Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
My question [theory?] really relates tangentially to the good discussion previous entitled "is it really about the music?" and the discussion about Comhaltas etc. Perhaps what has happened to ITM in the last 30 odd years or so is a number of things: it's now in the cultural mainstream; it's no longer seen as a 'rural' [aka "backward" thing--a laughable concept]; it's codified more because it has more *money* behind it [the so-called Celtic Tiger effect] because it now has mass middle class participation by yuppie moms and dads [i include myself]; & those same want their KIDS to be part of this, etc etc. My point is simply this, a relatively recent and now fairly 'wealthy' mass culture is firmly behind ITM. We live out our fantasies through it [becasue we're bored with 'real life' perhaps?] and we want our kids to do the same. Mammy wants little Johnny in Dublin to be the next great fiddler which is exactly why someone like caobhim o'rallaigh has said publicly he doesn't take up teaching. This isn't a rural, isolated social activity anymore -- and maybe that was romanticising it somewhat anyway. But money and high culture have co-opted it and as a result it was bound/has to change. It has become a commodity that's now seen as 'cool' and 'real' and by entering into that world perhaps we too hope to find something deep in which to participate. Aren't we searching for the authentic...? Isn't the authentic what we love when we hear and recognize it in people like James Kelly or past masters like Patrick Kelly? Isn't that what's missing. We know it, feel it, but can't quite put a finger on it. But I think new wealth has changed it, because society has changed. It's urban music now for a bored middle class that wants desparately to connect with something that matters.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
There is simply no way to keep anything in a hermetically sealed vacuum forever. Music changes and evolves. You can still cherish the founding fathers and mothers and choose to ignore the new fangled variations if you wish. The imagery of the barefoot Irish kid learning fiddle tunes at the feet of a cherished elder by a smoldering peat fire are gone. But that is OK and inevitable.
However, you as an individual can still go out and participate in what is right and good about this music.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I think there is some truth in what you say. Speaking broadly, ITM has shifted towards being an urban middle class music instead of a rural music of the poor and itinerant. And that is sort of odd and postmodern, given the roots of the music.
However, I would not say that ITM has been "ruined" by the things you describe. I was listening to some old 78's recently and I was reminded that the way they were playing this music a century ago is very much like the way it is played today, despite vast changes happening in society, the world, etc.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
CF
perhaps "ruined" isn't the right word. maybe the more commercialized aspects of the music [now] are just more noticeable/prevalent because of the media we have that we didn't have 10 years ago. It's easy to critique unfeeling playing on YouTube or Comhaltas' site in a way that would have been impossible until recently. We could just be bemoaning more because there's more available to bemoan. And it may be true that the core playing -- as you point out -- isn't terribly different from 80-100 yrs ago. I must but on my Michael Coleman cds again.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
"They were saying this 40 years ago.
They will be saying it in 40 years time, again."
Which is why this thread and the "is it really about the music" thread, are the most ridiculous threads I've read in a long while.
It's more of the "ITM is this and only this and only my friends and I do it right and you don't" BS. It''s really annoying. </rant>
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Even 100-200 years ago traditional music wasn't *only* played by the itinerant, lower classes. There were a lot of middle class pipers; in fact, pipers were more likely to be middle class or gentry of some sort than not given the instrument wasn't exactly cheap then either.
It is a bit too rosy for my taste to presume that the music was somehow "better" and more "authentic" (what does that mean anyway?) when people in Ireland were really, really poor and desperate. It's a dubious endeavour at best to characterize nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish music because we have so few recordings of it. Of the ones we do have, you can't say that everyone played like that. Who knows how "everyone" played?
I have met and listened to many brilliant musicians who care deeply about music. Does the fact they are not starving and sharing the living room with their six siblings and the family cow make their music less "authentic?"
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I don't think you can generalise away and say that pipers were more likely to be middle class or gentry. There were a few of those, the majority however, weren't.
I think you can hear a difference between the older musicians and the present (upcoming) generation. The difference is for a large part in the transmission, most of today's player have been taught, and they sound like it.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
"There is nothing more bourgeois than wanting not to appear bourgeois."
—"The Philosophy of Andy Warhol" (1975)
Some ungratefully express their sulking boredom with the bland culture that has nurtured and shielded them by getting multiple faux-tribal tattoos (which then quickly became blandly mainstream).
I ungratefully express my sulking boredom with the bland culture that has nurtured and shielded me by occasionally playing music that is not mainstream (though inevitably it is becoming more blandly mainstream).
I am a laughably inauthentic player who tends to forget how lucky I am that I have the time and the privilege and the right to be laughably inauthentic. Plus, chicks dig it. Er, dug it. Sigh.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's always been across the rural/urban divide. It is argued that the vast majority of good musicians in the 18th century were full time professional players, not some farmer who played for his own pleasure after a full days harvest. The upper echelons of Irish society have always encourged the music through patronage often inducing the ire of the great unwashed who would probably rather listen to CandW anyway. Singing and dancing would be different, the peasantry would have a completely different culture around the pursuit of those two arts than the gentry.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Too strong a word. 'ruined', because it is not-yet.
In bankers terms, ITM is probably a little bit of 'leading indicator' and alot of 'trailing indicator' as far as the influence of Irish Culture during the past 100 or so years, though maybe more dramatically since the late '70's.
Leading- ITM really was not particularly widely popular through the forst part of the 20th century. It was a popular local curiosity for second generation kids of immigrants going back to see the 'Old Sod' IF you could get to where the real music was being played. The big change allowing the popularization of ITM actually was probably the Irish Road system. It was a disaster up until 20 years ago. The Roads not only opened up the country so that curious non-Irish folks (last time I was there there was more German and Japanese being spoken in the tourist places than 'American'. ) could get places they would never have dreamed of earlier, it allowed the rural musicians easier access to major markets and get back home comfortably.
The Chietains success is a testament to that change in access and visibility.
Sadly, which is where I sense alot of the contributors here are going, is that the changes/popularization of ITM is lagging indicator of the homoginization of the Irish culture.
While the Irish culture and descendants around the world continue have a huge influence world-wide (I am not kidding when I say I live in a Chicago neighborhood where everyone believes they are Irish regardless of their ethnicity.), the increased 'familiarity' with the Culture is devaluing it. The least common denominator aspects seem to be the ones being prominant- the excessive drinking, Guiness, a charicature of a percieved 'wink-nod-wink' conservative attitude towards sex ( strange to put that into this website-but when I was growing up, Irish girls were the prettiest and their mothers the most protective, which the girls supposedly rebelled against).
In ITM, that devaluation shows up in the grossly over produced PBS fund raising spectacles that play every pledge drive, the 'Irish Cruises' to carribean islands where the phrase 'black irishman' has nothing to do with hair color and Moorish genetic influence as it were, attempts by every fiddler to play in excess of a 240 metronome setting, and by ITM crossing-over into popular music to the point of the genre becoming trite.
But that's what makes learning and playing the tunes right so important. The importance of the Mustad Board among other places where some still are concerned with keeping the faith with ITM.
I am Polish (though Irish by osmosis after 36 years with Herself of Donegal and Mayo roots). I have seem how assimilation in the states combined with the oppression by the communists and upheaval of WWII has really its toll on our culture. I would like to say that we are charicatured as alternating chord accordian polka players who dance in strange costumes. But even that is not true because very few of polish descent play the accordion anymore, and they've all changed their names to sound 'Mer'c'n (American)
Take me for instance. I hate 'Polish Stomp' polkas, can't pronounce a word of Polish properly, really don't like saur kraut (kapusta) and have a name that would pass real well in the English parliament.-anglicized in 1932.
Slow day...... I am always accused of over-analyzing. My button box teacher is always surprised at that. He just wishes I would learn to calm down and just play the music.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
You tell 'em zippy!
The Reverend calls that "Plastic Paddyism". What can we do? Just keep setting a good cultural example, I suppose. Of course, Ireland having like 20 boxers in the Olympics does nothing for the stereotype of the fighting Irishman...
But anyway, yeah. Everybody quit worrying, it's all good. Heck, with all those Eleanor Plunketts and Mrs. Judges, wither O'Carolan?
Sheesh. I'd like to find me a nice nobleman somewhere who wants to keep a fiddler on staff. I wouldn’t take up too much space in the castle.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
In short no! as this implies that itm was perfect and no longer is . It just changes, always has always will . Where it will be in 100 years no one can predict correctly .
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Zippydw, when we come to Chicago so I can show my wife around the neighborhood where I grew up, would you like for me to give you some spelling and typing lessons or would it be a hopeless endeavor in your case?
As for my last name, it sounds very English;however, when my ancestors first came here, some of them married native women because there weren't enough so-called "European" women to marry.
Down with "Plastic Paddyism"! (in favor of the Real Thing)
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
25 words or less. dinn2-right idea.
fauxcelt- What neighborhood?
Npdeco (whew!)- Strangely the Polish girls at Assumption wouldn't give me the time of day.....Oddly at a grammar school reunion-our 43rd ironically put together by a nice polish gilr who turned me down for dates three times- I got reaquainted with a woman who I actually had crossed paths with in college for about 15 minutes-and promplty lost track of her. The conversation was cordial and obvious that I should have asked her out! And in our overwhlmingly Polish Parish, in my overwhelmingly Polish class, she was the Irish redhead!
Herself (As previously noted a flaming irish redhead with temper to match) seemed a bit quiet and diplomatically backed off potential further social contact
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I was always of the opinion that trad music in Ireland was played mainly by people from rural areas (mostly poor) and an occasional townie like myself. Occasionally professional people entered the scene such as Dr Gallagan in the fifties, and much later on O'Riada. I'm sure there were many exceptions to the rule, especially in small communities. I remember with great fondness playing many a session in a small north Cork town in the seventies. The local bank manager loved the music, and although he was a non player, he always obliged with a blast of a song. The exception to the rule I'd say.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago. When I was born, my father was employed doing weather research at the University of Chicago. He wanted to live close to his job so he could walk to and from work instead of having to commute several miles twice a day by bus or train just to get to and from work.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
The poor and itinerant workers in most
West European countries now are north African or east European - I guess that means that the authentic music of the rural itinerant class nowadays is Afro-Gipsy fusion?
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
The hyjacking of the music from the rural idyle by the middle classes sound like a lovely thesis but it strikes me as missing out on fundamental points. ITM has developed and grown over the last 150 year in immigrant communities in cities outside of Ireland - Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool. Only from the mid 70s onwards has there been any mass cultural interest in ITM in Ireland. Whilst you had small pockets of continuous tradition in Ireland, ITM played today is 100 years detached from rural life. Only Comhaltas, who are criticised, tried to keep the light on (in a culturally naive way). But if you live and play in the cities mentioned you should be trulry proud that you are in the most important part of the tradition of ITM.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
ITM and class - a potentially explosive subject! In pure Marxian terms, the bourgousie or capitalist class (not sure if this equates to the 'pushed down' middle classes of today) are those who own the means of production.
In musical terms, I take this to mean ownership of the musical instrument. Who owns your instrument? You? The bank (if you're repaying the loan), the shop who hired you the instrument, a friend?
I own my Black dot accordion (can't afford a better one - yet). With this I produce tunes - well, sort of. - but haven't made any money out of it yet. Perhaps if I rent my accordion to someone at exhorbitant rates where I make a profit, then yes, this would certainly make me a capitalist. But I'm not doing that. I'm simply playing a few tunes, among friends, continuing a traditional that has been in my family for generations. What harm is in that?
The real crime is the price of instruments - A$4,600 for a Cairdin accordion. How much do they cost to make?
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
As doubleray rightly pointed out, that which is often labelled as the "middle class" nowadays is really just the modern working class. Those who live by the fruits of their own productive labour, whether with their hands or their brains are workers. Those who live of the earnings from ownership of the means of production are capitalists, i.e most pensioners nowadays...
Söd it - I'm off to listen to my new CD - Mike Rafferty's Speed 78... Amazed I never bought it earlier!
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Oh and, social climber that I am, I'd better go and do some work too so I can pay for my instruments.
Interestingly, the cost of instruments is almost always due to the amount of hand labour involved in their manufacture. We are just used to things being much cheaper due to mechanical manufacture for just about everything else in our life.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I was very tempted to get into this debate, however, my main concern is that the true roots of the music remain intact and unsullied by the perversion of modern politics. It is only in the last 30 years that the working man has been encouraged to buy property and shares, yes indeed, make us all the new middle class, split the working class, decimate the trade unions, forget values, betray our friends in the pursuit of wealth. In answer to the question, wealth and the middle classes have ruined everything that decent folk held so dear for so long.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
There is less predjudice against this music than in the past, when fiddling was scorned, and 'people of means' pursued the more 'cultured' world of classical music. So the music spreads wider than it had in the past, which increases its chance of survival, but also the 'mutations' like Celtic rock that many of us decry. There are also those who try to impose rules and regulations on it as if it was some new variety of classical music, and not just music people play because they love it, the way they love it.
And like many above have said, in the USA, the middle ain't the middle any more. No one wants to be branded as poor, so 'middle class' has become almost synonomous with working class. And with capital increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer people, things are getting worse. As Billy Holiday sang, "Them that's got shall get, and them that's not shall lose..."
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
i suppose in a way it is poisoning the music scene, not so much the music itself. but it depends on each person. i know a family, who will remain nameless, theyre not irish but anyway, theyre extremely well off and have enough money to fly their kids thousands of miles every month for music classes. they can be bullies, constantly contacting well known musicians for classes and basically forcing them with money to teach their kids. they have also screwed over a lot of these great musicians who refuse to deal with them again but the family feels that because they have money that they can basically buy their way into the music and think nothing of throwing money at a problem to make it go away. in terms of that it is ruining the music.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
How can you force someone to teach with money? You don't need to take the money. As for the rest, arrogant tosspots who think that money is the answer to all problems can be found anywhere. Just ignore/avoid them.
However, tradmoosic's last sentence bothers me - "...in terms of that it is ruining the music." - doesn't actually follow from anything else in his post. I can imagine it might be ruining the comfortable local social scene centred around the music, but the music itself?
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
(I assume that the baddies are not going so far as to pay for hitmen to beat up the musicians unless they play in a particular way, or for professional heckler's to disrupt concerts/session etc. That could be one way of using money to genuinely mess up the local music scene.)
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Crackpot,
I agree totally with what tradmoosic is saying which is, I think, this family HAS MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY NO! And *that* is what is so disturbing and -- let's say it -- UGLY about wealth when it comes into a collision course with something like ITM.
Musicians, by and large, are not comfortably off [exceptions made for Michael Flatley]. Could you say no a few thousand quid/dollars if someone said "give my kids a day's worth of lessons and it's yours"??
Perhaps you could, but I'll bet most of us would not. [But perhaps we should. But that's a different matter and, anyway, smacks of sanctimonious moralizing...better not to go there].
The anecdote tradmoosic gives is SOOO typical of a North American response...enough money and you can buy your way into anything even if it's a tradition -- hell, especially if it's a tradition. The point being there is little thought given over to either what you're doing, or what the consequences of what you're doing may be. You want it. I got the dough. Therefore it's mine. Regardless.
My point in raising the discussion is how wealth has changed the scene within and around a cultural resource like ITM in the last 30-50 yrs in Ireland. But in the last little while in particular.
Can you imagine univesities like Limmerick etc offering courses [to the children of the middle class...let's be honest] in ITM say, 40, 50, 60 years ago? Would you have seen them at Trinity? Cork? Belfast? not likely. ITM has now been "accepted" as worthy of study and pursuit by the academy. And maybe that's good. But it's a double edge sword...that's what I'm saying. And money and class is what's driving the co-option into the mainstream. I think.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
When ragtime music was most popular (between approximately 1900-1910), it was criticized and put down by the so-called "establishment" because it was created and invented here in the United States instead of coming from Europe. It was said that ragtime music would corrupt the morals of the young people by encouraging them to go to wild parties where they would overindulge in too much alcoholic beverages and do crazy and immoral dancing and so on and so forth. Another problem which the "establishment" had with ragtime was its origin because ragtime originally came from the so-called "red light districts" (which weren't supposed to exist) in the wilder towns on the frontier.
And now (about one hundred years later), ragtime is considered to be a perfectly acceptable subject for graduate students at major universities and colleges to study and do research papers on.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
For a few thousand pounds, if I was hungry I'd give anyone a day's lessons. I might be forced to make a few things clear, e.g. Parents NOT to be present. NO absolute results to be expected. And I would not be taking the child along to session under my wing. Unless that was a specific part of the agreement, then it would cost... Seriously, for a few days per year at that rate one can free oneself from all other worries about money. (Also, although I teach martial arts, not music, there are some people I will not accept into my classes whatever external incentives are shoved under my nose. And I stick to that.)
I really fail to see the problem. What is this "into the tradition" that one is meant to be able to buy? Are you talking about buying your way into a particular social scene? Where maybe you personally are of the opinion that entry should be paid for in talent/hard work, not money? It is not nice, but at the end of the day it is not "the music" but "your music scene" that you are talking about getting spoilt here.
And the Black Death is also a suitable subject for University theses. I fail to see what your point here is. Being academically interesting and being socially acceptable to the ruling classes are two different things.
And there were people going around studying ITM a hundred years ago - or what do you think Captain O'Neill was doing when he compiled his collections? The presence of courses in more obscure subjects at universities nowadays has more to do with our perception of the role of the university than of the suitability of the subjects.
Sorry, but as someone said earlier, there is nothing more middle class than slagging off the middle classes. This time, I really am off to go play some music.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Any music worth playing is transformative. We go day to day in one state of mind.
Music has the ability to change that perspective. There is a relationshpi betwee these 2 states of mind. Oppression can give tradition & music more meaning. Who here does not dream of their next session when you hear the masters' cry, 'Back in the fields ye' filthy beggars.. I'll just takes these fiddles for my firewood.
Sorry; what was the question? I have to get off to work. I'm savng up to go to a house concert.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and the other to sing about how good the old one used to be.
-
The fact that people want to play the music imo is healthy, no matter who you are or where you're from.
This music is played all over the world now, by people from many different backgrounds, not just class divisions.
I think it's outdated and impossible, but maybe understandable, to want to keep the music close and to its roots. But like everything it has to be able to adapt or it will die.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I should have said - our _perception_ of the world has got more complicated. The world, according to string theory probably _is_ more complicated now that then but that isn't what I meant, sorry.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Right. No one's blaming the music. It hasn't failed us. We have failed it. And I'm saying that's because I think we've distorted it for our own purposes -- and those expectations or purposes have to do with social status, acceptance etc and that's because many of us are now in a position monetarily as a class[es] to afford the luxury of that.
ITM has become a middle class luxury item to be consumed...just like we consume everything nowadays. And in the process it gets prettified, and tarted up and made "nice"...so, no "howling dogs" as one poster alluded to above. Instead we have Lunasa et al. Nice "groovy" music that has nothing to do with what the music is really about imho.
Nice, easy, cleaned up swinging music. Ah, yes. That's great stuff isn't it?
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
mtodd -- When you talk about the music becoming a product, an item that can be consumed, I don't understand how this analsysis could apply to session playing. There are indeed commercial artists like Lunasa, etc, but they do represent the core of what ITM means as a form of folk music. The fact that, in this day and age, people still bother to learn to play instruments, learn a bunch of tunes, and take time play together in sessions, is to me a wonderfully anachronistic phenomenon and it runs completely counter to the idea that ITM has become a product for passive consumption. As far as I can tell, this participatory ethos is going strong, regardless of Marxian socioeconomics.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's impossible to consume. It exists. They're tunes, it's community, friends, family, etc. How can you eat a tune and have it be gone, and need to make another one?
Sure, CDs, tickets for performances, OK, but that's not what 'the music' is.
It's tunes, friends, family, culture, heritage, that's where it lives.
It doesn't live on a CD or in a performance on a big stage with fancy lighting and smoke machines.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
CF
Good point. Long may the tradition remain anachronistic then....Indeed, that's no doubt part of its charm and allure. And surely we enjoy those who are in it too for their own anarchic charm [well, some people anyway], Well said. I just think there are social/economic forces that would like to tame that and make it neat and tidy and predictable...surely that's part of the criticism levelled at Comhaltas? Too much the same sound, too much the same approach. Like being the the Celtic Army or something.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
@tradmoosic: Ok, now I understand what you mean. You have my deepest sympathy, because when it comes down to it, without my local scene, I am reduced to playing for myself alone or along with CDs - and that is sad.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Wow, great question! .... but have they ruined it? no, they (we) made it their own!!
Cathal McConnell sounds like a peasant, Seamus Egan doesnt ...
Tommy Peoples sounds like a peasant, Sean Smyth doesnt ...
All modern ITM sounds middle class to me now, any peasantish stuff is not really as acceptable as it was in the 70's say ..... compare Slide with Planxty for example ...
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
>No one's blaming the music. It hasn't failed us. We have failed it.
Oh for god's sake catch a grip. Cop on. If that's the way you feel, give up, or improve or do something, but please don't include me in yer guilt trip.
Our session and most of the players can stand aloft and keep the flame burning without any feeling of having failed anyone, and I'm sure the regulars of most reasonable to good quality sessions can say the same.
And even if they can't and are still able to produce a session-like sound, well good for them. People come first, not the music. The music is what draws us all together in the pursuit of that aesthetic, but it's only a medium (singular of media) by which that process occurs.
I just can't believe you can actually hold creedence with what you typed there. Unless you just typed it in, in the solitude of your own pc and forgetting that you have a potential audience of 40,000+.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
And while I'm at it:
>ITM has become a middle class luxury item to be consumed
Again, speak for yourself. If that's the way you feel about it just leave it alone, and don't bother consuming it. Do you know/have at your session any composers (... as opposed to poseurs?)
There are certain persons I know who are very high quality musicians and composers within this genre (myself not included) who have dedicated if not their whole life, (I can think of a couple of people here) certainly their careers could possibly have been compromised by their emphasis on their time spent concentrating on this music.
And for some internet blahoo to come up with some inky dinky theory that they are just middle class hooray henrys dabbling in EYE TEE EMM just frankly makes me feel sick and very angry, leaving me with the impression, which I have kind of sniffed before but now am convinced, that you simply just don't know what you're talking about.
OK. I am going to meld back into obscurity - the only reason I became visible again was I saw this thread and felt an appropriate answer needed to be provided.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's ok, Danny. There will always be someone who thinks that things were better 40-200 years ago than they are now.
I reread mtodd's first post, especially the bit about "high culture" and "bored middle class," and that conjured up an image of Victorian New York or London, with lords and ladies in frilly dresses lounging around their estates, looking for something to do because it was too rainy to go hunting or skeet shooting or throw an outdoor dinner party. Like an Edith Wharton novel.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
ha ha! Yes - I certainly didn't recognise myself there. Yeah, maybe that was a bit of rant of mine. But it was either that or ignore it. At least I got it out of my system!
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Many of the people being slagged as overly commercial or middle class are folks that, when you catch them in a session setting, blend in seamlessly with the unison sound. And while they make money at the music, they are also very generous at activities that nurture the tradition. Not to mention all the nameless and faceless local heros who keep the music alive in kitchens and pubs around the world, who play it to their children, who buy instruments for the youth, etc, etc, etc. It is not surprising that ITM has changed, what is truly a miracle, and a blessed one at that, is that the core of the music has survived and even thrived. The glass is AT LEAST half full, folks.......
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Things change, period. It's one of the few absolutes in life.
I think we are very fortunate that this music never quite petered out, but stayed alive, however tenuously, long enough for us to enjoy it today! To me, the rest is quibbling, unless you're talking about Celtic Woman.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Quote MTODD "Mammy wants little Johnny in Dublin to be the next great fiddler which is exactly why someone like caobhim o'rallaigh has said publicly he doesn't take up teaching. This isn't a rural, isolated social activity anymore"
Its ironic that Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh is indeed from this same upper class Dublin and whose family background had no major tradition of traditional music. Did he not attend Trinity College for years? James Kelly was born and bred in urban Dublin and not in a rural isolated area. O'Raghallaigh may choose to disguise his background in his accent and dress which is fine in pursuit of a straggling peasant vagabond. Sean O Riada sought to please the upper and middle class people with his fusion of Irish traditional music with other staged arrangement with his Ceol na nUasal - Music of the Gentry. its strange for Mtodd to list Caoimhin, James Kelly, O'Riada in his profile as favourites as it appears to undermine his own suggestion that (mtodd quote)"it's urban music now for a bored middle class that wants desparately to connect with something that matters". In fact if Sean O'Riada met most of Ceoltoiri Cualann not in isolated pockets around the county but in urban areas. Perhaps Mtodd maybe you are "romanticising it somewhat anyway" as the tragic passing of the true tradition from the rural isolated areas to the flashy urban centres where people are "bored" and searching for something. If anything if your wondering why young people don't play like Patrick Kelly maybe you should ask the middle-aged people of Cree who failed to learn it form Patrick and can't pass it on to the younger generation now. Speaking condescendingly about parents who now wish their children to learn our music in classes is a backward notion and the opportunity is there for any teacher to promote the music of masters such as Patrick from recordings and past interviews etc
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Lord Gordon,
In defence of mtodd his original poat was more rhetorical than stated and clearly he's looking for answers and clarification. O'Raghallaidh is not the only Dub wandering around the country with his fiddle in an organic dyed bawneen but he is the only one that has performed and taught here in Toronto recently, and at least he can play (I love his playing). Unfortunately the opinions of tutors that come here can have lasting effects on the locals because of the absolute paucity of music here, compared to say New York, Chicago or Boston. Everyone takes everything very seriously. The level of charlatanism is staggering, particularly in the degree course at UofT. I know of several individuals who basically lie about their background in order to get the gig and proceed to fill the heads of very impressionable people with utter sh*te. Again Caoimhin states in an interview in the JMI that Toronto is one of the few places in the world with an interesting music scene, Finland being the other. This couldn't be further from the truth but I could understand how he could think that having visited for the w/e a year ago. It's very easy for people abroad to have romantic notions about cultures other than theirs but that's OK. My ire is raised when those notions are fuelled by opportunists, well meaning or otherwise who clearly have no need to worry about how they're going to pay the mortgage or put food on the table for the kids week in and week out.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Having just reread my post I want to make clear that my comment about people who fake their experience is not about the course at UofT per se but rather a more general scenario.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Many thanks Patkiwi for clarifying -- or at least alluding to -- the basic premise of what I was trying to do, ie, "looking for answers and clarification". I don't think anywhere in my original post I said "this is so", I wanted to raise the possibility that some aspects of the tradition could be or have been affected [for the worse] by a lot of new- found weath, coupled with new-found interest/popularity. I know many parents live out their fantasies through their children...that's certainly true in Irish dance studios in Toronto area and was especially true in the time of Riverdance etc. Dance classes swelled to bursting...at least in Newmarket, Ont. I was wondering perhaps if that also might be so in the Comhaltas phenomenon or otherwise. Certainly I think caobhim o'rallaigh might have been implying as much [without putting words in his mouth]..
However, what I really meant to do, and what Patkiwi is more or less saying is EXPLORE A QUESTION. This brings me to another topic, namely the seeming incapability of certain member on this site to think thoughtfully about a theory [good or bad] without PERSONAL ATTACKS.
It's ok to think a theory or whatever is sh*te. No problem, but it's another affair entirely to make personal remarks....
Key Maniac Lad for one seems to consider himself the moral gatekeeper of both good grammar, puntuation and people's opinions. Laughable. Not content to merely discuss the idea at hand he instead must make [hmmm....odd isn't it that he found 'maniac' in the scrambled anagram of his name...rather Freudian] and take it personally. In fact, that's his right [as with some other MALE posters] so far as he's concerned. In other words, passion allows you to say anything you want...even if it's personal as opposed to the subject at hand.
It is people like Key Maniac Lad [and there are several others] who are not content to agree/disagree with an opinion but must slag the contributor. And people wonder why others such as the Reverend of Zina left in disgust.
In case you missed KML's diatribe above, i'll cut and paste it here:
"And for some internet blahoo to come up with some inky dinky theory that they are just middle class hooray henrys dabbling in EYE TEE EMM just frankly makes me feel sick and very angry, leaving me with the impression, which I have kind of sniffed before but now am convinced, that you simply just don't know what you're talking about."
Nice work, Key. Not only are you a gate keeper of the tradition but also a savant. Well done my boy.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
to answer the original Q,
i dont know....
would it be better for the music to keep its extremely humble integrity, and die out without selling out?
i think its great that this stuff is gaining popularity.
it doesnt matter how much money you have, it takes time and graft to learn this stuff, if the middle classes get up to speed, then fair play to them.
i think it was gerry o connor (fiddler) who used to mildly chastise the "planxty crowd" who turned up at his early gigs.
well these planxty gonks (regardless of class) and their ilk have helped itm turn into something international. and if todays middle classes are helping the spread of itm (and helping itm musicians earn a living) from their patronage, then that is fracking great.
if itm doesnt fill the hole, something else will.
if you "get" itm, that blinding, expressway to your skull feeling from a few bars of music, i cant see how politics and class can get in the way.
for me its like chogging down on a pipe spewing out jack daniels, its a carnal thrill,and if others get it, then come on down and chog with me
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Frulator,
Is the band thing not a different kettle of fish to the essence of the art form itself ? 99.9% of bands form with one purpose and that's to make a few bob, an aspect not really covered in a previous topic. Hells bells, I've been there and I'm currently still doing it. Outside of that I love to just sit at the kitchen table and play tunes for my own amusement with nobody to judge me and without the anxiety of performance except for the wains who think that I'm playing too loud, begging me to stop. I love Planxty, I love Slide but I really dig just playing tunes with me and the missus in all our working (ex middle) class glory.
Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
My question [theory?] really relates tangentially to the good discussion previous entitled "is it really about the music?" and the discussion about Comhaltas etc. Perhaps what has happened to ITM in the last 30 odd years or so is a number of things: it's now in the cultural mainstream; it's no longer seen as a 'rural' [aka "backward" thing--a laughable concept]; it's codified more because it has more *money* behind it [the so-called Celtic Tiger effect] because it now has mass middle class participation by yuppie moms and dads [i include myself]; & those same want their KIDS to be part of this, etc etc. My point is simply this, a relatively recent and now fairly 'wealthy' mass culture is firmly behind ITM. We live out our fantasies through it [becasue we're bored with 'real life' perhaps?] and we want our kids to do the same. Mammy wants little Johnny in Dublin to be the next great fiddler which is exactly why someone like caobhim o'rallaigh has said publicly he doesn't take up teaching. This isn't a rural, isolated social activity anymore -- and maybe that was romanticising it somewhat anyway. But money and high culture have co-opted it and as a result it was bound/has to change. It has become a commodity that's now seen as 'cool' and 'real' and by entering into that world perhaps we too hope to find something deep in which to participate. Aren't we searching for the authentic...? Isn't the authentic what we love when we hear and recognize it in people like James Kelly or past masters like Patrick Kelly? Isn't that what's missing. We know it, feel it, but can't quite put a finger on it. But I think new wealth has changed it, because society has changed. It's urban music now for a bored middle class that wants desparately to connect with something that matters.
thoughts?
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ITM?
Yes
Mary
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Antikhntr
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
There is simply no way to keep anything in a hermetically sealed vacuum forever. Music changes and evolves. You can still cherish the founding fathers and mothers and choose to ignore the new fangled variations if you wish. The imagery of the barefoot Irish kid learning fiddle tunes at the feet of a cherished elder by a smoldering peat fire are gone. But that is OK and inevitable.
However, you as an individual can still go out and participate in what is right and good about this music.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I think there is some truth in what you say. Speaking broadly, ITM has shifted towards being an urban middle class music instead of a rural music of the poor and itinerant. And that is sort of odd and postmodern, given the roots of the music.
However, I would not say that ITM has been "ruined" by the things you describe. I was listening to some old 78's recently and I was reminded that the way they were playing this music a century ago is very much like the way it is played today, despite vast changes happening in society, the world, etc.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by timmy!
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
They were saying this 40 years ago.
They will be saying it in 40 years time, again.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
CF
perhaps "ruined" isn't the right word. maybe the more commercialized aspects of the music [now] are just more noticeable/prevalent because of the media we have that we didn't have 10 years ago. It's easy to critique unfeeling playing on YouTube or Comhaltas' site in a way that would have been impossible until recently. We could just be bemoaning more because there's more available to bemoan. And it may be true that the core playing -- as you point out -- isn't terribly different from 80-100 yrs ago. I must but on my Michael Coleman cds again.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
"They were saying this 40 years ago.
They will be saying it in 40 years time, again."
Which is why this thread and the "is it really about the music" thread, are the most ridiculous threads I've read in a long while.
It's more of the "ITM is this and only this and only my friends and I do it right and you don't" BS. It''s really annoying. </rant>
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Fishmonger
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Even 100-200 years ago traditional music wasn't *only* played by the itinerant, lower classes. There were a lot of middle class pipers; in fact, pipers were more likely to be middle class or gentry of some sort than not given the instrument wasn't exactly cheap then either.
It is a bit too rosy for my taste to presume that the music was somehow "better" and more "authentic" (what does that mean anyway?) when people in Ireland were really, really poor and desperate. It's a dubious endeavour at best to characterize nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish music because we have so few recordings of it. Of the ones we do have, you can't say that everyone played like that. Who knows how "everyone" played?
I have met and listened to many brilliant musicians who care deeply about music. Does the fact they are not starving and sharing the living room with their six siblings and the family cow make their music less "authentic?"
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Yes, the middle class ruined ITM when the first noble gave Carolan room and board for a few weeks. Been downhill ever since. Damn landed gentry.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Not to worry, Michael. The middle class is vanishing at an ever increasing rate. At least in the U S of A.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Bob himself
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I don't think you can generalise away and say that pipers were more likely to be middle class or gentry. There were a few of those, the majority however, weren't.
I think you can hear a difference between the older musicians and the present (upcoming) generation. The difference is for a large part in the transmission, most of today's player have been taught, and they sound like it.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
i think some people have a little too much time for thinking...............
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by S.Doherty
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Aye, SWFL.
As far as I know, Michael Coleman wasn't living in a cardboard box underneath the Queenboro Bridge.
Patsy Touhy did rather well for himself entertaining the middle classes on Vaudeville.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
"There is nothing more bourgeois than wanting not to appear bourgeois."
—"The Philosophy of Andy Warhol" (1975)
Some ungratefully express their sulking boredom with the bland culture that has nurtured and shielded them by getting multiple faux-tribal tattoos (which then quickly became blandly mainstream).
I ungratefully express my sulking boredom with the bland culture that has nurtured and shielded me by occasionally playing music that is not mainstream (though inevitably it is becoming more blandly mainstream).
I am a laughably inauthentic player who tends to forget how lucky I am that I have the time and the privilege and the right to be laughably inauthentic. Plus, chicks dig it. Er, dug it. Sigh.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's always been across the rural/urban divide. It is argued that the vast majority of good musicians in the 18th century were full time professional players, not some farmer who played for his own pleasure after a full days harvest. The upper echelons of Irish society have always encourged the music through patronage often inducing the ire of the great unwashed who would probably rather listen to CandW anyway. Singing and dancing would be different, the peasantry would have a completely different culture around the pursuit of those two arts than the gentry.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Patkiwi
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Too strong a word. 'ruined', because it is not-yet.
In bankers terms, ITM is probably a little bit of 'leading indicator' and alot of 'trailing indicator' as far as the influence of Irish Culture during the past 100 or so years, though maybe more dramatically since the late '70's.
Leading- ITM really was not particularly widely popular through the forst part of the 20th century. It was a popular local curiosity for second generation kids of immigrants going back to see the 'Old Sod' IF you could get to where the real music was being played. The big change allowing the popularization of ITM actually was probably the Irish Road system. It was a disaster up until 20 years ago. The Roads not only opened up the country so that curious non-Irish folks (last time I was there there was more German and Japanese being spoken in the tourist places than 'American'. ) could get places they would never have dreamed of earlier, it allowed the rural musicians easier access to major markets and get back home comfortably.
The Chietains success is a testament to that change in access and visibility.
Sadly, which is where I sense alot of the contributors here are going, is that the changes/popularization of ITM is lagging indicator of the homoginization of the Irish culture.
While the Irish culture and descendants around the world continue have a huge influence world-wide (I am not kidding when I say I live in a Chicago neighborhood where everyone believes they are Irish regardless of their ethnicity.), the increased 'familiarity' with the Culture is devaluing it. The least common denominator aspects seem to be the ones being prominant- the excessive drinking, Guiness, a charicature of a percieved 'wink-nod-wink' conservative attitude towards sex ( strange to put that into this website-but when I was growing up, Irish girls were the prettiest and their mothers the most protective, which the girls supposedly rebelled against).
In ITM, that devaluation shows up in the grossly over produced PBS fund raising spectacles that play every pledge drive, the 'Irish Cruises' to carribean islands where the phrase 'black irishman' has nothing to do with hair color and Moorish genetic influence as it were, attempts by every fiddler to play in excess of a 240 metronome setting, and by ITM crossing-over into popular music to the point of the genre becoming trite.
But that's what makes learning and playing the tunes right so important. The importance of the Mustad Board among other places where some still are concerned with keeping the faith with ITM.
I am Polish (though Irish by osmosis after 36 years with Herself of Donegal and Mayo roots). I have seem how assimilation in the states combined with the oppression by the communists and upheaval of WWII has really its toll on our culture. I would like to say that we are charicatured as alternating chord accordian polka players who dance in strange costumes. But even that is not true because very few of polish descent play the accordion anymore, and they've all changed their names to sound 'Mer'c'n (American)
Take me for instance. I hate 'Polish Stomp' polkas, can't pronounce a word of Polish properly, really don't like saur kraut (kapusta) and have a name that would pass real well in the English parliament.-anglicized in 1932.
Slow day...... I am always accused of over-analyzing. My button box teacher is always surprised at that. He just wishes I would learn to calm down and just play the music.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Lord I am a rotten typist! The Mustard board needs a spell check utility!
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
You tell 'em zippy!
The Reverend calls that "Plastic Paddyism". What can we do? Just keep setting a good cultural example, I suppose. Of course, Ireland having like 20 boxers in the Olympics does nothing for the stereotype of the fighting Irishman...
But anyway, yeah. Everybody quit worrying, it's all good. Heck, with all those Eleanor Plunketts and Mrs. Judges, wither O'Carolan?
Sheesh. I'd like to find me a nice nobleman somewhere who wants to keep a fiddler on staff. I wouldn’t take up too much space in the castle.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
zippy--When I was young the most attractive girls in my 'hood, no contest, were Polish. The grass is always greener...
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
In short no! as this implies that itm was perfect and no longer is . It just changes, always has always will . Where it will be in 100 years no one can predict correctly .
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by bazouki dave
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I agree with Stephen.......GO AND PLAY SOME MUSIC!
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by dinn2
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Zippydw, when we come to Chicago so I can show my wife around the neighborhood where I grew up, would you like for me to give you some spelling and typing lessons or would it be a hopeless endeavor in your case?
As for my last name, it sounds very English;however, when my ancestors first came here, some of them married native women because there weren't enough so-called "European" women to marry.
Down with "Plastic Paddyism"! (in favor of the Real Thing)
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
25 words or less. dinn2-right idea.
fauxcelt- What neighborhood?
Npdeco (whew!)- Strangely the Polish girls at Assumption wouldn't give me the time of day.....Oddly at a grammar school reunion-our 43rd ironically put together by a nice polish gilr who turned me down for dates three times- I got reaquainted with a woman who I actually had crossed paths with in college for about 15 minutes-and promplty lost track of her. The conversation was cordial and obvious that I should have asked her out! And in our overwhlmingly Polish Parish, in my overwhelmingly Polish class, she was the Irish redhead!
Herself (As previously noted a flaming irish redhead with temper to match) seemed a bit quiet and diplomatically backed off potential further social contact
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I was always of the opinion that trad music in Ireland was played mainly by people from rural areas (mostly poor) and an occasional townie like myself. Occasionally professional people entered the scene such as Dr Gallagan in the fifties, and much later on O'Riada. I'm sure there were many exceptions to the rule, especially in small communities. I remember with great fondness playing many a session in a small north Cork town in the seventies. The local bank manager loved the music, and although he was a non player, he always obliged with a blast of a song. The exception to the rule I'd say.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Free Reed
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago. When I was born, my father was employed doing weather research at the University of Chicago. He wanted to live close to his job so he could walk to and from work instead of having to commute several miles twice a day by bus or train just to get to and from work.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Maybe it's squeezed out the sort of songs and ballads rural people like. That's what they get from C&W, be it in America, Ireland or the UK.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
nicholas-Cand W is nothing more than commercial background noise for beer commercials, NASCAR races and Republican presidential candidates.
fauxcelt- nice area. Always a great neighborhood, but enjoying a renaissance over the past 20 years. I'm in Beverly a bit further south.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
That may be so, zippy, but it still seems to fill a gap for some folks!
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
The poor and itinerant workers in most
West European countries now are north African or east European - I guess that means that the authentic music of the rural itinerant class nowadays is Afro-Gipsy fusion?
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
The hyjacking of the music from the rural idyle by the middle classes sound like a lovely thesis but it strikes me as missing out on fundamental points. ITM has developed and grown over the last 150 year in immigrant communities in cities outside of Ireland - Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool. Only from the mid 70s onwards has there been any mass cultural interest in ITM in Ireland. Whilst you had small pockets of continuous tradition in Ireland, ITM played today is 100 years detached from rural life. Only Comhaltas, who are criticised, tried to keep the light on (in a culturally naive way). But if you live and play in the cities mentioned you should be trulry proud that you are in the most important part of the tradition of ITM.
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by portnasaol
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Up the diaspora! Rah!
# Posted on August 20th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
"pear of cats" ? Is that something like an apple of dogs ? Or an orange of hamsters ? Or a plum of armadillos ?
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by wolfbird
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Is that like Eric Satie's infamous piece in the shape of a pear?
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
ITM and class - a potentially explosive subject! In pure Marxian terms, the bourgousie or capitalist class (not sure if this equates to the 'pushed down' middle classes of today) are those who own the means of production.
In musical terms, I take this to mean ownership of the musical instrument. Who owns your instrument? You? The bank (if you're repaying the loan), the shop who hired you the instrument, a friend?
I own my Black dot accordion (can't afford a better one - yet). With this I produce tunes - well, sort of. - but haven't made any money out of it yet. Perhaps if I rent my accordion to someone at exhorbitant rates where I make a profit, then yes, this would certainly make me a capitalist. But I'm not doing that. I'm simply playing a few tunes, among friends, continuing a traditional that has been in my family for generations. What harm is in that?
The real crime is the price of instruments - A$4,600 for a Cairdin accordion. How much do they cost to make?
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Ozbox
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
As doubleray rightly pointed out, that which is often labelled as the "middle class" nowadays is really just the modern working class. Those who live by the fruits of their own productive labour, whether with their hands or their brains are workers. Those who live of the earnings from ownership of the means of production are capitalists, i.e most pensioners nowadays...
Söd it - I'm off to listen to my new CD - Mike Rafferty's Speed 78... Amazed I never bought it earlier!
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Oh and, social climber that I am, I'd better go and do some work too so I can pay for my instruments.
Interestingly, the cost of instruments is almost always due to the amount of hand labour involved in their manufacture. We are just used to things being much cheaper due to mechanical manufacture for just about everything else in our life.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I was very tempted to get into this debate, however, my main concern is that the true roots of the music remain intact and unsullied by the perversion of modern politics. It is only in the last 30 years that the working man has been encouraged to buy property and shares, yes indeed, make us all the new middle class, split the working class, decimate the trade unions, forget values, betray our friends in the pursuit of wealth. In answer to the question, wealth and the middle classes have ruined everything that decent folk held so dear for so long.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by strayaway
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
There is less predjudice against this music than in the past, when fiddling was scorned, and 'people of means' pursued the more 'cultured' world of classical music. So the music spreads wider than it had in the past, which increases its chance of survival, but also the 'mutations' like Celtic rock that many of us decry. There are also those who try to impose rules and regulations on it as if it was some new variety of classical music, and not just music people play because they love it, the way they love it.
And like many above have said, in the USA, the middle ain't the middle any more. No one wants to be branded as poor, so 'middle class' has become almost synonomous with working class. And with capital increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer people, things are getting worse. As Billy Holiday sang, "Them that's got shall get, and them that's not shall lose..."
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by AlBrown
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
i suppose in a way it is poisoning the music scene, not so much the music itself. but it depends on each person. i know a family, who will remain nameless, theyre not irish but anyway, theyre extremely well off and have enough money to fly their kids thousands of miles every month for music classes. they can be bullies, constantly contacting well known musicians for classes and basically forcing them with money to teach their kids. they have also screwed over a lot of these great musicians who refuse to deal with them again but the family feels that because they have money that they can basically buy their way into the music and think nothing of throwing money at a problem to make it go away. in terms of that it is ruining the music.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by tradmoosic
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
How can you force someone to teach with money? You don't need to take the money. As for the rest, arrogant tosspots who think that money is the answer to all problems can be found anywhere. Just ignore/avoid them.
However, tradmoosic's last sentence bothers me - "...in terms of that it is ruining the music." - doesn't actually follow from anything else in his post. I can imagine it might be ruining the comfortable local social scene centred around the music, but the music itself?
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
(I assume that the baddies are not going so far as to pay for hitmen to beat up the musicians unless they play in a particular way, or for professional heckler's to disrupt concerts/session etc. That could be one way of using money to genuinely mess up the local music scene.)
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Crackpot,
I agree totally with what tradmoosic is saying which is, I think, this family HAS MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY NO! And *that* is what is so disturbing and -- let's say it -- UGLY about wealth when it comes into a collision course with something like ITM.
Musicians, by and large, are not comfortably off [exceptions made for Michael Flatley]. Could you say no a few thousand quid/dollars if someone said "give my kids a day's worth of lessons and it's yours"??
Perhaps you could, but I'll bet most of us would not. [But perhaps we should. But that's a different matter and, anyway, smacks of sanctimonious moralizing...better not to go there].
The anecdote tradmoosic gives is SOOO typical of a North American response...enough money and you can buy your way into anything even if it's a tradition -- hell, especially if it's a tradition. The point being there is little thought given over to either what you're doing, or what the consequences of what you're doing may be. You want it. I got the dough. Therefore it's mine. Regardless.
My point in raising the discussion is how wealth has changed the scene within and around a cultural resource like ITM in the last 30-50 yrs in Ireland. But in the last little while in particular.
Can you imagine univesities like Limmerick etc offering courses [to the children of the middle class...let's be honest] in ITM say, 40, 50, 60 years ago? Would you have seen them at Trinity? Cork? Belfast? not likely. ITM has now been "accepted" as worthy of study and pursuit by the academy. And maybe that's good. But it's a double edge sword...that's what I'm saying. And money and class is what's driving the co-option into the mainstream. I think.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
When ragtime music was most popular (between approximately 1900-1910), it was criticized and put down by the so-called "establishment" because it was created and invented here in the United States instead of coming from Europe. It was said that ragtime music would corrupt the morals of the young people by encouraging them to go to wild parties where they would overindulge in too much alcoholic beverages and do crazy and immoral dancing and so on and so forth. Another problem which the "establishment" had with ragtime was its origin because ragtime originally came from the so-called "red light districts" (which weren't supposed to exist) in the wilder towns on the frontier.
And now (about one hundred years later), ragtime is considered to be a perfectly acceptable subject for graduate students at major universities and colleges to study and do research papers on.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
For a few thousand pounds, if I was hungry I'd give anyone a day's lessons. I might be forced to make a few things clear, e.g. Parents NOT to be present. NO absolute results to be expected. And I would not be taking the child along to session under my wing. Unless that was a specific part of the agreement, then it would cost... Seriously, for a few days per year at that rate one can free oneself from all other worries about money. (Also, although I teach martial arts, not music, there are some people I will not accept into my classes whatever external incentives are shoved under my nose. And I stick to that.)
I really fail to see the problem. What is this "into the tradition" that one is meant to be able to buy? Are you talking about buying your way into a particular social scene? Where maybe you personally are of the opinion that entry should be paid for in talent/hard work, not money? It is not nice, but at the end of the day it is not "the music" but "your music scene" that you are talking about getting spoilt here.
And the Black Death is also a suitable subject for University theses. I fail to see what your point here is. Being academically interesting and being socially acceptable to the ruling classes are two different things.
And there were people going around studying ITM a hundred years ago - or what do you think Captain O'Neill was doing when he compiled his collections? The presence of courses in more obscure subjects at universities nowadays has more to do with our perception of the role of the university than of the suitability of the subjects.
Sorry, but as someone said earlier, there is nothing more middle class than slagging off the middle classes. This time, I really am off to go play some music.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Any music worth playing is transformative. We go day to day in one state of mind.
Music has the ability to change that perspective. There is a relationshpi betwee these 2 states of mind. Oppression can give tradition & music more meaning. Who here does not dream of their next session when you hear the masters' cry, 'Back in the fields ye' filthy beggars.. I'll just takes these fiddles for my firewood.
Sorry; what was the question? I have to get off to work. I'm savng up to go to a house concert.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Ben Steen
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and the other to sing about how good the old one used to be.
-
The fact that people want to play the music imo is healthy, no matter who you are or where you're from.
This music is played all over the world now, by people from many different backgrounds, not just class divisions.
I think it's outdated and impossible, but maybe understandable, to want to keep the music close and to its roots. But like everything it has to be able to adapt or it will die.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by dee.
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I should have said - our _perception_ of the world has got more complicated. The world, according to string theory probably _is_ more complicated now that then but that isn't what I meant, sorry.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
yea i meant what you said crackpot about the scene AROUND the music, no the music itself, i prob shud have said that.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by tradmoosic
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Right. No one's blaming the music. It hasn't failed us. We have failed it. And I'm saying that's because I think we've distorted it for our own purposes -- and those expectations or purposes have to do with social status, acceptance etc and that's because many of us are now in a position monetarily as a class[es] to afford the luxury of that.
ITM has become a middle class luxury item to be consumed...just like we consume everything nowadays. And in the process it gets prettified, and tarted up and made "nice"...so, no "howling dogs" as one poster alluded to above. Instead we have Lunasa et al. Nice "groovy" music that has nothing to do with what the music is really about imho.
Nice, easy, cleaned up swinging music. Ah, yes. That's great stuff isn't it?
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
mtodd -- When you talk about the music becoming a product, an item that can be consumed, I don't understand how this analsysis could apply to session playing. There are indeed commercial artists like Lunasa, etc, but they do represent the core of what ITM means as a form of folk music. The fact that, in this day and age, people still bother to learn to play instruments, learn a bunch of tunes, and take time play together in sessions, is to me a wonderfully anachronistic phenomenon and it runs completely counter to the idea that ITM has become a product for passive consumption. As far as I can tell, this participatory ethos is going strong, regardless of Marxian socioeconomics.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by timmy!
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
ARGH!!! I meant to write:
"There are indeed commercial artists like Lunasa, etc, but they do ***NOT*** represent the core of what ITM means as a form of folk music."
Oops.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by timmy!
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's impossible to consume. It exists. They're tunes, it's community, friends, family, etc. How can you eat a tune and have it be gone, and need to make another one?
Sure, CDs, tickets for performances, OK, but that's not what 'the music' is.
It's tunes, friends, family, culture, heritage, that's where it lives.
It doesn't live on a CD or in a performance on a big stage with fancy lighting and smoke machines.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
CF
Good point. Long may the tradition remain anachronistic then....Indeed, that's no doubt part of its charm and allure. And surely we enjoy those who are in it too for their own anarchic charm [well, some people anyway], Well said. I just think there are social/economic forces that would like to tame that and make it neat and tidy and predictable...surely that's part of the criticism levelled at Comhaltas? Too much the same sound, too much the same approach. Like being the the Celtic Army or something.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
@tradmoosic: Ok, now I understand what you mean. You have my deepest sympathy, because when it comes down to it, without my local scene, I am reduced to playing for myself alone or along with CDs - and that is sad.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Crackpot
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
I don't know yet... I have to make some more money first.
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by The Merry Highlander
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Wow, great question! .... but have they ruined it? no, they (we) made it their own!!
Cathal McConnell sounds like a peasant, Seamus Egan doesnt ...
Tommy Peoples sounds like a peasant, Sean Smyth doesnt ...
All modern ITM sounds middle class to me now, any peasantish stuff is not really as acceptable as it was in the 70's say ..... compare Slide with Planxty for example ...
# Posted on August 21st 2008 by Frulator
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
>No one's blaming the music. It hasn't failed us. We have failed it.
Oh for god's sake catch a grip. Cop on. If that's the way you feel, give up, or improve or do something, but please don't include me in yer guilt trip.
Our session and most of the players can stand aloft and keep the flame burning without any feeling of having failed anyone, and I'm sure the regulars of most reasonable to good quality sessions can say the same.
And even if they can't and are still able to produce a session-like sound, well good for them. People come first, not the music. The music is what draws us all together in the pursuit of that aesthetic, but it's only a medium (singular of media) by which that process occurs.
I just can't believe you can actually hold creedence with what you typed there. Unless you just typed it in, in the solitude of your own pc and forgetting that you have a potential audience of 40,000+.
# Posted on August 22nd 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
And while I'm at it:
>ITM has become a middle class luxury item to be consumed
Again, speak for yourself. If that's the way you feel about it just leave it alone, and don't bother consuming it. Do you know/have at your session any composers (... as opposed to poseurs?)
There are certain persons I know who are very high quality musicians and composers within this genre (myself not included) who have dedicated if not their whole life, (I can think of a couple of people here) certainly their careers could possibly have been compromised by their emphasis on their time spent concentrating on this music.
And for some internet blahoo to come up with some inky dinky theory that they are just middle class hooray henrys dabbling in EYE TEE EMM just frankly makes me feel sick and very angry, leaving me with the impression, which I have kind of sniffed before but now am convinced, that you simply just don't know what you're talking about.
OK. I am going to meld back into obscurity - the only reason I became visible again was I saw this thread and felt an appropriate answer needed to be provided.
# Posted on August 22nd 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
It's ok, Danny. There will always be someone who thinks that things were better 40-200 years ago than they are now.
I reread mtodd's first post, especially the bit about "high culture" and "bored middle class," and that conjured up an image of Victorian New York or London, with lords and ladies in frilly dresses lounging around their estates, looking for something to do because it was too rainy to go hunting or skeet shooting or throw an outdoor dinner party. Like an Edith Wharton novel.
# Posted on August 22nd 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
ha ha! Yes - I certainly didn't recognise myself there. Yeah, maybe that was a bit of rant of mine. But it was either that or ignore it. At least I got it out of my system!
# Posted on August 22nd 2008 by Rudall the time
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Many of the people being slagged as overly commercial or middle class are folks that, when you catch them in a session setting, blend in seamlessly with the unison sound. And while they make money at the music, they are also very generous at activities that nurture the tradition. Not to mention all the nameless and faceless local heros who keep the music alive in kitchens and pubs around the world, who play it to their children, who buy instruments for the youth, etc, etc, etc. It is not surprising that ITM has changed, what is truly a miracle, and a blessed one at that, is that the core of the music has survived and even thrived. The glass is AT LEAST half full, folks.......
# Posted on August 22nd 2008 by AlBrown
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Things change, period. It's one of the few absolutes in life.
I think we are very fortunate that this music never quite petered out, but stayed alive, however tenuously, long enough for us to enjoy it today! To me, the rest is quibbling, unless you're talking about Celtic Woman.
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by cathrynb
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
From an Andy Capp cartoon:
Andy, reading the newspaper: "There's nothing certain in this world. Only an idiot would say he's positively sure about anything."
The Wife: "Are you sure about that, pet?"
Andy: "I'm positive!"
(Although informed opinions on the worth of Celtic Woman might be an exception to that general rule.)
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by John Galt
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Quote MTODD "Mammy wants little Johnny in Dublin to be the next great fiddler which is exactly why someone like caobhim o'rallaigh has said publicly he doesn't take up teaching. This isn't a rural, isolated social activity anymore"
Its ironic that Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh is indeed from this same upper class Dublin and whose family background had no major tradition of traditional music. Did he not attend Trinity College for years? James Kelly was born and bred in urban Dublin and not in a rural isolated area. O'Raghallaigh may choose to disguise his background in his accent and dress which is fine in pursuit of a straggling peasant vagabond. Sean O Riada sought to please the upper and middle class people with his fusion of Irish traditional music with other staged arrangement with his Ceol na nUasal - Music of the Gentry. its strange for Mtodd to list Caoimhin, James Kelly, O'Riada in his profile as favourites as it appears to undermine his own suggestion that (mtodd quote)"it's urban music now for a bored middle class that wants desparately to connect with something that matters". In fact if Sean O'Riada met most of Ceoltoiri Cualann not in isolated pockets around the county but in urban areas. Perhaps Mtodd maybe you are "romanticising it somewhat anyway" as the tragic passing of the true tradition from the rural isolated areas to the flashy urban centres where people are "bored" and searching for something. If anything if your wondering why young people don't play like Patrick Kelly maybe you should ask the middle-aged people of Cree who failed to learn it form Patrick and can't pass it on to the younger generation now. Speaking condescendingly about parents who now wish their children to learn our music in classes is a backward notion and the opportunity is there for any teacher to promote the music of masters such as Patrick from recordings and past interviews etc
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by Lord Gordon
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Lord Gordon,
In defence of mtodd his original poat was more rhetorical than stated and clearly he's looking for answers and clarification. O'Raghallaidh is not the only Dub wandering around the country with his fiddle in an organic dyed bawneen but he is the only one that has performed and taught here in Toronto recently, and at least he can play (I love his playing). Unfortunately the opinions of tutors that come here can have lasting effects on the locals because of the absolute paucity of music here, compared to say New York, Chicago or Boston. Everyone takes everything very seriously. The level of charlatanism is staggering, particularly in the degree course at UofT. I know of several individuals who basically lie about their background in order to get the gig and proceed to fill the heads of very impressionable people with utter sh*te. Again Caoimhin states in an interview in the JMI that Toronto is one of the few places in the world with an interesting music scene, Finland being the other. This couldn't be further from the truth but I could understand how he could think that having visited for the w/e a year ago. It's very easy for people abroad to have romantic notions about cultures other than theirs but that's OK. My ire is raised when those notions are fuelled by opportunists, well meaning or otherwise who clearly have no need to worry about how they're going to pay the mortgage or put food on the table for the kids week in and week out.
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by Patkiwi
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Having just reread my post I want to make clear that my comment about people who fake their experience is not about the course at UofT per se but rather a more general scenario.
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by Patkiwi
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Many thanks Patkiwi for clarifying -- or at least alluding to -- the basic premise of what I was trying to do, ie, "looking for answers and clarification". I don't think anywhere in my original post I said "this is so", I wanted to raise the possibility that some aspects of the tradition could be or have been affected [for the worse] by a lot of new- found weath, coupled with new-found interest/popularity. I know many parents live out their fantasies through their children...that's certainly true in Irish dance studios in Toronto area and was especially true in the time of Riverdance etc. Dance classes swelled to bursting...at least in Newmarket, Ont. I was wondering perhaps if that also might be so in the Comhaltas phenomenon or otherwise. Certainly I think caobhim o'rallaigh might have been implying as much [without putting words in his mouth]..
However, what I really meant to do, and what Patkiwi is more or less saying is EXPLORE A QUESTION. This brings me to another topic, namely the seeming incapability of certain member on this site to think thoughtfully about a theory [good or bad] without PERSONAL ATTACKS.
It's ok to think a theory or whatever is sh*te. No problem, but it's another affair entirely to make personal remarks....
Key Maniac Lad for one seems to consider himself the moral gatekeeper of both good grammar, puntuation and people's opinions. Laughable. Not content to merely discuss the idea at hand he instead must make [hmmm....odd isn't it that he found 'maniac' in the scrambled anagram of his name...rather Freudian] and take it personally. In fact, that's his right [as with some other MALE posters] so far as he's concerned. In other words, passion allows you to say anything you want...even if it's personal as opposed to the subject at hand.
It is people like Key Maniac Lad [and there are several others] who are not content to agree/disagree with an opinion but must slag the contributor. And people wonder why others such as the Reverend of Zina left in disgust.
In case you missed KML's diatribe above, i'll cut and paste it here:
"And for some internet blahoo to come up with some inky dinky theory that they are just middle class hooray henrys dabbling in EYE TEE EMM just frankly makes me feel sick and very angry, leaving me with the impression, which I have kind of sniffed before but now am convinced, that you simply just don't know what you're talking about."
Nice work, Key. Not only are you a gate keeper of the tradition but also a savant. Well done my boy.
Sigh.
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
correction:
Caoimhin O Raghallaigh
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by skin&bow
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
to answer the original Q,
i dont know....
would it be better for the music to keep its extremely humble integrity, and die out without selling out?
i think its great that this stuff is gaining popularity.
it doesnt matter how much money you have, it takes time and graft to learn this stuff, if the middle classes get up to speed, then fair play to them.
i think it was gerry o connor (fiddler) who used to mildly chastise the "planxty crowd" who turned up at his early gigs.
well these planxty gonks (regardless of class) and their ilk have helped itm turn into something international. and if todays middle classes are helping the spread of itm (and helping itm musicians earn a living) from their patronage, then that is fracking great.
if itm doesnt fill the hole, something else will.
if you "get" itm, that blinding, expressway to your skull feeling from a few bars of music, i cant see how politics and class can get in the way.
for me its like chogging down on a pipe spewing out jack daniels, its a carnal thrill,and if others get it, then come on down and chog with me
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by one nation under chicken
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Frulator,
Is the band thing not a different kettle of fish to the essence of the art form itself ? 99.9% of bands form with one purpose and that's to make a few bob, an aspect not really covered in a previous topic. Hells bells, I've been there and I'm currently still doing it. Outside of that I love to just sit at the kitchen table and play tunes for my own amusement with nobody to judge me and without the anxiety of performance except for the wains who think that I'm playing too loud, begging me to stop. I love Planxty, I love Slide but I really dig just playing tunes with me and the missus in all our working (ex middle) class glory.
# Posted on August 26th 2008 by Patkiwi
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Class never really came into it in a lot of ways, either you've got money or you haven't but the pint of plain was and is always yer only man.
# Posted on August 26th 2008 by Patkiwi
Re: Has wealth and the rise of middle class ruined ItM?
Well said Flan - great book that
A pint of plain is yer only man.
# Posted on August 28th 2008 by Lord Gordon