have come from the East Clare/Galway repertoire
Two more are compositions by East Galway Man Vincent Broderick
Anachuin is usually considered as a Junior Crehan tune
Fahey’s reel is in fact The Banks of the Suir and generally considered a Sliabh Luachra tune
Paddy O Brien’s I assume was composed by Paddy O Brien of Tipperary
The Man of Aran was composed by Dubliner Darech de Brun
One tune listed unkown is as far as I know a composition of banjoplayer Anthony Sullivan
Another ‘unknown’ is a reel ‘The Curlews’ composed by Josephine Keegan
The next ‘unknown’ is the Street players composed by Ed Reavey, the tune after that comes from Paddy Carty and was composed by Paddy Fahey
The jig ‘The New House’ is another Paddy O Brien composition
And the final one is Garret Barry’s reel, which has strong Clare ties having found it’s current circulation through WiIlie Clancy and his father who got it from piper Garret Barry.
Of the remaining tunes there are several that are recent compositions as well [The Whistling Postman for example] I just can’t stick a composer on them like these, a number of the remaining tunes are pretty standard fare without strong Sligo associations, there are a few that have connections with Roger Sherlock and there are two I don’t know. Now, these may be typical Sligo tunes.
Now this is fine ofcourse if the aim of the book is to outline the repertoire played by a group of players from the area at a given time, if you expect a repertoire with a strong regional flavour [and let’s face it you do in a book like this] you don’t really get what you expect. On top of this, I find quite a number of these tunes have some odd corners in them that make them to me a lot less attractive than versions I know from other sources.
This trend continues to an extend throughout the book, offcourse it’s the players that bring in the tunes but wouldn’t it really have been a bigger effort to get them to play more ‘local’ tunes and paint a picture of the Sligo/May/Roscommon repertoire. An editor helping with the selection process could have made such a difference and made what is now a nice book a really great and worthwhile project.
Having read Peter’s comments, if any of you are looking for a good little collection of Sligo music, I can highly recommend the book/CD combination of “The Mountain Road - Tunes Popular in South Sligo” (I may have gotten the name a bit off… correct me if I’m wrong).
The book seems to be well done, with a brief history of each tune and who that specific version came from. The CD, however, is the real gold mine, with lots of superb playing by local greats such as Peter Horan and Colm O’Donnel.
Best,
Chris
I got both. Though I think most of the tunes in Mountain Road are also in Trip to Sligo, the Mountain Road CD is great. (Now if there were just a Trip to Sligo boxed CD set…)
Neither books claims to be Sligo-specific tunes, just tunes commonly played in Sligo, and I think that’s a very sensible approach.
A lot of the players in the trip to Sligo appear on the Coleman archive recordings.
I hate to knock the book because it’s obviously done with great love for the subject and an awful lot of time and effort has gne into it but I always felt slightly disappointed by it’s contents. I came across a few tracks of Benard Flaherty playing with Declan Folan, nice duet and Flaherty himself is a nice fluteplayer.