"Neagh" seems like the sound a horse makes
As in 'Lough Neagh' - pronounced 'nay'.
Is there a connection here with the horse hair on the fiddle bow. :~}
It seems appropriate that a word that no-one can properly define yet everyone knows it is that special ingredient in good ITM, should be impossible to spell.
I never heard that expression until I heard Eileen Ivers use it at her workshop up at the Catskills this summer. It seems that what she was referring to is what makes the music sound Irish and have lift, make you want to dance.
Specifically it seemed that the slurring into the downbeat of a jig (which is what we were working on) is a good example of putting the "nyah" into the music.
After hearing a Kevin Burke quote about old men listening to a young player and saying "He's got the nyah", my husband commented that it sounds like a disease. If so, it's not one I'd mind getting.
My question is, do the number of As in the word increase the more intense the nyah becomes? Is having the nyaaaaah better than just having the nyaah?
haha, i have no idea fiddle mouse. i would assume so. it adds more emphasis and meaning through intonation.
my grandparents said danu doesnt have much neagh, haha. said they were "irish hillbillies". they really liked them, tho. just said they had very little neagh.
when i hear irish people say it, they put a hard aa sound in it. very in the front and center of the mouth. awkward at first but i like it. we americans are lazy in our pronunciation.
Yep, in jigs (and other tune types as well), you gte nyah by slurring across the bar line (from the last note(s) of one bar onto the downbeat at the start of the next bar. You also get it by delaying landing on the strong notes, for example K:D maj, instead of playing |FABc d2...| you can add nyah by hanging on the c and sliding or hammering from the c to the d: |FABc c-d2....|
*Grin* Sara, the meat of the nyah is in the 'ny' bit, the little slidey mini-crescendo onto a note. Too much and you'll sound like a drunken trombonist.
Kerri, Bobby Casey has lots of nyah--listen to him playing Rolling in the Barrel and In the Taproom, or take your pick of West Clare players. Let's see, Paddy Keenan, Kevin Burke (*lots* of nyah in his Sean Ryan's Jigs set). Just about every track on Martin Hayes's Lonesome Touch is brimming with nyah.
Basically, it's Irish swing (not to be confused with the soap).
Packie Manus Byrne on the subject of "the nyah", from "Recollections of a Donegal Man", publ. 1989:
Quote:
I've heard a lot of traditional musicians in my time, and I can always tell the people that were brought up with it and the people that learned it as a chore -- to learn this music was something that they set themselves out to do. I'm not saying that the people who picked it up from their parents were always better musicians, but there was something about it that just gave you the idea, oh aye, it's in his hands or in his blood or it's in the head all right. Even to this day if I'm in a folk club or at a festival or somewhere, and someone picks up an instrument to play it, and if it's anything like a flute or a fiddle or a whistle or something that I was brought up with, I'm nearly always right when I say, "Ah, that came down through the generations!"
It's just there's a feeling about it. And there's a lot of that feeling in Ireland, especially around the Dublin area, and the West Country, they used to call it the "nyah" -- there was this kind of a little twist in the voice, and in the way the words were put to the notes of the tune, and the decorations, which is very natural when you're born into that kind of music, or when you pick it up when you're very young; whereas very often that does not exist in the people who learn to sing or play when they're full grown. They do decorations and they do twiddlies, but funny enough you can tell if it grew in the hands or if it was brought in artificially.
I don't doubt Mr. Byrnes' experience, but I've heard players with the touch, lots of nyah, who didn't get it passed down from the generations. Cait Reed is an exceelent case in point--fiddler from California. She earned the nyah by learning from Martin Rochford and being open to everything she heard.
Other players touch on some of the same points as the Byrne stuff but from a more encouraging (for those of us who grew up outside the tradition) angle.
Here are some excerpts from an interview with Martin Hayes that ran in the Irish Times, August 29, 1998. The article was written by John Kelly.
“Martin Hayes…has the language and the intellectual focus with which to address the more mysterious aspects of creativity. His starting point is to accept words like mystery, magic, and muse as very real things.”
(Hayes) “A lot of older players kept talking to me about that sadness in the music, that draíocht, that touch. And I was encouraged in that direction. I didn’t have enormous physical skill as a young player and so I tried to make simple things sound well and I tried to really get into the things that I could play.”
(Hayes) “And while there is some magic in Clare of course, it’s like anything else—why are Kerry footballers great footballers? The air really isn’t any different there, but they have a belief in it now. Clare people actually believe they have the music. They are very confident about it. They don’t feel there is another source somewhere else that has a greater insight into it. So growing up in Clare you never second guessed it at all. You didn’t doubt it for one minute but that you were actually right in the heart of it.”
(Hayes) “I’m always trying to retrace my steps. All I know is that you have to clear up the mess that’s in between the music and the muse. There is a clarity and openness required on a personal level to allow music to flow through you. But when you’re caught up with doubts, with fears, with egotism—all of these issues cloud the music. If you can eliminate those by whatever means, be it spirituality, yoga, or whatever, then it happens.”
(Hayes) "I do feel anybody can play music, to tell you the truth. I think it’s a matter of exposure and opportunity. It is a gift, but it’s the gift of loving it.”
Will, you and I would like to believe the last remark for obvious reasons, and I suppose I do.
But at the same time I've learned to pay careful attention to what Packie says - he's still as sharp as a pin at 87, and has an infallible innate bullshit detector. He's from another generation entirely, born 1917, learned his music before even the radio arrived in his locality, and his judgments come from another place and time. He's quite open-minded about revivalists and those that learned when full-grown, and I'm sure he'd enjoy and appreciate your music, and probably mine as well. But I still bet he could tell whether we had it from the cradle, as it were.
I don't doubt it. One of the dead give-aways is how self-conscious most of us are when we play. People who grow up playing the tunes as part of their daily life don't suffer that. It's taken me 25 years to overcome my suburban childhood, but I am making progress.
I know what you mean about coming from another place and time. My Dad was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1914. He remembered horse drawn fire wagons, doing errands for the Dodger players who lived in the neighborhood (lots of 'medicinal' whiskey), and surviving polio. No matter where you lived, that generation went from a world of isolated villages to total globalization. It gives them a remarkable perspective, one we'd all be wise to listen to before they leave us.
Or maybe Packie has this bullshit detector of which you speak, but his philosophy about it is flawed. Basically, he is observing a stylistic difference between people who have learned to play from their family and friends and people who have taken lessons and learned from CDs and what not. Fair enough.
I can observe things, too. I can spot classically trained musicians from a mile away based on their posture and the constipated expressions on their faces. That doesn't mean I'm going to say classical musicians are *never* going to sound like Irish musicians no matter how much they might want to. Strikes me as a bit presumptuous.
i think what the guy says about from the cradle is true, for the most part. just like you can tell when someone is a foreigner by their accent. its true, there are people who learned english at 25 who i cant tell speak english, but most people dont question their fundamental ways of thinking enough to get it. they cant hear the sounds. english speakers hear sounds differently than everyone else in the world, and vice versa. its normal. just like non trad speakers (so to speak) cant hear all of it, as well. are there people who started late who can get the neagh, yeah there are, but its as rare as an american with a perfect french accent, is what i think he's getting at.
that being said, a lot of people dont play til their older but grow up listening to it. and then there are people who grow up learning to listen to music and questions themselves in all areas, and they'll get it.
how to spell nyah
how to spell nyah
i am boring. and want to know how to spell nyah. i dont feel like contributing or making meaningful discussions right now. too much thai food.
my grandpa says its neagh, but he knew the old spellings (with dots over the letters), so he's not sure if thats how they spell it now.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by daiv
Re: how to spell nyah
nyah works for me; rt honable P d"arcy has used nyah before
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by I_Fel
Re: how to spell nyah
I've seen nyah as the most common modern spelling. Even nyaah. And neagh in older texts--but I can't recall where the accent marks go.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: how to spell nyah
Neág? add a dot o'er the g and ye've got it.
mebbe
-Padraig
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Pádraig
Re: how to spell nyah
"Neagh" seems like the sound a horse makes
As in 'Lough Neagh' - pronounced 'nay'.
Is there a connection here with the horse hair on the fiddle bow. :~}
It seems appropriate that a word that no-one can properly define yet everyone knows it is that special ingredient in good ITM, should be impossible to spell.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Donough
Re: how to spell nyah
Nope
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Cath
Re: how to spell nyah
Please define.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
Hmm.
Do we have a finger in an ear here? Or is that an EFM (particularly NFS) thing?
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: how to spell nyah
"Putting the "nyah" into the music".
I never heard that expression until I heard Eileen Ivers use it at her workshop up at the Catskills this summer. It seems that what she was referring to is what makes the music sound Irish and have lift, make you want to dance.
Specifically it seemed that the slurring into the downbeat of a jig (which is what we were working on) is a good example of putting the "nyah" into the music.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Andee
Re: how to spell nyah
its also the sound you get when you bend a c natural note on a chanter; you know, nyah kinda sound
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by I_Fel
Re: how to spell nyah
Absolutely! You can also do that on fiddle--Eileen Ivers did also mention that--sliding into the downbeat note.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Andee
Re: how to spell nyah
After hearing a Kevin Burke quote about old men listening to a young player and saying "He's got the nyah", my husband commented that it sounds like a disease. If so, it's not one I'd mind getting.
My question is, do the number of As in the word increase the more intense the nyah becomes? Is having the nyaaaaah better than just having the nyaah?
Sara
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by sara g
Re: how to spell nyah
haha, i have no idea fiddle mouse. i would assume so. it adds more emphasis and meaning through intonation.
my grandparents said danu doesnt have much neagh, haha. said they were "irish hillbillies". they really liked them, tho. just said they had very little neagh.
when i hear irish people say it, they put a hard aa sound in it. very in the front and center of the mouth. awkward at first but i like it. we americans are lazy in our pronunciation.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by daiv
Re: how to spell nyah
Can you ask your grandparents who DOES have nyah? Maybe I can learn the meaning of nyah by comparison.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
Yep, in jigs (and other tune types as well), you gte nyah by slurring across the bar line (from the last note(s) of one bar onto the downbeat at the start of the next bar. You also get it by delaying landing on the strong notes, for example K:D maj, instead of playing |FABc d2...| you can add nyah by hanging on the c and sliding or hammering from the c to the d: |FABc c-d2....|
*Grin* Sara, the meat of the nyah is in the 'ny' bit, the little slidey mini-crescendo onto a note. Too much and you'll sound like a drunken trombonist.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: how to spell nyah
Kerri, Bobby Casey has lots of nyah--listen to him playing Rolling in the Barrel and In the Taproom, or take your pick of West Clare players. Let's see, Paddy Keenan, Kevin Burke (*lots* of nyah in his Sean Ryan's Jigs set). Just about every track on Martin Hayes's Lonesome Touch is brimming with nyah.
Basically, it's Irish swing (not to be confused with the soap).
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: how to spell nyah
Ahhhhhhh. I am enlightened.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
Packie Manus Byrne on the subject of "the nyah", from "Recollections of a Donegal Man", publ. 1989:
Quote:
I've heard a lot of traditional musicians in my time, and I can always tell the people that were brought up with it and the people that learned it as a chore -- to learn this music was something that they set themselves out to do. I'm not saying that the people who picked it up from their parents were always better musicians, but there was something about it that just gave you the idea, oh aye, it's in his hands or in his blood or it's in the head all right. Even to this day if I'm in a folk club or at a festival or somewhere, and someone picks up an instrument to play it, and if it's anything like a flute or a fiddle or a whistle or something that I was brought up with, I'm nearly always right when I say, "Ah, that came down through the generations!"
It's just there's a feeling about it. And there's a lot of that feeling in Ireland, especially around the Dublin area, and the West Country, they used to call it the "nyah" -- there was this kind of a little twist in the voice, and in the way the words were put to the notes of the tune, and the decorations, which is very natural when you're born into that kind of music, or when you pick it up when you're very young; whereas very often that does not exist in the people who learn to sing or play when they're full grown. They do decorations and they do twiddlies, but funny enough you can tell if it grew in the hands or if it was brought in artificially.
Endquote.
Can white men play the blues?
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Jeeves Tones
Re: how to spell nyah
I don't doubt Mr. Byrnes' experience, but I've heard players with the touch, lots of nyah, who didn't get it passed down from the generations. Cait Reed is an exceelent case in point--fiddler from California. She earned the nyah by learning from Martin Rochford and being open to everything she heard.
Other players touch on some of the same points as the Byrne stuff but from a more encouraging (for those of us who grew up outside the tradition) angle.
Here are some excerpts from an interview with Martin Hayes that ran in the Irish Times, August 29, 1998. The article was written by John Kelly.
“Martin Hayes…has the language and the intellectual focus with which to address the more mysterious aspects of creativity. His starting point is to accept words like mystery, magic, and muse as very real things.”
(Hayes) “A lot of older players kept talking to me about that sadness in the music, that draíocht, that touch. And I was encouraged in that direction. I didn’t have enormous physical skill as a young player and so I tried to make simple things sound well and I tried to really get into the things that I could play.”
(Hayes) “And while there is some magic in Clare of course, it’s like anything else—why are Kerry footballers great footballers? The air really isn’t any different there, but they have a belief in it now. Clare people actually believe they have the music. They are very confident about it. They don’t feel there is another source somewhere else that has a greater insight into it. So growing up in Clare you never second guessed it at all. You didn’t doubt it for one minute but that you were actually right in the heart of it.”
(Hayes) “I’m always trying to retrace my steps. All I know is that you have to clear up the mess that’s in between the music and the muse. There is a clarity and openness required on a personal level to allow music to flow through you. But when you’re caught up with doubts, with fears, with egotism—all of these issues cloud the music. If you can eliminate those by whatever means, be it spirituality, yoga, or whatever, then it happens.”
(Hayes) "I do feel anybody can play music, to tell you the truth. I think it’s a matter of exposure and opportunity. It is a gift, but it’s the gift of loving it.”
Amen.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: how to spell nyah
Will, you and I would like to believe the last remark for obvious reasons, and I suppose I do.
But at the same time I've learned to pay careful attention to what Packie says - he's still as sharp as a pin at 87, and has an infallible innate bullshit detector. He's from another generation entirely, born 1917, learned his music before even the radio arrived in his locality, and his judgments come from another place and time. He's quite open-minded about revivalists and those that learned when full-grown, and I'm sure he'd enjoy and appreciate your music, and probably mine as well. But I still bet he could tell whether we had it from the cradle, as it were.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Jeeves Tones
Re: how to spell nyah
I don't doubt it. One of the dead give-aways is how self-conscious most of us are when we play. People who grow up playing the tunes as part of their daily life don't suffer that. It's taken me 25 years to overcome my suburban childhood, but I am making progress.
I know what you mean about coming from another place and time. My Dad was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1914. He remembered horse drawn fire wagons, doing errands for the Dodger players who lived in the neighborhood (lots of 'medicinal' whiskey), and surviving polio. No matter where you lived, that generation went from a world of isolated villages to total globalization. It gives them a remarkable perspective, one we'd all be wise to listen to before they leave us.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: how to spell nyah
Or maybe Packie has this bullshit detector of which you speak, but his philosophy about it is flawed. Basically, he is observing a stylistic difference between people who have learned to play from their family and friends and people who have taken lessons and learned from CDs and what not. Fair enough.
I can observe things, too. I can spot classically trained musicians from a mile away based on their posture and the constipated expressions on their faces. That doesn't mean I'm going to say classical musicians are *never* going to sound like Irish musicians no matter how much they might want to. Strikes me as a bit presumptuous.
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
(Which is not to say that an 87 year old man hasn't earned the right to be as presumptuous as he darn well pleases.)
# Posted on September 21st 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
In Portugal they spell it 'nha'.
In Italy and France they spell it 'gna'.
In Germany they spell it 'nja'.
# Posted on September 22nd 2004 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: how to spell nyah
haha, thanks david! thats cool. i like gna, haha.
i think what the guy says about from the cradle is true, for the most part. just like you can tell when someone is a foreigner by their accent. its true, there are people who learned english at 25 who i cant tell speak english, but most people dont question their fundamental ways of thinking enough to get it. they cant hear the sounds. english speakers hear sounds differently than everyone else in the world, and vice versa. its normal. just like non trad speakers (so to speak) cant hear all of it, as well. are there people who started late who can get the neagh, yeah there are, but its as rare as an american with a perfect french accent, is what i think he's getting at.
that being said, a lot of people dont play til their older but grow up listening to it. and then there are people who grow up learning to listen to music and questions themselves in all areas, and they'll get it.
# Posted on September 22nd 2004 by daiv
Re: how to spell nyah
Mah Nyah Nah - no rush!
# Posted on September 22nd 2004 by Cath
Re: how to spell nyah
I've just remembered how to get foreign characters, so here's a few more spellings:
Spanish, 'ña';
Latvian, 'ņā';
Russian, 'ня'.
# Posted on September 22nd 2004 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: how to spell nyah
Canajun: nyah, eh?
# Posted on September 22nd 2004 by grego
Re: how to spell nyah
No, greg, canadian is "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaah" (K: Amin | c2 c A2 d | C3 A3)
# Posted on September 23rd 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
Correction. K: Fmaj
# Posted on September 23rd 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: how to spell nyah
I don't much care *how* it's spelled; I just want more of it to get into my music.
Just now my listeners are probably more apt to use "nyah" in the "nyah nyah nyah" schoolyard sense then in the admiring one . . .
Back to the woodshed.
# Posted on September 25th 2004 by Journeyman