Last saturday I was at an event called the "Irishfolk openair festival Poyenberg". It was indeed a festival, open air and in Poyenberg (Northern Germany). However, I counted... The bands had significant overlap in their repertoires and well over the half of the music was Scottish, not Irish. And I am not talking about tunes common to both traditions - I am talking about e.g. Ye Jacobites by name, Lewis Bridal Song (Mhairi's Wedding) etc. Two of the bands (I think they were Dutchmen?) even appeared on stage in Kilts. And not Irish ones either (I can tell the difference...).
However, this was marketed as an Irish folk music festival. Is that just because Guinness have done a far better job of marketing over the last decades than McEwan's? Don't get me wrong here, I am Scottish, but a huge fan of the Irish stuff too. I am just wondering whether they would have had a problem with their public if they had called it the "Irish and Scottish Folk festival..." or god-forbid: "Celtic Folk festival...".
That all said, the festival was great, right up to the B****rds who played their car stereos loudly outside our tent at 4am, 5am, 6am...
Hi chris, sorry if i'm inadvertantly redirecting the course of your discussion but I see you said you can tell the difference between irish and scotish kilts. I have been researching into the clothing of the early irish celts for a project im involved with and I was wondering if you could tell me of any sources i could check out for information.
Thanks
International perception: "Irish" - holds the promise of easy conversation , good music and good times; "Scottish" - doesn't.
Not necessarily reflective of reality, but in marketing terms, that's the way it is.
They don't know the difference in Europe.Years ago I played in a Flemish/Scottish band and we were contacted by a Belgian restaurant chain (no,it's name wasn't Horses For Courses).They were having an Irish beef month and wanted us to play some gigs in their establishments;We told them that we didn't play irish music and we had Scottish pipes,but all they said was "No-one will notice",and they were right.
Ireland was marketed by the NI Troubles. They were known about everywhere - on the news, commented on, discussed. They continually drew attention to the island, whose life and culture might have remained a lot more obscure to the outside world without them. And they coincided with the major developments in Irish music in the 1970s in particular.
One result was that Ireland's tragic history, seen to be contemporary and ongoing, combined with the music and the seemingly unspoilt nature of the country to give Ireland a big romantic mystique - especially for lots of young Germans. On the musical front, Irish bands played to huge numbers of people in Germany, and Irish music and songs were eagerly adopted by singers/players there.
To answer SessionSavage, the cut of the modern Scottish Kilt is an invention of the Scottish military regiments of the British army. As are many of the elements of the common ensembles worn by e.g. Pipers. Modern Irish kilts that I have seen have the same cut, just a different choice of patterns - often plain colours being involved, e.g. plain orange. However modern Scottish kiltmakers have also been freeing themselves from the dependency on Tartan and experimenting with e.g. modern pin-striped suit material (no joke - to go with a comlete suit!) and leather.
The formalised set of family tartans that used to have so much weight put on them are also in fact inventions (by Walter Scott) following King George's visit to Edinburgh in 1822. Previously, as I understand it, every weaver would have their own favourite patterns and everything was much looser.
The Plaid is basically a long strip of material (6 metres?) wound round the waist, held in place with a belt and the rest thrown over the shoulder. This is in fact what one of the bands was wearing, but the patterns were tartan... The plaid would also traditionally serve as a blanket for sleeping rough. I presume the Irish had something similar.
As far as sources go, I am relying here on my own personal verbal tradition... But a bit of reading about King George's visit to Edinburgh would be very informative anyway.
As for the rest of you, I know that most central European audiences can't tell the difference. I was just having a bit of a moan. (And was the marketing pull of Scotland in Victoria's time actually felt outside the U.K.?) And back to the cause, I think it is due to the Guinness marketing push putting Irish pubs everywhere in the world. Now a self-sustaining phenomenon.
Pinstriped kilts? Wow, that's a concept. They probably use Harris tweed as well.
For your example, Crackpot, I think "Celtic" would be the most correct way to market the festival ("Irish and Scottish" takes up more room on a banner and takes longer to say)
Scotland has had past episodes of being wildly fashionable, which have disappeared like the hump of the Loch Ness Monster under the cold waters of history.
At the restoration of Charles II, Scottish music became very fashionable in London, and multitudes of tunes were composed in its style by Englishmen (the "Scotch Snap" was a very popular device). Eventually some of these got to Scotland, and became "traditional" there! I can't, though, give examples.
In the 1700s a Mr. MacPherson of Kingussie created an epic poem or poems that purported to be by an ancient Gaelic bard called Ossian. At any rate before MacPherson's forgery was discovered or admitted, the work was enthusiastically read by people across Europe and helped to kick-start Romanticism.
In the 70s, every Greek schoolkid knew about the Loch Ness Monster. One of the country's top comedians, "Harry Clean", said it lived in the Lake of Marathon near Athens!
Another variation that I have seen is the replacement of the sporran with two separate pockets hung at either side of the kilt... And I'm sure someone somewhere has a kilt and jacket suit of matching Harris tweed.
Just to digress slightly, someone in the DUP was complaining that Tourism Ireland concentrated too much on Irish dancers and musicians playing reels and jigs while Orange Marches and the 12th July were being ignored. No doubt in time TI will have to embrace all cultures on the Island but presently I think marching aspects should be put on the long finger as most people still identify them with riot police, flying bottles and the like. Hopefully 2007 will be different.
Didnt that dude from travis wear a leather kilt in one of thier music vieos.
Cool as F#ck too. and samual l jackson wore one in that film I cant remember.
If I was scottish i would be tearing around in a kilt the whole time...throwing shapes.
Why worry about being "Scottish" in order to wear a kilt?
If you want to wear a kilt, wear one!
(I'd suggest Vivienne Westwood's fab 1970's designs...)
Next you'll being suggesting one has to be Native American to wear moccasins, "Indian" to wear a dhoti, from somewhere in China to eat chow mein, Australian Aboriginal to chuck a boomarang...oh!...and "Irish" to play ITM.
I assume Scotland's main attractions for outsiders to go there have been Edinburgh, a handful of castles, and The Great Outdoors in one or other of its forms for walking, climbing, fishing, game-shooting, etc.
The flip side used to be grim food and lodgings and appalling weather. Creature comforts have probably improved greatly; even the weather may have done; but these considerations probably didn't bother Victorian and later sportsmen overmuch.
As a romantic and architecturally endowed ancient city, Edinburgh now has to contend with more rivals than in the old days for visits by tourists: Prague, Budapest, St. Peterburg, maybe Riga, are comparable cities competing for custom - places closed to any rate unhindered tourism before 1989.
I'm glad Scotland has lousy weather and Edinburgh has competition from other cities. If it had a Mediterranean climate everyone would go there and it would be way too crowded!
Honestly, I go just to breathe the air. It smells wonderful!
One is sure that one could don a kilt and walk anywhere in South London and no one would turn a hair.
One is not Sikh (nor Sikh or South Asian looking) but for instance one frequently sports a turban without outside comment.
It is indeed as crackpot says - nobody cares if it's Irish, Scottish or even English. It's not the Guiness marketing alone either.
To us in a heavily industrialised country Ireland was attractive as rural and unspoiled and last not least with an unbroken musical tradition. Fun-loving, simple and hospitable people.
The Troubles were not used in the marketing. They got our attention partly because we have our own history of wars between states of different confessions in Central Europe. Take the war of 1618 - 1648.
I wonder how you got to Poyenberg, crackpot. Were you playing in one of the bands?
Interesting to read your perspective, kuec. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the Troubles were deliberately used to market Ireland! - only that they made Ireland well-known through being so much in the news.
"only that they made Ireland well-known through being so much in the news" - for the wrong reasons I'm afraid; I doubt if the scenes of petrol bombs and rubber bullets ever encouraged anyone to go looking for an Irish session!
I work at an advertising agency, one of those big global conglomerates. It’s actually lots of fun. (We’ve got the mind control lasers almost perfected and are working on launching the orbital mirrors.) Anyway, I thought I saw a memo a year or so ago that we had won the Irish tourism account. I would love to work on that, but it’s not handled out of my office and I’m not sure who does. It would be interesting to bring the perpective of this board into some sort of advertising campaign.
I envision a print ad that has a friendly little tear-out pocket guide for Americans travelling to Ireland on how not to act like a spanner. especially at sessions.
I'm googling it, of course, nicholas, but what's that about the airport at Knock?
Knock is a village in the middle of nowhere in the West of Ireland.
It is famous for having been the site of an apparition of the Virgin Mary and other characters in 1879. It is accordingly a place of Catholic pilgrimage, and the Pope visited it in 1979.
A local priest called I think Father Hogan lobbied incessantly for the Irish government to build an international airport there, to boost the local economy and to ferry lots of pilgrims to Knock. In the face of ridicule he got the government to build it. Soon afterwards he died (1980s).
It sounds like a lively story. It must have had some bizarre twists and turns.
apropros of nothing, my favorite among my kilts is a jet-black wool rendition by yohji yamamoto of japan......he and fellow japanese design genius rei kawakubo have made brilliant poetry with victorian and other northern european historic costume.....
The kilt is a fine example of a tradition that is only brought to life by a projection backwards. Same thing as McPherson's Ossian: people want some myth they can believe in. And that's where marketing comes in.
and then there are the maori cannibals living wild in the hills. It never ceases to amaze me how many tourists fall for that one. The other cons I can think of is abalone shells and chinese industrial jade for sale in airports. Take note folks the good stuff is called ponamu and its incredibly expensive.
Ever y country has its tourism cons and impressions.
Irish Marketing
Irish Marketing
Last saturday I was at an event called the "Irishfolk openair festival Poyenberg". It was indeed a festival, open air and in Poyenberg (Northern Germany). However, I counted... The bands had significant overlap in their repertoires and well over the half of the music was Scottish, not Irish. And I am not talking about tunes common to both traditions - I am talking about e.g. Ye Jacobites by name, Lewis Bridal Song (Mhairi's Wedding) etc. Two of the bands (I think they were Dutchmen?) even appeared on stage in Kilts. And not Irish ones either (I can tell the difference...).
However, this was marketed as an Irish folk music festival. Is that just because Guinness have done a far better job of marketing over the last decades than McEwan's? Don't get me wrong here, I am Scottish, but a huge fan of the Irish stuff too. I am just wondering whether they would have had a problem with their public if they had called it the "Irish and Scottish Folk festival..." or god-forbid: "Celtic Folk festival...".
That all said, the festival was great, right up to the B****rds who played their car stereos loudly outside our tent at 4am, 5am, 6am...
'bye,
Chris
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Crackpot
Re: Irish Marketing
Hi chris, sorry if i'm inadvertantly redirecting the course of your discussion but I see you said you can tell the difference between irish and scotish kilts. I have been researching into the clothing of the early irish celts for a project im involved with and I was wondering if you could tell me of any sources i could check out for information.
Thanks
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Re: Irish Marketing
Irish is the new Scottish - or to put it another way, Scottish doesn't have the pull it used to have in Queen Victoria's time.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Martin Milner
Re: Irish Marketing
International perception: "Irish" - holds the promise of easy conversation , good music and good times; "Scottish" - doesn't.
Not necessarily reflective of reality, but in marketing terms, that's the way it is.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Bren
Re: Irish Marketing
They don't know the difference in Europe.Years ago I played in a Flemish/Scottish band and we were contacted by a Belgian restaurant chain (no,it's name wasn't Horses For Courses).They were having an Irish beef month and wanted us to play some gigs in their establishments;We told them that we didn't play irish music and we had Scottish pipes,but all they said was "No-one will notice",and they were right.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by dafydd
Re: Irish Marketing
Ireland was marketed by the NI Troubles. They were known about everywhere - on the news, commented on, discussed. They continually drew attention to the island, whose life and culture might have remained a lot more obscure to the outside world without them. And they coincided with the major developments in Irish music in the 1970s in particular.
One result was that Ireland's tragic history, seen to be contemporary and ongoing, combined with the music and the seemingly unspoilt nature of the country to give Ireland a big romantic mystique - especially for lots of young Germans. On the musical front, Irish bands played to huge numbers of people in Germany, and Irish music and songs were eagerly adopted by singers/players there.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
To answer SessionSavage, the cut of the modern Scottish Kilt is an invention of the Scottish military regiments of the British army. As are many of the elements of the common ensembles worn by e.g. Pipers. Modern Irish kilts that I have seen have the same cut, just a different choice of patterns - often plain colours being involved, e.g. plain orange. However modern Scottish kiltmakers have also been freeing themselves from the dependency on Tartan and experimenting with e.g. modern pin-striped suit material (no joke - to go with a comlete suit!) and leather.
The formalised set of family tartans that used to have so much weight put on them are also in fact inventions (by Walter Scott) following King George's visit to Edinburgh in 1822. Previously, as I understand it, every weaver would have their own favourite patterns and everything was much looser.
The Plaid is basically a long strip of material (6 metres?) wound round the waist, held in place with a belt and the rest thrown over the shoulder. This is in fact what one of the bands was wearing, but the patterns were tartan... The plaid would also traditionally serve as a blanket for sleeping rough. I presume the Irish had something similar.
As far as sources go, I am relying here on my own personal verbal tradition... But a bit of reading about King George's visit to Edinburgh would be very informative anyway.
As for the rest of you, I know that most central European audiences can't tell the difference. I was just having a bit of a moan. (And was the marketing pull of Scotland in Victoria's time actually felt outside the U.K.?) And back to the cause, I think it is due to the Guinness marketing push putting Irish pubs everywhere in the world. Now a self-sustaining phenomenon.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Crackpot
Re: Irish Marketing
Thanks crackpot, your a fountain of knowledge.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Re: Irish Marketing
Pinstriped kilts? Wow, that's a concept. They probably use Harris tweed as well.
For your example, Crackpot, I think "Celtic" would be the most correct way to market the festival ("Irish and Scottish" takes up more room on a banner and takes longer to say)
Now everyone is going to throw things at me...
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Irish Marketing
http://www.scottishtartans.org/kilt.html
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Crackpot
Re: Irish Marketing
Scotland has had past episodes of being wildly fashionable, which have disappeared like the hump of the Loch Ness Monster under the cold waters of history.
At the restoration of Charles II, Scottish music became very fashionable in London, and multitudes of tunes were composed in its style by Englishmen (the "Scotch Snap" was a very popular device). Eventually some of these got to Scotland, and became "traditional" there! I can't, though, give examples.
In the 1700s a Mr. MacPherson of Kingussie created an epic poem or poems that purported to be by an ancient Gaelic bard called Ossian. At any rate before MacPherson's forgery was discovered or admitted, the work was enthusiastically read by people across Europe and helped to kick-start Romanticism.
In the 70s, every Greek schoolkid knew about the Loch Ness Monster. One of the country's top comedians, "Harry Clean", said it lived in the Lake of Marathon near Athens!
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Link on Kilt history....
http://www.scottishtartans.org/kilt.html
Another variation that I have seen is the replacement of the sporran with two separate pockets hung at either side of the kilt... And I'm sure someone somewhere has a kilt and jacket suit of matching Harris tweed.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Crackpot
Re: Irish Marketing
Just to digress slightly, someone in the DUP was complaining that Tourism Ireland concentrated too much on Irish dancers and musicians playing reels and jigs while Orange Marches and the 12th July were being ignored. No doubt in time TI will have to embrace all cultures on the Island but presently I think marching aspects should be put on the long finger as most people still identify them with riot police, flying bottles and the like. Hopefully 2007 will be different.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Bannerman
Re: Irish Marketing
Didnt that dude from travis wear a leather kilt in one of thier music vieos.
Cool as F#ck too. and samual l jackson wore one in that film I cant remember.
If I was scottish i would be tearing around in a kilt the whole time...throwing shapes.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Why worry about being "Scottish" in order to wear a kilt?
If you want to wear a kilt, wear one!
(I'd suggest Vivienne Westwood's fab 1970's designs...)
Next you'll being suggesting one has to be Native American to wear moccasins, "Indian" to wear a dhoti, from somewhere in China to eat chow mein, Australian Aboriginal to chuck a boomarang...oh!...and "Irish" to play ITM.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Irish Marketing
I assume Scotland's main attractions for outsiders to go there have been Edinburgh, a handful of castles, and The Great Outdoors in one or other of its forms for walking, climbing, fishing, game-shooting, etc.
The flip side used to be grim food and lodgings and appalling weather. Creature comforts have probably improved greatly; even the weather may have done; but these considerations probably didn't bother Victorian and later sportsmen overmuch.
As a romantic and architecturally endowed ancient city, Edinburgh now has to contend with more rivals than in the old days for visits by tourists: Prague, Budapest, St. Peterburg, maybe Riga, are comparable cities competing for custom - places closed to any rate unhindered tourism before 1989.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
nicholas. Yes you're right. You assume.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish Marketing
I'm glad Scotland has lousy weather and Edinburgh has competition from other cities. If it had a Mediterranean climate everyone would go there and it would be way too crowded!
Honestly, I go just to breathe the air. It smells wonderful!
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Irish Marketing
Come on Yhaalhouse, theres a pretty big difference between a non-irish person playing ITM and a non-Scottish person wearing a kilt.
I just dare you to take a stroll down the street of my home village wearing a 'skirt'. You may change your tune then
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Re: Irish Marketing
One is sure that one could don a kilt and walk anywhere in South London and no one would turn a hair.
One is not Sikh (nor Sikh or South Asian looking) but for instance one frequently sports a turban without outside comment.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Irish Marketing
One is mad
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Re: Irish Marketing
I have always wanted to revive the lost habbit of wearing an Irish cloak, with a big fat penanular brooch.
maybe i'll start there!
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by session savage
Re: Irish Marketing
Yeats walked round London in a cloak. One of my grandfathers as a young man hero-worshipped Yeats and did the same.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
It is indeed as crackpot says - nobody cares if it's Irish, Scottish or even English. It's not the Guiness marketing alone either.
To us in a heavily industrialised country Ireland was attractive as rural and unspoiled and last not least with an unbroken musical tradition. Fun-loving, simple and hospitable people.
The Troubles were not used in the marketing. They got our attention partly because we have our own history of wars between states of different confessions in Central Europe. Take the war of 1618 - 1648.
I wonder how you got to Poyenberg, crackpot. Were you playing in one of the bands?
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by kuec
Re: Irish Marketing
Interesting to read your perspective, kuec. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the Troubles were deliberately used to market Ireland! - only that they made Ireland well-known through being so much in the news.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
"only that they made Ireland well-known through being so much in the news" - for the wrong reasons I'm afraid; I doubt if the scenes of petrol bombs and rubber bullets ever encouraged anyone to go looking for an Irish session!
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by Bannerman
Re: Irish Marketing
I work at an advertising agency, one of those big global conglomerates. It’s actually lots of fun. (We’ve got the mind control lasers almost perfected and are working on launching the orbital mirrors.) Anyway, I thought I saw a memo a year or so ago that we had won the Irish tourism account. I would love to work on that, but it’s not handled out of my office and I’m not sure who does. It would be interesting to bring the perpective of this board into some sort of advertising campaign.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by fidkid
Re: Irish Marketing
Only vaguely connected, there must be a feature film in the story of that priest who got an international airport built at Knock.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
I envision a print ad that has a friendly little tear-out pocket guide for Americans travelling to Ireland on how not to act like a spanner. especially at sessions.
I'm googling it, of course, nicholas, but what's that about the airport at Knock?
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by fidkid
Re: Irish Marketing
Knock is a village in the middle of nowhere in the West of Ireland.
It is famous for having been the site of an apparition of the Virgin Mary and other characters in 1879. It is accordingly a place of Catholic pilgrimage, and the Pope visited it in 1979.
A local priest called I think Father Hogan lobbied incessantly for the Irish government to build an international airport there, to boost the local economy and to ferry lots of pilgrims to Knock. In the face of ridicule he got the government to build it. Soon afterwards he died (1980s).
It sounds like a lively story. It must have had some bizarre twists and turns.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Irish Marketing
apropros of nothing, my favorite among my kilts is a jet-black wool rendition by yohji yamamoto of japan......he and fellow japanese design genius rei kawakubo have made brilliant poetry with victorian and other northern european historic costume.....
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: Irish Marketing
The kilt is a fine example of a tradition that is only brought to life by a projection backwards. Same thing as McPherson's Ossian: people want some myth they can believe in. And that's where marketing comes in.
# Posted on June 15th 2007 by kuec
Re: Irish Marketing
" Australian Aboriginal to chuck a boomarang..."
"Male Australian Aboriginal" and "play a didgeridoo" might be more appropriate in this context.
# Posted on June 16th 2007 by Bren
Re: Irish Marketing
and then there are the maori cannibals living wild in the hills. It never ceases to amaze me how many tourists fall for that one. The other cons I can think of is abalone shells and chinese industrial jade for sale in airports. Take note folks the good stuff is called ponamu and its incredibly expensive.
Ever y country has its tourism cons and impressions.
# Posted on June 16th 2007 by Joze
Re: Irish Marketing
To Kuec,
No, I wasn't in one of the bands - I got exported to Germany a while ago...(the usual reasons - woman, Hefeweizen, etc.)
Chris
# Posted on June 16th 2007 by Crackpot
Re: Irish Marketing
Let's have a bit of a bio then, Chris
# Posted on June 16th 2007 by kuec