To everyone all over the globe, wherever you may be: I"ve read comments about sessions dying out, disagreements over what Trad is, etc. What are your thoughts about the condition of Trad in general? Is it getting more popular, dying out, changing, ? Will it hang on for future generations?
“Trad” in general loosely defined as indigenous, tradition-based music, (also defined by what it is not: a mass-marketed commodity), is getting smaller if you think of it as a percentage of a growing global population, one that is increasingly homogenized. As a population of practitioners, however, I think that Irish traditional music is possibly growing, in that more people are being introduced to it than are dying off. Yay!
I'm probably just showing my age, but it's the speed of change due to so much technology that worries me most, I guess.
Because everybody has access to so much music now, regional styles are certainly under threat. Often, it is their very promotion that ends up diluting them, or diluting other styles. Even in the past 25 years or so that I've had a strong interest in Irish music I have noticed that this is happening. Perhaps it is a bit strong to say that it is a BAD thing, but for many of us it is certainly a SAD thing.
It isn't entirely new - people have always moved around and shared music, and the radio and recordings have been with us awhile. It certainly hasn't killed the music off - perhaps even the opposite, but that's impossible to prove. That musicians in every part of Ireland now tend to know a few Kerry polkas or Clare reels (and for that matter Canadian tunes and Galician tunes) is in one way a nice friendly sharing kind of thing. However, in another it erodes both the players' own regional styles and possibly the styles they are attempting to assimilate.
There is probably very little anyone can do to alter the course of things, though. Possibly with the exception of teaching lots and lots of youngsters to play in their own local regional styles. Regional speaking accents are also changing, but much more alowly, and this is probably because everybody in an area speaks, but only a small percentage play traditional music.
What scares me much more is that wider, national (or whatever) styles are in danger of becomming lost - especially with the rise of "Celtic" music as a perceived genre. So growth and change do not necessarily equal health in my book.
Something will undoubtedly hang on for future generations, but whether many of us would like or recognise it 100 years from now is a difficult question.
I think it's still in a *very* healthy condition. Whenever I visit London, Leeds, Fermanagh, Sligo, and some parts of Clare, I'm always pleased to find many people including kids play traditional music in very old fashioned styles. And as you know, young players like Harry Bradley, Jesse Smith, Oisin McDiarmada, Kevin O'Reilly has been releasing great recordings, paying homage to the old generations of musicians. In a sense, "trad" music is just coming back.
Is TRAD alive and well? No, it isn't. Which is sad for many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm constantly being asked to provide some trad music for events or Irish pubs ( which are spreading at an alarming rate ) and can provide nothing bar maybe solo fiddle. There are simply no trad musicians or people willing to learn in my area. I've heard similar sentiments from the east coast.
I wouldn't gage the over-all health of ITM on the arguments people have in this forum. As great as this website is it still has a limited audience among ITM enthusiasts and aficionados. If you look at the source, I've been told that the music is more popular in Ireland now than it's ever been. I would imagine the same is true globally, but I have no stats to back that up.
I've been playing regularly in sessions since about 1985 and I've seen real ebb and flow in attendance and proliferation of session venues here in SF. When I first moved here in 1985 there were sessions to be found four or five nights a week. Then it dropped back to only a couple. Then they accumulated again until there was practically one every night of the week at one point. Then it dwindled again to one or two. Recently we had it back up to about four a week, but three pubs changed hands right around the same time. When pub ownership changes in a pub with a session you can count on the demise of that session. It just so happened that three pubs changed hands around the same time. No worries -- others will crop up here and there before too long. And then they'll end. S**t happens, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that the dark ages of ITM is about to begin... at least I hope not anyway.
Here in Boston it seems to be booming. A lot of sessions are cropping up outside of the city in the burbs now as well. It's great.
It baffles me that it can hang on. MAybe people like the connection to something real as opposed to the ever icreasing pop culture.
I wish I could share the optimism, and obviously no real stats exist, I'm just going on generalities and impressions. Keep in mind, Button, that the recent 4 night week of music would usually feature the same 3-6 musicians. You and I know everyone in a drastically small club in one of the most populated places in the world. And again not from lack of interest from a punter pov. Maybe a youth program would help. Does the UICC do anything like that?
Its definitely alive and doing not too bad considering its age. There are some nasty growths that should probably be cut out, but it can still get down to the pub. Although it might be more comfortable at home. Don’t worry too much. It’s under the care of some very skilled practitioners.
"Here in Boston it seems to be booming. A lot of sessions are cropping up outside of the city in the burbs now as well. It's great."
Any hints as to where?
I'm a student at Olin College in Needham, and while there's a sizeable group of people on campus who like and play traditional music - mostly Irish, but other things too - and we've all had trouble finding placed off campus to play, outside of the Green Briar (which is a bit of a haul for us carless students here).
Yes, and doing better than I would have thought in this day and age where music is blipping around the world as streams of electrons. It certainly is not as previlant as it was in the days before records when people made music to entertain themselves, and certainly isn't filling any giant concert halls, but it just keeps chugging on in the nooks and crannies of the musical world.
ITM in Boston does seem to be in decent shape. I bet I could turn up a dozen sessions in the area, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that there are others that keep to themselves. There is a fine, purpose built Irish Cultural Centre in the area and a recently renovated AOH hall in Worcester Mass'. My son attends the vibrant CCE school that is well attended by youngsters and adults; and there is an active Junior Ceili band.
This year’s All Ireland web site says they are expecting 11,000 players - if these are all competitors, then they will have had to get through their local competitions to win a spot to get there, and what percentage of all players would compete in a local Fleadh? So ITM seems to be in shape when viewed from here.
Call me old fashioned, but I don't consider how many sessions there are to be the main indication of the health or quality or the music, it's just one factor.
Examples like slainte gives are great. Great as they are, though, I'm not sure whether they indicate that the music isn't generally being homogenised.
If Irish music should start to be heard only in pubs and on CDs, it would be under threat. But as long as it stays together with dancing, singing, or other cultural aspects of Irish tradition, it would never die out.
This March I returned to Leeds, West Yorkshire, where I used to study Art History, and learn and play Irish music for a year. I stayed with a friend and great fiddler, and one night he took me to a poetry reading event held in Irish Centre there. I was told they needed some musicians to play tunes in the middle of the event and I'd be very welcome to join. When we arrived, a floor of the building was crammed with some 80 people, who are first- or second-generation Irish. Among them were around 12 young dancers, including a very good friend of mine, chatting at tables. They actually danced in front of the audience for an introduction to the whole event. The poetry reading itself was excellent, of course, with a variety of themes, such as the scenery of their homeland, the famine, the immigration, etc. Then, more than ten musicians, including very finest ones of the city and me, played some local tunes together before the break and after the event. I really like the way how music and dancing function in the community there. They both literally bring people together. Some say they used to have more sessions in the city, but I always find the scene in Leeds is in a healthy condition.
Farr, I can count far higher than the "3-6" musicians you're counting. Of course I'm gauging my count by the people I'm seeing pass through the pub I play at regularly. I’d say there’s more like a pool of 30 musicians that might randomly show up, some more than others. Then there’s a pool of maybe a dozen that I’ll run into at other sessions, and then there’s at least another dozen who I never see at sessions but will only run into at parties or piper’s club events. Outside of that there’s an unknown amount of folks from the slow player community who are having sessions around the area.
I think trad music is alive and well. I am only 23 and I know a number of other young players who are quite good and getting better. And there seem to be plenty of bands like Danu or Lunasa floating around that are doing quite well (say what you will about bands -- the fact that these guys are very popular and more or less supporting themselves playing Irish music indicates there's a lot of interest in it). And a lot of those bands, like Danu, are pretty young.
I don't know that there is homogenization of the music, or if that's bad or inevitable or whatever, but I've discussed it with a few people who are quite saddened by their perception that regional styles are disappearing. In my experience, I have met a number of musicians who say, "I want to play Sligo fiddle," so they listen to lots of Sligo fiddlers and attempt to play in that style. People who are hardcore about retaining regional style retain regional style. Then there are people who learn the tunes and find their own style and don't feel bound to any particular style. That's how I work anyway, so I think it's fine (at any rate, piping styles don't seem as historically defined by geography as they do socioeconomic class -- that's my theory on it anyway). I think individual musicians will do their own thing, and the "purists" will do what they think will maintain the pure tradition, and others will be more inclined to experiment.
The internet and recording technology, of course, will diminish the influence of regional styles. I don't think that's a terrible thing. I think you get regional styles of music when there isn't a whole lot of travel, so you learn from the people who live near you, and so an "accent" develops. And in the 1700s and 1800s and even early 1900s, Ireland was a poor, poor place and I doubt people travelled all that much. That's not the case anymore, and technology being what it is, music can travel independently of musicians. I think this is terrific. It allows people like me to learn to play. And why should I feel bound to a regional style? There isn't Boulder style uilleann piping, as far as I know. Maybe if I'd grown up in Clare in a family of Irish musicans, I'd feel crankier about this.
Yes it is. It is as simple as that, there is more intrest in it now than there ever was before. Someone once said something along the lines of if it doesn't change it is dead. Has trad continued to evolve over the years? Hell yes it has, if it hadn't we would all be writting Poetry in Gaelic and accompining ourselves with Harps.
As for regional styles again, just think about what has been going on in Dublin. I myself haven't explored the scene there yet, but it seems musicians still preserve the styles their parents or grandparents carried on. A bit like a "melting pot" but still it seems to retain some integrity when musicians with different styles and backgrounds play together. I believe that's true with the scenes all over the world, at least true with one regular session I attend in Tokyo.
I wish people from GB add some comments to prove my view of Irish music in England isn't biased.
I'm actually not in the position of talking about the scene in Tokyo in general simply because I go to only one or two regular sessions out of many others there. (I'm not living in the city anyway.) But in one of those I attend, we have several unique fiddlers: one with a distinctive American-Sligo style, another with scratchy Donegal sounds, another who still plays loud bluegrass music, another who loves to play slides and polkas, etc. We sometimes struggle to find out what tunes we can play together, but manage to do it most of the time.
I think the music is thriving, but tradition is on its last legs (if it's not already dead). Lots of people around the world love and play traditional music. Some learn to play it in a particular style that we associate (perhaps historically) with a certain region. That's all wonderful.
But a tradition isn't something you can choose on your own because you like it. It's just a part of your life. If you were musically inclined, without a car and maybe without electricity in your house in Knocknagree or Feakle or Buncrana, what choice would you have but to play the music that you found in your community? Maybe you put your own stamp on it, but your outside influences were few and far between (though not completely absent - the music did, obviously, travel). And your elders in the community came to the same music the same way.
I once heard a story (from a musician) about a family tradition (not musical) that to me sums up what tradition is. A young mother was about to cook a roast and her daughter wanted to help. The mother asked the daughter to get out the large and the small roasting pans. She cut a piece off the end of the meat, placed the large piece in the large pan and the small piece in the small pan. The daughter asked why she always did that.
The mother said, "I don't know. Grandma always did it that way. Let's call her up and ask." They did. The grandmother said the same thing. They called the girl's great-grandmother. She cleared the matter up. "I didn't have a big enough pan for the whole roast." [I suspect that's when this family tradition died.]
Good point Gary, I mostly play Irish music because I enjoy it, and because people give me free drinks when I play it, but my ethnic heritage is a mix of Scot/German/English/Irish, and the music my parents exposed me to in my youth was mostly jazz, especially Dixieland, show tunes, Tin Pan Alley, and what is becoming to be called the "American Songbook." Through popular music, I became exposed to an even wider mix of music, the radio in those days not being as polarized into specific styles as it is nowadays. As I grew older, I began to enjoy acoustic and roots music more and more, and the root I followed to the local session was Irish music. So my coming to Irish music is more of a choice than something I was weaned on.
The music will always be there, whether people like it or not.
I assume that like me, and alot of other users here on this site, that once you get into it, traditional Irish Music is very infectuous.
I didn't rate it for years and thought of it as repetitive and predictable, but having my grandparents both playing fiddle alot, I wasn't given much of a choice, but to start playing.
I feel within Ireland and else where there is a large demographic of people who are born into it, and simply play because thats what they know and its just something thats done in the house....
I think this will always be there, and I think It will keep the music alive. Once its alive, as far as I'm concerned, its well.
I'd hazard a guess that provided the the tunes stay known, both in the aural and written forms then trad music is alive, no matter what sytle of accompaniment is forced into/over/around them. I suppose it's well if the number of people leaving the tradition is smaller than those entering it, and enough of the tunes are being remembered and we aren't all playing the latest "cool" tune from so-and-so's latest CD at the expense of the old tunes, the traditon is well, though I can't say if this is the case or not. And sites like this can only help to preserve the tunes - so I think we owe three cheers to Jeremy!!
I expect Gary knows the story of an Oxbridge College where a notice appeared in the quadrangle announcing that as from the beginning of the term it would be the Tradition that only Fellows of the College would be permitted to walk on the grass.
No, I don't. Please tell. Did it become a tradition or not? And if it did, it couldn't have become one until the sign was gone, yet the practice continued to be observed with people not really knowing why.
Is TRAD music alive and well?
Is TRAD music alive and well?
To everyone all over the globe, wherever you may be: I"ve read comments about sessions dying out, disagreements over what Trad is, etc. What are your thoughts about the condition of Trad in general? Is it getting more popular, dying out, changing, ? Will it hang on for future generations?
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by O'Lehane
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
If it ever does die out, I hope I die out with it!
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by gldms
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
“Trad” in general loosely defined as indigenous, tradition-based music, (also defined by what it is not: a mass-marketed commodity), is getting smaller if you think of it as a percentage of a growing global population, one that is increasingly homogenized. As a population of practitioners, however, I think that Irish traditional music is possibly growing, in that more people are being introduced to it than are dying off. Yay!
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by fidkid
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Well, I'm scared and optimistic by turns.
I'm probably just showing my age, but it's the speed of change due to so much technology that worries me most, I guess.
Because everybody has access to so much music now, regional styles are certainly under threat. Often, it is their very promotion that ends up diluting them, or diluting other styles. Even in the past 25 years or so that I've had a strong interest in Irish music I have noticed that this is happening. Perhaps it is a bit strong to say that it is a BAD thing, but for many of us it is certainly a SAD thing.
It isn't entirely new - people have always moved around and shared music, and the radio and recordings have been with us awhile. It certainly hasn't killed the music off - perhaps even the opposite, but that's impossible to prove. That musicians in every part of Ireland now tend to know a few Kerry polkas or Clare reels (and for that matter Canadian tunes and Galician tunes) is in one way a nice friendly sharing kind of thing. However, in another it erodes both the players' own regional styles and possibly the styles they are attempting to assimilate.
There is probably very little anyone can do to alter the course of things, though. Possibly with the exception of teaching lots and lots of youngsters to play in their own local regional styles. Regional speaking accents are also changing, but much more alowly, and this is probably because everybody in an area speaks, but only a small percentage play traditional music.
What scares me much more is that wider, national (or whatever) styles are in danger of becomming lost - especially with the rise of "Celtic" music as a perceived genre. So growth and change do not necessarily equal health in my book.
Something will undoubtedly hang on for future generations, but whether many of us would like or recognise it 100 years from now is a difficult question.
T
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by kris
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I don't know what that T at the end of my post is - must have hit a key...
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by kris
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
When we stop arguing, so-called ITM would die.
I think it's still in a *very* healthy condition. Whenever I visit London, Leeds, Fermanagh, Sligo, and some parts of Clare, I'm always pleased to find many people including kids play traditional music in very old fashioned styles. And as you know, young players like Harry Bradley, Jesse Smith, Oisin McDiarmada, Kevin O'Reilly has been releasing great recordings, paying homage to the old generations of musicians. In a sense, "trad" music is just coming back.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Listen to these programmes:
Ceili House from Manchester:
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/ceilihouse/rams/7may.smil (broadcast on May 7th, 2005)
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/ceilihouse/rams/18june.smil (broadcast on June 18th, 2006)
Do you still think this diddly music is increasingly homogenised or dying out?
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Oops, I mean the second one was broadcast on June 18th, *2005*.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Is TRAD alive and well? No, it isn't. Which is sad for many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm constantly being asked to provide some trad music for events or Irish pubs ( which are spreading at an alarming rate ) and can provide nothing bar maybe solo fiddle. There are simply no trad musicians or people willing to learn in my area. I've heard similar sentiments from the east coast.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by Farr
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I wouldn't gage the over-all health of ITM on the arguments people have in this forum. As great as this website is it still has a limited audience among ITM enthusiasts and aficionados. If you look at the source, I've been told that the music is more popular in Ireland now than it's ever been. I would imagine the same is true globally, but I have no stats to back that up.
I've been playing regularly in sessions since about 1985 and I've seen real ebb and flow in attendance and proliferation of session venues here in SF. When I first moved here in 1985 there were sessions to be found four or five nights a week. Then it dropped back to only a couple. Then they accumulated again until there was practically one every night of the week at one point. Then it dwindled again to one or two. Recently we had it back up to about four a week, but three pubs changed hands right around the same time. When pub ownership changes in a pub with a session you can count on the demise of that session. It just so happened that three pubs changed hands around the same time. No worries -- others will crop up here and there before too long. And then they'll end. S**t happens, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that the dark ages of ITM is about to begin... at least I hope not anyway.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Here in Boston it seems to be booming. A lot of sessions are cropping up outside of the city in the burbs now as well. It's great.
It baffles me that it can hang on. MAybe people like the connection to something real as opposed to the ever icreasing pop culture.
Salt
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by saltcast
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I wish I could share the optimism, and obviously no real stats exist, I'm just going on generalities and impressions. Keep in mind, Button, that the recent 4 night week of music would usually feature the same 3-6 musicians. You and I know everyone in a drastically small club in one of the most populated places in the world. And again not from lack of interest from a punter pov. Maybe a youth program would help. Does the UICC do anything like that?
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by Farr
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Its definitely alive and doing not too bad considering its age. There are some nasty growths that should probably be cut out, but it can still get down to the pub. Although it might be more comfortable at home. Don’t worry too much. It’s under the care of some very skilled practitioners.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by fidkid
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
"Here in Boston it seems to be booming. A lot of sessions are cropping up outside of the city in the burbs now as well. It's great."
Any hints as to where?
I'm a student at Olin College in Needham, and while there's a sizeable group of people on campus who like and play traditional music - mostly Irish, but other things too - and we've all had trouble finding placed off campus to play, outside of the Green Briar (which is a bit of a haul for us carless students here).
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by tualha04
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Yes, and doing better than I would have thought in this day and age where music is blipping around the world as streams of electrons. It certainly is not as previlant as it was in the days before records when people made music to entertain themselves, and certainly isn't filling any giant concert halls, but it just keeps chugging on in the nooks and crannies of the musical world.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by AlBrown
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
ITM in Boston does seem to be in decent shape. I bet I could turn up a dozen sessions in the area, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that there are others that keep to themselves. There is a fine, purpose built Irish Cultural Centre in the area and a recently renovated AOH hall in Worcester Mass'. My son attends the vibrant CCE school that is well attended by youngsters and adults; and there is an active Junior Ceili band.
This year’s All Ireland web site says they are expecting 11,000 players - if these are all competitors, then they will have had to get through their local competitions to win a spot to get there, and what percentage of all players would compete in a local Fleadh? So ITM seems to be in shape when viewed from here.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by billiamconkey
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Call me old fashioned, but I don't consider how many sessions there are to be the main indication of the health or quality or the music, it's just one factor.
Examples like slainte gives are great. Great as they are, though, I'm not sure whether they indicate that the music isn't generally being homogenised.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by kris
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
If Irish music should start to be heard only in pubs and on CDs, it would be under threat. But as long as it stays together with dancing, singing, or other cultural aspects of Irish tradition, it would never die out.
This March I returned to Leeds, West Yorkshire, where I used to study Art History, and learn and play Irish music for a year. I stayed with a friend and great fiddler, and one night he took me to a poetry reading event held in Irish Centre there. I was told they needed some musicians to play tunes in the middle of the event and I'd be very welcome to join. When we arrived, a floor of the building was crammed with some 80 people, who are first- or second-generation Irish. Among them were around 12 young dancers, including a very good friend of mine, chatting at tables. They actually danced in front of the audience for an introduction to the whole event. The poetry reading itself was excellent, of course, with a variety of themes, such as the scenery of their homeland, the famine, the immigration, etc. Then, more than ten musicians, including very finest ones of the city and me, played some local tunes together before the break and after the event. I really like the way how music and dancing function in the community there. They both literally bring people together. Some say they used to have more sessions in the city, but I always find the scene in Leeds is in a healthy condition.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
As for homogenisation of music, I have a question: Has there been any single unified and "pure" regional style in the past?
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Farr, I can count far higher than the "3-6" musicians you're counting. Of course I'm gauging my count by the people I'm seeing pass through the pub I play at regularly. I’d say there’s more like a pool of 30 musicians that might randomly show up, some more than others. Then there’s a pool of maybe a dozen that I’ll run into at other sessions, and then there’s at least another dozen who I never see at sessions but will only run into at parties or piper’s club events. Outside of that there’s an unknown amount of folks from the slow player community who are having sessions around the area.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Yes
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by bodhran bliss
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I think trad music is alive and well. I am only 23 and I know a number of other young players who are quite good and getting better. And there seem to be plenty of bands like Danu or Lunasa floating around that are doing quite well (say what you will about bands -- the fact that these guys are very popular and more or less supporting themselves playing Irish music indicates there's a lot of interest in it). And a lot of those bands, like Danu, are pretty young.
I don't know that there is homogenization of the music, or if that's bad or inevitable or whatever, but I've discussed it with a few people who are quite saddened by their perception that regional styles are disappearing. In my experience, I have met a number of musicians who say, "I want to play Sligo fiddle," so they listen to lots of Sligo fiddlers and attempt to play in that style. People who are hardcore about retaining regional style retain regional style. Then there are people who learn the tunes and find their own style and don't feel bound to any particular style. That's how I work anyway, so I think it's fine (at any rate, piping styles don't seem as historically defined by geography as they do socioeconomic class -- that's my theory on it anyway). I think individual musicians will do their own thing, and the "purists" will do what they think will maintain the pure tradition, and others will be more inclined to experiment.
The internet and recording technology, of course, will diminish the influence of regional styles. I don't think that's a terrible thing. I think you get regional styles of music when there isn't a whole lot of travel, so you learn from the people who live near you, and so an "accent" develops. And in the 1700s and 1800s and even early 1900s, Ireland was a poor, poor place and I doubt people travelled all that much. That's not the case anymore, and technology being what it is, music can travel independently of musicians. I think this is terrific. It allows people like me to learn to play. And why should I feel bound to a regional style? There isn't Boulder style uilleann piping, as far as I know. Maybe if I'd grown up in Clare in a family of Irish musicans, I'd feel crankier about this.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by TheSilverSpear
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Yes it is. It is as simple as that, there is more intrest in it now than there ever was before. Someone once said something along the lines of if it doesn't change it is dead. Has trad continued to evolve over the years? Hell yes it has, if it hadn't we would all be writting Poetry in Gaelic and accompining ourselves with Harps.
# Posted on May 11th 2006 by Unseen122
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
As for regional styles again, just think about what has been going on in Dublin. I myself haven't explored the scene there yet, but it seems musicians still preserve the styles their parents or grandparents carried on. A bit like a "melting pot" but still it seems to retain some integrity when musicians with different styles and backgrounds play together. I believe that's true with the scenes all over the world, at least true with one regular session I attend in Tokyo.
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I think I'm going to shut up. I love reading people's comments, but certainly not rereading mine.
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
OK< great point. If its true in Tokyo, its definitely thriving! Just not in San Francisco...
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by Farr
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I wish people from GB add some comments to prove my view of Irish music in England isn't biased.
I'm actually not in the position of talking about the scene in Tokyo in general simply because I go to only one or two regular sessions out of many others there. (I'm not living in the city anyway.) But in one of those I attend, we have several unique fiddlers: one with a distinctive American-Sligo style, another with scratchy Donegal sounds, another who still plays loud bluegrass music, another who loves to play slides and polkas, etc. We sometimes struggle to find out what tunes we can play together, but manage to do it most of the time.
Now, I'll be quiet.
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by slainte
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I think the music is thriving, but tradition is on its last legs (if it's not already dead). Lots of people around the world love and play traditional music. Some learn to play it in a particular style that we associate (perhaps historically) with a certain region. That's all wonderful.
But a tradition isn't something you can choose on your own because you like it. It's just a part of your life. If you were musically inclined, without a car and maybe without electricity in your house in Knocknagree or Feakle or Buncrana, what choice would you have but to play the music that you found in your community? Maybe you put your own stamp on it, but your outside influences were few and far between (though not completely absent - the music did, obviously, travel). And your elders in the community came to the same music the same way.
I once heard a story (from a musician) about a family tradition (not musical) that to me sums up what tradition is. A young mother was about to cook a roast and her daughter wanted to help. The mother asked the daughter to get out the large and the small roasting pans. She cut a piece off the end of the meat, placed the large piece in the large pan and the small piece in the small pan. The daughter asked why she always did that.
The mother said, "I don't know. Grandma always did it that way. Let's call her up and ask." They did. The grandmother said the same thing. They called the girl's great-grandmother. She cleared the matter up. "I didn't have a big enough pan for the whole roast." [I suspect that's when this family tradition died.]
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by GaryAMartin
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
Good point Gary, I mostly play Irish music because I enjoy it, and because people give me free drinks when I play it, but my ethnic heritage is a mix of Scot/German/English/Irish, and the music my parents exposed me to in my youth was mostly jazz, especially Dixieland, show tunes, Tin Pan Alley, and what is becoming to be called the "American Songbook." Through popular music, I became exposed to an even wider mix of music, the radio in those days not being as polarized into specific styles as it is nowadays. As I grew older, I began to enjoy acoustic and roots music more and more, and the root I followed to the local session was Irish music. So my coming to Irish music is more of a choice than something I was weaned on.
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by AlBrown
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
The music will always be there, whether people like it or not.
I assume that like me, and alot of other users here on this site, that once you get into it, traditional Irish Music is very infectuous.
I didn't rate it for years and thought of it as repetitive and predictable, but having my grandparents both playing fiddle alot, I wasn't given much of a choice, but to start playing.
I feel within Ireland and else where there is a large demographic of people who are born into it, and simply play because thats what they know and its just something thats done in the house....
I think this will always be there, and I think It will keep the music alive. Once its alive, as far as I'm concerned, its well.
# Posted on May 12th 2006 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
TRAD is what I am able to play. If I can't play it, it cannot be TRAD.
# Posted on May 14th 2006 by stonecrusher
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I'd hazard a guess that provided the the tunes stay known, both in the aural and written forms then trad music is alive, no matter what sytle of accompaniment is forced into/over/around them. I suppose it's well if the number of people leaving the tradition is smaller than those entering it, and enough of the tunes are being remembered and we aren't all playing the latest "cool" tune from so-and-so's latest CD at the expense of the old tunes, the traditon is well, though I can't say if this is the case or not. And sites like this can only help to preserve the tunes - so I think we owe three cheers to Jeremy!!
# Posted on May 14th 2006 by Andy V
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
I expect Gary knows the story of an Oxbridge College where a notice appeared in the quadrangle announcing that as from the beginning of the term it would be the Tradition that only Fellows of the College would be permitted to walk on the grass.
# Posted on May 15th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Is TRAD music alive and well?
No, I don't. Please tell. Did it become a tradition or not? And if it did, it couldn't have become one until the sign was gone, yet the practice continued to be observed with people not really knowing why.
# Posted on May 15th 2006 by GaryAMartin