Attended a Session in a nearby town last night, and a young lady turned up with a Djembe. First time I’ve ever encountered one of those. Has anyone else come across ‘Unusual’ instruments at a Session?
A djembe would be a bit much at an Irish session, but it works great with the Highland pipes! They’re of a like volume.
Djimbes put off a bit of a counteractive vibe for this type of music, in my opinion. They just don’t sound right in Irish trad. Good for other things, though.
I’ve seen a clarinet… Not a bad sound but a bit tough on the clarinettist as you have to add 2 sharps to everything (and most of our stuff is already in a sharp key). I have seen a djembe and thought it was OK if not played to loudly. The only problem with a djembe is that it doesn’t really allow for all the nuances a bodhran can provide.
Pat
It was fairly unobtrusive last night, but the player insisted on playing the same accompaniment more or less to every tune.
I went to my very first session last night and there was a young woman playing a Ruan. I smiled at the international thoughts .. American with a Ruan playing Celtic music ..
We’ve had a Hurdy Gurdy player show up to our session once. Luckily hers was tuned to G and she was smart enough to stay out of the tunes she couldn’t play. Another time we had a didgridoo(sp?) player…he scared off our piper!
You’d be hard pushed to beat Dan for “unusual instruments in Irish music”. Sorry, the clip is quite quiet.
On a lot of german bal folk festivals there is a strikt ban of djembes in sessions and actually at the whole festival 
But I had some sessions with people playing the melodica. In Eindhoven (NL) it was gipsy guitar, ukulele, whistle, melodica, ocarina, some percussion and a tea box bass 
@Kristof Where have you seen ocarina players? Besides myself and Jack Campin, I’m not aware of many serious trad ocarina players.
The ocarina is my main instrument, and I’ve been playing at a few sessions recently. It’s very difficult to play irish music well. The pitch is highly unstable and is verry hard to control with the speed this music is typically played. The lack of range is also a big problem with the typical D to b range, a 10 hole in D gives you D to g, which works for some tunes, often with a lot of note substitution.
A pacchioni-system double, featuring note overlap in the chambers may be manageable, tuned in D would give the high A and B.
I see it being more suitable for other traditions with smaller note range, commonly bagpipe music from several traditions. A 1 hole G has almost the same range as ‘swane style’/‘english border’/french pipes. They will also fit all GHB music, though it’s much easier if the C is tuned to c#, effectively swapping two holes.
I don’t know if he’s trad., but Hans Houkes builds and plays them in The Netherlands
Here is a video of him building and playing one:
http://youtu.be/MkUdIJiutec
Someone turned up at a session I used to go to in England with a metal clarinet in G…unusual version of an unusual session instrument
Ian
at one local session we have the melodica, what a strange sound, cheap reeds I would guess and the plastic body doesn’t help much.
At another session we have dobro, rather two, though one hardly ever plays a note..
Ok, this isn’t at a session, but definitely out of the ordinary for ITM…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEk-gj0douk
I’d think an A clarinet (common in orchestral music) would be the thing to use with ITM. (Well, the G mentioned above would be even better, I suppose, but as far as I know those are far less common.)
The guys keep on encouraging me to bring my bassoon to the session…
I think you should do it. Just the once, of course. They’ll talk about it for years. 
At the Cobblestone in August.
I played whistles for a while with a bluegrass circle. Same format as a session and a few of the same tunes. I was the only non-string instrument in the circle, so I was the “unusual instrument.”
G clarinets with Albert System keywork are commonly used in Turkish music, they are also known as Turkish clarinets. The fingering on the bottom octave is very similar to a keyed D flute (including foot with extra notes for C#, C and B). Six fingers down plays a D, and the scale going up lifting one finger after another is the D scale with F# and C#. F nat is played forked, C nat as well, or with a C nat key. So it is easy to migrate from flute or whistle fingering to G Albert system clarinet. - But because it is not Boehm system, it is not regarded a “proper” clarinet fit for classical music. It has less keys and therefore less scale possibilities than a Boehm system clarinet. But just listen to Turkish clarinet players to hear how expressively such clarinets can be played!