In an interview Willie Clancy gave in august 1972, a few months before his death, he gives this advice to young musicians:
Get a grasp of the Gaelic tongue and develop a love for it. Go to the Gaeltacht and the old people who have it and learn it. I feel that a knowledge of our language is essential if you are to express the true spirit of our music and, as the saying goes, “Don’t settle for the skim milk when the cream is at hand”. Apart from that have patience; learn to walk before you run. You might have a flair for the music, you might think you’re good at it, and you might be tempted to plunge ahead without perfecting your technique; well it might be in your head but your fingers will let you down. So, start playing early and develop your technique with patience, practice and perseverance
It’s the eternal talk of music teachers. I got a copy of the flute tutor by Quantz, written about 1750, and he says more or less the same things: practice, be patient, improve your technique etc …
Very funny that nothing really changes in these matters.
You may be right TreeShark, but I do think that if you are going to learn an indigenous art, it can be very helpful to have a basic grasp of the language, otherwise the history of the music will be excluded to some degree. The other thing that I was told was, in order for a musician to be able to play slow airs properly they must have a proper grasp of the song, words and all as it can dictate how the tune is played and in what form.
It isnt neccessary to learn the language, but wouldnt it be nice?
I think that was said in the spirit of “do as I say, not as I did.” Clancy didn’t actually speak much Irish himself; from what I read he could understand it fairly well but he always regretted not having spent more time learning to speak it. In Pat Mitchell’s book he is quoted as saying he would have given up his ability to play pipes for the ability to speak Irish
I studied Irish for a little while myself and would love to get back to it too…I do think it could have an effect on your playing of dance tunes, more in the sense of giving the music a context and background and depth from of all the things you learn along the way while you’re learning Irish and talking with native speakers.
One of my big regrets is never learning another language, I think you need to live where a language is everyday to really absorb it. Mind you most of the kids I know in Ireland hate learning Irish with a vengence!
I do agree it’s helpful to hear an air sung and understand the words, though IMHO I don’t think it’s a reason to not play a tune if you don’t. Many of the tunes after all have had several different sets of words. Some tunes have crossed all of europe too and fro, changing all the time.
Rob
I think one of the reasons he thought it so important to get a grasp of the tongue, was that in his lifetime, a large proportion of the old players were native speakers and the history of the tunes was inextricably linked to their Mother Tongue. I know as an Irish speaker I could be accused of being biased here, but I am not a native speaker, my interest in the language started at the same time as my interest in the music. So of course I will agree with the opening quote.
In the context of whether it is important to learn Irish or not, here is a question.
Why learn the tunes without the background of where they are from?
Surely if you are making the effort to learn a particular genre of music you should be a little informed of its structure & history (including those periods in Irelands history when the language, religion & arts of this country were suppressed until they nearly died).
Perhaps Mr Clancy was expressing his national pride?
In Peter Browne’s radio documentary on Willie Clancy (“Lashings of Music”) there’s a few minutes devoted to his interest in Irish. He definitely understood it and listened very closely to the sean-nos singers, so much so that one interviewer remarked to him that when he played airs it sounded as if he was “playing, in actual fact, Irish, rather than music.” Clancy replied that he liked to think of it that way.
The Gaelic language was forbidden in schools in Ireland during Willie Clancys
school days and also during his father and mothers school days,
His grandfather and grandmother may very well have spoke in the native tongue but were forbidden to speak the language in public,
This ban was put into effect by the English overlords and landlords of the period who ruled the country and who also starved and tried to kill-off the natives, This was during Willies fathers and grandfathers time,
They also banned the playing of traditional music and airs or singing irish songs,
They did not want people talking to each other in a language that they(the English invaders) could’nt understand,
The Gaelic language survived in areas that these grabbers and killers did not invade, poorer areas like Connemara, West Kerry and West Cork, part of Donegal Arran islands etc,
If any of you plan on a trip to Ireland you should take some time to visit the west Kerry area, drop in for a drink at any of the pubs in Ballyferitter and listen to or engage in speaking the native tongue.
You can question all you want, My Mother was born in 1917 and my father
in 1919 in West limerick and North Kerry, we lived just across the Shannon river from Clare, My father played the flute and met Willie Clancy on several ocasions, actually Willie also played whistle and flute,
I have verbal history from my parents and grandparents about what happened over the years in these areas they have all passed and gone now RIP.
I spent most of my time in Ireland on the Dingle Peninsula. I went to a church service conducted in Gaelic. I would like to live in western Ireland some of the time.
I have heard Scandinavian folk music which sounds pretty good and very like Irish Trad. I did not know they spoke Gaelic in Scandinavia.
My thoughts are that to be good at music one must also have a developed linguistic sense at some level and in ANY language. I am particularly referring to a sense of poetics as well as non-semantic stuff like rhythm (metre) and so on. I do not mean an academic sense or any analytical sense. You will find that most good musos are either very good speakers or almost mute. These are the two sides of the same coin.
Fiddler James Kelly and I have had long talks about the language, sean-nos singers, and the idea of “having” to understand the language. James understands (I suspect) more Irish than he himself knows. When I speak snipits of Donegal Irish to himself, he fully understands, except dialect idosyncracies. Conversely, he tells me of a trend in the late '60’s that perpetuated the idea that you could not accuratley play an air if you didn’t understand the words. James, being one of the greatest air players in traditional music, takes that stance of “as an instrumentatist-I’m concerned with melody. It’s the melody I’m playing and manipulating.” to paraphrase more; he’d say that he doesn’t need to know about the greeen mountain the goat got lost on because “Sean was writing a love letter on a dew dropped leaf,” to constuct an aural picture and pace an air.
We might wax on forever about this. I beleive there is that duality (regarding James) of understanding the spoken language to an extent, and understanding the language of airs themselves thoroughly, is how his music comes out the way it does.
Personally, I think it would be brilliant to be fluent! As if the pipes weren’t enough!? Tom Standeven (sp?) sure enjoyed both camps. I think he told Tim britton that beffore he started learning pipes, he must learn to read and write Irish..and I think Tim did to some extent early on..
Willie was in fact taught basic Irish in school. In the same interview he talks about how much Seamus Ennis had the advantage playing airs as a fluent speaker of Irish. But maybe it’s time to steer this thread away from the subject of Irish, fact remains there are many of the finest traditional musicians who don’t have much (or any) Irish at all (and the reverse is true too, I have come across native speakers without much of a grasp of music even though they tried hard.). Recently I had Nuala O Connor and Breandan Begley in the house filming for TG4 and it was interesting to see how the majority of the musicians present were hugely nervous having to speak even a few words of Irish. The main subject of the documentary had none at all.
It’s the running before you can walk and the need to put in the effort if you want to have a fair go at it that has a context on the forums in my opinion.
Agreed, and it’s great advice, especially now when people seem to be rushing to learn to play just well enough so they can join sessions. That’s the most damaging thing, I think. Lots of people see musicians playing in a session and think, “that’s cool, I want to be part of that club.” To me, it’s the rush to join sessions that’s the main culprit in leading people to run before they can walk, or worse resorting to shortcuts like leaving out half the notes in a tune
Back on Clips & Snips someone who couldn’t play a reel properly to save his life treated me to the old ‘but at session I can play them well’. The ultimate example of what we’re talking about.
I’m interested in knowing what scandinavian folk music sounds very much like ITM. Some sort of fusion perhaps?
I don’t think most scandinavian trad sounds much like Irish trad at all. There are a few similarities however. Just like there are similarities between old norse language and gaelic.
I myself have no idea where I stand in this question. I’m not really experienced and I know two words or something in Irish. But as an amature musician, I’d probably agree with the statements of James Kelly posted by Brazenkaine.
