Although, as a player, it's easy to take for granted the fact that I play the music, to whatever level of proficiency, I have always allowed myself time to reflect on why someone with no directly discernible Irish roots (although my maternal grandmother's maiden name was Byrne, and my paternal grandmother could not speak English, but Scots Gaelic, when she arrived in Glasgow) could feel such a strong connection to Ireland and her music.
Often colleagues have commented, but nowadays I keep my passion in the closet, as it invariably requires too lengthy an explanation.
It's on these occasions I use the dreaded "Diddly-diddly" description as a throwaway, on the premise that if you need to ask, you'll never understand properly anyway, so just feed them the line they need, to satisfy the attention-span-of-a-goldfish curiosity you get at such dinner parties (a cop-out, I know).
Getting back to the point(s).
I'm curious to know, albeit via opinions, ideologies, hard facts, etc., what makes Irish Music so popular with each of the many correspondents out there. This survey includes residents of Ireland (including the English-Occupied Zone).
I would like to hear in particular those who have knowledge relating to a particular historical slant, eg., is it really true, as apochrypha would dictate, that jigs are from Ireland, reels are from Scotland and hornpipes are from England?
I've also heard that polkas are from Bohemia (nowadays Czech Rep.) and Mazurkas, from Poland, entered the Irish tradition via America.
Why is there such a well-collected, and played, body of Irish music worldwide compared to a country of similar size and population, say, Scotland (although I'm told that in Northern Pakistan, the tribesmen are fierce defenders of the tradition of piping and pipe tune composing, believing it to be their own. And I mean Scottish Pipes. To the best of my knowledge this is true!)
OK, maybe not Scotland. What about Switzerland? You don't hear of many Swiss sessions taking off in Vancouver, or Melbourne, or Philadelphia, never mind London or even Galway City.
Is there something inherently subliminally Celtic in the tunes of the Irish tradition, like the twists in the jig Tatter Jack Walsh, or the In Your Face directness of The Sally Gardens (reel)?
Please feel free to discuss: Anything including: Poverty & 19th century Ireland, tunes predating the C19th, eg Carolan (although he was basically doing Italian stuff - argue that one if you will).
And why, would anyone sincerely believe, that there is a genuine and uniquely Celtic, ethnomusicological link with the Gallegos (Galicians) and the Bretons, and the Irish, other than that put about by those engaged, via the music industry, in making money out of it.
St. Paul, in the New Testament, wrote a letter to the Galatians, who were Celts who, in 2nd century BC, had settled in North-Central Anatolia (Turkey), so maybe someone should go record their music before George W. bombs them flat. They're Celts after all, although I bet they didn't go round calling themselves that.
According to John Davies, the history of the Celts (who never existed as a tribe which called itself Celtic) and the definition of Celticity are two separate things.
To quote from his description of picking up young hitchhikers on the Doolin road, who told him that August jollity in Doolin "'is Celtic,' they say, ' and Celtic is wonderful.' There seemed to be something ironic in all this. Here they are, teens and twenties from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and, also, so I was told, increasingly from Hungary and the Czech Republic, converging on the distant shores of Munster to become engrossed in the charms of Celticity. They come from Mitteleuropa, the region traditionally considered to be the original heartland of the Celts, and yet to them that heartland is in the furthest reaches of Europe on the coasts and islands down from Galway Bay.
'What is so wonderful about this Celtic thing?' I ask. The answers come thick and fast, not only from the Austrians but from a Belgian to whom I also give a lift. Adjectives tumble out: anarchic, spiritual, unmaterialistic, companionable, romantic, unregimented, soulful, unhurried, instinctive -- all qualities, it seems, that their own societies have come to lack. This then is what they want to find, these pilgrims form the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine. They are seeking, as one of them put it, 'the world we have lost and should not have lost'.
It is one definition of Celticity and, judging by the world's appetitie for books on Celtic spirituality, music, myths, art, magic and landscapes, it is the definition most widely held today. It may not have much relevance to the real history of the Celts, but it does confirm an abiding feature of Celticity: that the word, to quote Humpty Dumpty, means what those who use it choose it to mean."
So, yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus. *grin* Doesn't sound too much unlike our various definitions of "traditional music" now does it?
Greek writers in the sixth and fifth centuries BC first used the word Celt as the name of a people or peoples inhabiting the vincinity around Massalia. Later classical writers applied the word to an even larger area.
In the early 1700s, the Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd analyzed the Irish, Breton, Welsh and Gaulish languages and identified what would become (in the mid 1800s) a linguistic group of the Indo-European family of languages. He called this group "Celtic". Before the researchs of Lhuyd, none of these groups had ever called themselves Celts, and no classical writer had ever described the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as Celts.
William Stukeley began the habit of applying the term Celtic to any material evidence of the pre-Roman era. The salt-mine workers of Hallstat and the watery grave of the Le T
I frankly have absolutely no idea what a first generation Chinese American woman finds to connect her to things Irish, but I am a stepdancer and teacher, I make Irish stepdancing costumes, and I play the Irish fiddle.
My Lord Zina! Did you actually pull all that information from the top of your head? Wow!
One small bit of information regarding the Greek word "Keltoi". It wasn't exactly a term of enderment. By the name, "Keltoi", the Greeks meant "barbarians" or "non-Greeks". The following website has a bit more information on the subject.
So why can we find an Irish session in nearly every corner of the world but not a German traditional jam session? My first reaction is 'Have you ever HEARD a German polka?! They're HORRIBLE!". Still, it begs the question. Obviously, I love Irish Trad, so it doesn't suprise me that the music has global appeal. As to why the world loves Irish music and not German, I haven't got a clue.
Perhaps it's the oddness of the Irish modes. Western enough to be recognizable, but still odd enough to be interesting. The bones of the tunes are quite simple, but the swing and lift the genre demands pushes the tune into a strange complexity.
BTW, I'm an American cursed/blessed with an Irish surname (like a lot of Americans are). My Dad would play Tommy Makem and Clancy Brothers records at every holiday, often embarrasing us kids with the hokeyness of it all. Grew to like it eventually and I got into the dance music much later in life.
I love this topic(s)--there is so much to discuss here. I hope I can provide a thoughtful contribution at this early hour of the morning.
I am not at all Irish, either. My grandparents were Jews from Poland and Russia. No one in my family understands my passion for Irish music. They still don't even know what it is. And they don't really care. I know Klezmer music is becoming all the rage lately, but it doesn't attract me the way ITM does. My family was not musical at all, maybe if I grew up with it it would resonate more for me.
being in the ITM community, going to sessions, music lessons, has given me a sort of family experience that I didn't really get from my own family. And as they say in the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, "Tradition!"--I feel, even if in a small way, that I am contributing to the perpetuation of the music, by learning it playing it, and hopefully passing it on.
But all of this is actually just icing on the cake, I never expected the music to become so dear to me, the people to become so loved and important. In the beginning I just knew that I liked it, and wanted to learn to play it.
That being said, when I got married, I could have taken my husband's very Irish surname, and it would look so cool on my "business" cards, and everyone would just think I was Irish--but I didn't, because it was important for me to keep my own name, and somehow it drives it home to me that I am an outsider who has stumbled in from the cold, and have been taken in by the warmth and hospitality of the Irish people and their music.
P.S. Zina--I wish I could hang out with you sometime--you know so much and seem like such an interesting person!
Great ramble through the park, Zina! If they every come out with an Irish Jeopardy game show, you'll reign champion for years....
Maybe my next thought is so obvious no one dares mention it, but I would hazard a guess that Irish music is popular in so many far flung places in part because the Irish themselves are pretty far flung. I mean, you don't hear stories about Swiss police chiefs in Chicago writing down the old milking songs of the thousands of Swiss immigrants filling the bouroughs of the Windy City, do you?
A long history of Irish hardships (occupation, famine) drove much of that dispersion, and probably also imbued the music with more heart and soul than we hear in other folk forms. Hardships tend to make you passionate about life, and people respond passionately to whatever others do, especially music, with passion.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I'm 2nd or 3rd generation American on my Dad's side. His family came from Co. Roscommon to New York City and promptly tried to lose their Irishness to avoid prejudice. My family is musical, but never Irish. I was introduced to the music thanks to Mick Moloney's public radio broadcasts back in the 1970s. And it connected instantly.
Good heavens. No, I don't keep all that stuff up in my head! Especially quotes of that length. *grin* But I'm a writer and writers tend to keep references around close by their computers - I've often wondered what Will's office looks like. Of course, now I'm feeling a little uncomfy about the Helen Brannan quote, since I didn't go look that one up and did indeed pull that one out of the hat and I should probably make sure that that info was correct, and of course I had to go look up the Galician tribal names to make sure I had them spelled correctly (I mean, "Tolistobogii"?), and now I'm wondering what Alisdair Frasier bases his belief about the reels on and.... Heh
I'm not actually all that interesting, Andee. Mainly I read a lot. *snort* If you couldn't tell.
Good point about the diaspora, Will.
I miss Glauber already. I'd love to see what he'd say on this subject.
I've started to write and wiped out comments on this subject about 3 times now. Mostly because I feel, I have absolutely no qualification to speak or write with any real knowledge, just observances. I tend to agree with Will's comments about scattered peoples. I live in a country that was "settled" and in this part often by people who were transported. I grew up in a community that was settled primarily by Scots, Irish and English with the odd Ukrainian thrown in. Each brought a musical influence with them. The Metis tradition of this area can be traced to a primarily Scottish influence brought by exiled or transported Scots who were making their way trading furs to Hudson's Bay. Much of the music I heard growing up was this interesting combination of influences and yet when I hear an Irish tune, it's instantly more familiar. I'll find myself learning a new tune that I find that I know from somewhere way back only to play it for my Dad who can tell me that they used to play that at the dances when I was learning to dance standing on his feet. All that said, I've recently become interested in making musical connections to historical events. One of the ways in which conquering nations have tried to solidify their influence on a society has been to bannish the music and the language of the conquered people. Those who had the freedom to continue playing the music or speaking the language were often those who were exiled. If one person remembers the tradition continues. With Irish music, the thing that never fails to surprise me is the depth of the tradition and perhaps that's the thing that "hooks" us. There is always more to discover and another angle to discover it from. We all seem to be a bit like social historians and the further you delve into it the more you have to discover and learn. If you look at the resources and the quality of comments on many of these discussion pages you'll see what I mean which is I guess why I feel humbled by it all.
Zina,
A most impressive posting, thanks. Chinese American? Maybe your ancestors were Tocharian & the Irish music genes are now being expressed. Only joking. I heard some Chinese musicians busking once in Covent Garden, a trendy part of this town, and from a distance I mistook it for Irish music. Lovely stuff. So maybe it's not such a tenuous link.
Another musing - wrt those kids from Central Europe grooving to the celtic vibe - they more than likely are ancestors of true celts.
Did you ever read about Cheddar Man, a post-Ice Age skeleton found in the Cheddar Gorge in England? Scientists extracted his mitochondrial DNA and compared the sequence to a modern-day bloke, Mr. Adrian Targett, and found a close match. The implication was that a substantial proportion of people in modern Britain form part of local kinship groups which have had a continuous existence for 300- 400 generations. Each of those generations has adapted itself to each successive cultural and linguistic wave over the millennia.This debunks the notion that Britain's "Island Race" was the sum total of numerous mass invasions, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings etc. So no matter what language you speak, if your forebears are from around a certain area, they've probably been there since the Ice Age.
There.
So that's my Thought for the Day.
By the way, Anny, forgive my ignorance, but what is the Metis tradition?
What a great discussion....I don't know why I love this music! I'm only lately finding it a part of my life and it's taking over. I don't know why and it's interesting to find out and hear all the history and ideas. I just know it's fun to play....interesting to learn with lots of turns and twists and harmony that's unexptectedly familiar. I've come to use my 30 years of music teaching experience and college and graduate degrees in ways I never expected. It's complicated and simple...It's intellectual and spiritual....It's joyful and sad....It's the most complete music I've come to know. More! More!.......
Brent
Oh, Zina, I forgot to mention, Gallician music. The chief exponents these days are Milladoiro and Citania, and there are many others, Iike Susana Seivane, check out on the Green Linnet website, lovely stuff:
Also, this discussion is going very well so far, but I was hoping to steer it a bit more in the direction of things like how and why did sessions originate, history of specific tunes (and types of tune), and why some tunes survive and others don't, and so on and why we even bother!
Still, mustn't grumble...I admit I didn't specify those points earlier and discussions should be open-ended and democratic. I'm also curious as to whether non-musicians would be "allowed" to contribute as there are tons & tons of people out there who love the stuff, but who haven't got round to making enough noise to prove it (just thought I'd throw that one in to open it out even more).
I laughed so much to read what Will said about Swiss police/fire chiefs. I don't think I have any Irish genes, but am from English, Swiss, German, Austrian and possibly French Huguenot background (but then, who really knows what secret some great great grandparent never chose to divulge?) I grew up in Birmingham, UK and have now lived in Toronto for 32 years. So why have I always loved ITM? I've been wondering why I love ITM so much for a long time. I doubt I'll ever know, I just know I'm having a lot of fun whenever I get the chance to play it (and now I'm even getting into Scottish music too - I never believed that would happen!) I still love other kinds of music, and make my living as a violin teacher, so get lots of opportunity to introduce students to any kind of music that interests me. I'm so lucky!
History of various musics and people is always fascinating, I'm glad I found this site, where so many of you put such stimulating comments.
Thanks to all of you!
Perhaps this thread should be titled "Irish Music, History and Language". Just a thought. I wonder if there is a deep hidden connection between the language of a celtic people and their music. In the case of Irish music could the music perhaps mirror some fundamental structures of Gaelic? I'm probably talking gibberish but PhD dissertations have been written with even less secure foundations.
It's not gibberish at all to suggest that connection. There was a fascinating thread not too long ago on that topic or something very similar. It was a bit over my head at times, but emily-az or one of those other brainiacs should be able to give you the exact thread. (no offense emily, I thought some of your ideas and thoughts were brilliant!)
Not quite off the topic, but you can definitely see a connection to the music and the visual art of celtic knotwork--the endless looping, the rich ornamentation of a "simple" visual theme. The details embellishing, but never taking away from the whole. Both structured and organic
Metis! It's wonderful stuff, both the music and dancing. Anny, do you play Metis? I was astounded when I first saw this bunch of native American musicians come out on stage at a festival and from out of their instruments came Drops of Brandy.
--- So why can we find an Irish session in nearly every corner of the world but not a German traditional jam session? ---
My answer is the Irish Diaspora. Millions of irishmen and irishwomen spread all over the world during and after the famine years, so that contributed a lot to the fact that ITM can be found mostly everywhere. But yes. That's not enough to keep the music being played since late 1800's, isn't it?? So what is it? Caoimghgin says a German polka is horrible. The same applies to any traditional music from my country, Catalonia, and I'd dare saying the same about Spanish music (please. No offence, fellow spaniards). So it must be the inherent beauty of ITM that cacthes us. I must say, whenever I hear a reel, a jig, or whatever I immediatly and unscounsciosly start tapping my feet. A round later I'm already humming the tune and, whatever is my mood at that moment the music just lifts my heart. Another good reason: it's just FUN. I'm really sorry to say this again (the bloody movie has been commented too many times already), but one of the most remembered moments of the Titanic thing is the Irish party held on the third class of the vessel. Does that explain why ITM is being played all over the world??
And remember the wise irish words: Ceol agus craic.
Maybe one of the reasons it's so wide spread is 'cause it's quite easy to play.
You don't see many Bulgarian sessions.
Now I know that's not the whole story, English music is easier and the english are as wide spread, but not many people play that. That could be 'cause its not as good.
But the Scots are very wide spread and I'd argue that Scottish music is just as good as Irish. But what seems to have happened with that particular brand of Celtic twang as it travelled is it got lumped together with the general diddly, lost its Scottish edge and is now homogenised. (I know about that, that's how I and most diddlers I know know play Scottish music)
As mentioned before in this posting, Irish music is a rag bag of many traditions not even all celtic. I'd like to bet that not even half the people who play it are Irish. Is this a good thing? Of course it is. Irish music seems to have settled on a perfect blend of attractive subtlety and ease of technicality.
Bulagarian music may be better, but too hard.
Scottish music is just as good, but too precice.
English music is easy enough, but rubbish.
Metis means mixed blood. The metis fiddle tradition is a unique blend of Scots, Irish, French tunes set in a narrative fashion to remember stories of the people. It's unique sound is partly attibuted to the fact that there is no formal bar structure (although people have tried). It's highly rythmic with lots of double stops and in one of the most popular pieces the G string is tuned up to an A to provide a drone throughout. It's interesting to listen to because often you can hear the thread of the Scots or Irish influence, little snipets of the original tune but it's not the same at all. Zina, no sorry I can't play in the Metis style, although many people around here do. Mostly I don't play it because when I started to play fiddle, I learned Irish style and secondly because my double stops suck the big one. I've tried but I figure it will be a few more years before I could actually do it.
One thing that I think has been overlooked is culture. Different cultures put more emphasis on things than others. Education is very stressed in the Korean culture, sports is an important part of the Black American culture, and music is an important part of the Irish culture. With the emphasis on music in Irish culture, more people learn to play, more songs are written, and the best songs and players wash out to give a much fuller and richer tradition. There are tunes that speak to people's sad and reflective moods as well as tunes to reflect people's sheer joy and exhuberance for living. Of this large quantity of tunes that were created, the aweful stuff didn't survive while a good number of the really beautiful and catchy tunes carried on. The increased participation explains why each county would be able to cultivate its own style. Where else has this happened?
I am hooked partially because of the down-to-earthedness of the music. I shy away from other forms of music that I view as stuffy, uptight, and restrictive. Irish traditional music was written by common people for common people. Therefore its easy to learn and play enough to sound good, yet complicated enough to give you something to work on for the rest of your life.
I also am attracted to it as a fiddle player because so many tunes were composed and played on the fiddle. This makes it easier to play good sounding music on a fiddle.
Great post, Marty, and on the personal end of things, I think your post (and many of the other posts) puts the emphasis on something very important: for every single person, there will be a different way of looking at the music, they'll get different things out of it, they'll be attracted to different things about the music, and those things may shift around and change from minute to minute.
And each person may have kinds of music that will leave them cold even though it sends another person over the moon. (For me, that's country western. It does absolutely nothing for me. As Troy says, one person will see one kind of music as stuffy and uptight or whatever, whereas another will find all sorts of freedoms in it -- classical music is famous for this differing effect on different people.)
I mean, sick as it sounds, I even personally know people who quite enjoy German polkas. *grin* I can't remember who wrote it (probably Terry Pratchett, who I know I quote endlessly, sorry) but someone once referred to something like this as comparable to a monk who has been cloistered all his life -- he knows there's such a thing as vice and debauchery, and he knows that there are people out there who partake in such things and even enjoy them but, in his very heart of hearts, he can't quite believe such a thing happens or exists. Heh.
Not many contributions on the subjects of history of the music, or the history of tunes happening here, apart from what most people already know, ,just people mass-debating their own personal histories.
Yawwnnn......
Not much into the personal stuff, huh, Dan? Most of us regulars here tend to treat this forum as we do regular sessions, with digressions in conversations and all. It's not usual, really, for our threads to stick to one thing and one thing only, besides which Domhniaill Mac Aoidh *did* give us permission to digress, you know. But don't let us go boring you -- like the television, you can always change to another thread. *grin* Bet I know where a certain cheeky wee minx gets it...
Hey dan maybe you should enlighten us on the history of trad. Dont know about you lads but I personally have always been of the opinion 'you are were you are born' I dont feel any connection to any other country - I might have a dual citizenship but I will always be an aussie through and through so I dont think that has anything to do with why I play, except that it is a family tradition. I dont do it cause I want to connect with my family of 100 years ago, but I do do it cause I grew up with it and Ive heard it all my life. personally and no offence to anyone on the site I quite like Spanish music - theres a band called Felpayu (??) and they are galician I think - they are really good - on the other hand I hate scottish music. But then you cant have everything - Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world - it just wounldnt be fair if the music was brilliant as well!
bb: I presume you're the aussie banjo player who turned up with Andy at the Woodman a while back - nice playing!
History of trad? I've often wondered myself, and apart from reading here & there, have tried to figure a few things out. For example in Robert Burns' Tam O' Shanter, published in 1791, where the wiches' dance is described, there are a few telling lines:
"Warlocks and witches in a dance:
Nae cotillon brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels"
Implying, of course, that those quoted musical forms were old even then.
According to Breandan Breathnach, trotting the hay or hey was noted around 1670, in the Pale with wilder forms beyond. The term hey survived in Scotland into the C18th when it was superceded by the term Reel.
From Marie McCarthy's "Passing It On", a self-explanatory title, which was originally her Ph.D. thesis, (there's tons of stuff, actually), referring to around 1841:
"...many communities were immersed in the transmission of their own musical traditions locally, they were increasingly connected to the imagined national community through political and cultural organisations such as the Young Ireland movement, the Gaelic League, and not least, national education."
She goes on to demonstrate how the role of [traditional] music then was a powerful political force in the Nationalist movement - a point not previously made on this thread, and is still valid today, both in Ireland and amongst expatriates, whether or not they are of the belief that "you are where you're born".
These are just a few little pearls for your approbation, and this is the kind of thing I'd be more interested in discussing, but I'm tired as it's gone midnight, so "Booooing!!!!"
Dan - close - I'm the fiddler who turned up with andybanjo and the other banjo player (dan) Interesting topic but its true what zina said - as you know we all just ramble on about whatever. To be honest I'd rather just play tunes and I dont really want to discuss the history (sorry!!!) I'd rather sit down at a pub and have a pint and a few tunes. Unfortunatly I have to work - which is why I'm always on this site - next best thing to actually playing I guess.
Well, Dan, then you haven't much of an excuse, yes? *grin* Watch what you ask for then, because you'll get it. You asked why people thought there's so much Irish music being played all over the world, and people told you -- they think it's because it strikes a personal chord, and the chord it strikes is going to be different for each person, Irish or no.
I find history interesting. I also find other people's viewpoints and opinions interesting, too.
By the by, history is actually only people, you know -- moreso than just about anything else, because we make it up as we go along. One of the things that's so endlessly fascinating about Irish trad is that the history of it is really the people who play it. That would be these folks here, as well as those who went before. The stories of those who went before wouldn't necessarily be any more erudite than what you've gotten here. Can't you just see it? "Hey, this is the way they're playing hornpipes now in Dublin, lads, come over from England!" "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, that's awful!" "D'you think? I quite like it." "Leave it to the damned English to f--k up a decent hornpipe!" *snort*
Now, if you're really interested in ruminating over the bones of the history of the music in technicolor, nitpicky detail, I'd suggest you trot on over to IRate Trad. They're always happy to pick until it's raw over there.
Well put, Zina. I love the personal stories. It is "folk" music after all. It also allows me to share and to get to know all of you a little better, too.
I still stand by what I had previously posted. There is nothing wrong with wanting to understand a phenomenon from a historical perspective.
What I did ask people to post was, if you scroll to the top, was firstly what makes the music popular with the correspondents. This has been fairly exhaustively answered. I then asked from, (to quote myself) "in particular those who have knowledge of a particular historical slant", then I gave a few examples to get the ball rolling, ie jigs etc. When I said feel free to discuss "Anything....etc." I was hoping to get more of how history impacted upon the music. I thought that was implicit, going by what I had just written.
I was hoping people may have had a few nice little historical nuggets to share (and there have been, for which thanks).
Incidentally when my session pals and I have a chat between tunes quite often the subject IS about various historical apochrypha relating to the tunes and musicians.
I personally am not particularly interested in whether the music (note the judicious avoidance of the term ITM, which I despise {I would NEVER call it that in a session} - I prefer "the music" - I think we all know to which music we're referring) makes a correspondent's chest swell. That's a platitude. We all get that buzz, and it wasn't what this string was meant to be about.
History is actually only people? You can get natural history (dinosaurs etc.) and you can get the history of specific disciplines, eg the history of eg. microscopy, medicine, etc. and what I was hoping we'd discuss was the history of "the music".
Danny/Domhniaill
Do you always get this cranky when the conversation doesn't completely go your way? Maybe my initial post was a bit platitudinous (read trite), and other "correspondants" posts were as well, but it's not really very nice to point that out to people--it's kind of insulting actually. And, yes it is a bit rough for me out on the boy's playground as you asked me before. I prefer to play nice and make friends.
couple of things....
irish modes?? all the modes we play where put together buy interestingly the greeks, they are also named after greek clan or tribes.
the word hornpipe in conection with a type of tune originated around 1700's for no apperent reason other than to name them.
the stereotype everyone has now heard of that reels are from scotland etc. comes from a show put on in britten somewhere can't quite remember where where a dance from each country was performed unfortunately this stuck.
this isn't extremly precise as i'm really tred just felt a need to say something
Is that what you talk about in sessions dan?? The people I play tunes with usually talk about social things and how everyone got on during the week. I can honestly say that our sessions have never had conversations about the particular history of a particular tune, I think I'm with Andee on this one I prefer to make friends rather than over analyze the tunes ;) You do seem to be getting quite uptight that you didnt get it your own way - maybe you should take zina's advice about ITRAD - they love to over analyze everything too. By the by I would never ever ever call it ITM either - thats just plain weird - I just call it trad.
*sigh* Dan, I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at the historical perspective either.
What I *do* think there's something wrong with is going "yaawwwwn" at people because they chose to answer one facet of your question(s) rather than another. That's all. I don't think I was all that acrimonious, really.
Now, enough, don't you think? Peace out, dude. *snort*
Hey, thanks bb and zina. I thought I was a lone cry in the wilderness. Maybe I will say trad instead of ITM from now on--It does seem like a better abbreviation.
Just to clarify: Many moons ago someone on this site (it wasn't me, honest started using the acronym ITM to distinguish Irish traditional music from other genre's. My recollection is that the discussion revolved around many other forms of music, and folks needed a shorthand (much like the emoticons we use online) to be clear about when they meant just Irish traditional music. Hence, ITM.
It's not my favorite term either, and I would never say "EYE-TEA-EM" in the real world. So it's just an acronym some of us have used on this site for the sake of clarity and brevity, probably the same sorts of reasons other people call it diddly or trad.
So...I agree that most of the time on this site, we can simply say, "the music" or "the tunes," but there are conversations where people want to distinguish between, say, Irish and Scottish tunes (where saying "trad" wouldn't work because they're both traditional), or Irish traditional music and classical, etc., and then it's handy to have some shorthand to do so.
I would be leary of pegging someone as knowledgeable or not just based on their online vocabulary--this format compells us to adjust and adapt if we want to communicate clearly and to as diverse a crowd of people as we are here.
That said, if someone can come up with a better suggestion than ITM, that will work in the situations I've just described and save me from typing "I-r-i-s-h T-r-a-d-i-t-i-o-n-a-l M-u-s-i-c" all the time, I'd use it.
Regarding musical diasporas, Germany did have one: in the USA, a lot of people in Nebraska particularly are of German descent and, I read somewhere, German polkas etc. remain part of their music.
Irish music, and history
Irish music, and history
Although, as a player, it's easy to take for granted the fact that I play the music, to whatever level of proficiency, I have always allowed myself time to reflect on why someone with no directly discernible Irish roots (although my maternal grandmother's maiden name was Byrne, and my paternal grandmother could not speak English, but Scots Gaelic, when she arrived in Glasgow) could feel such a strong connection to Ireland and her music.
Often colleagues have commented, but nowadays I keep my passion in the closet, as it invariably requires too lengthy an explanation.
It's on these occasions I use the dreaded "Diddly-diddly" description as a throwaway, on the premise that if you need to ask, you'll never understand properly anyway, so just feed them the line they need, to satisfy the attention-span-of-a-goldfish curiosity you get at such dinner parties (a cop-out, I know).
Getting back to the point(s).
I'm curious to know, albeit via opinions, ideologies, hard facts, etc., what makes Irish Music so popular with each of the many correspondents out there. This survey includes residents of Ireland (including the English-Occupied Zone).
I would like to hear in particular those who have knowledge relating to a particular historical slant, eg., is it really true, as apochrypha would dictate, that jigs are from Ireland, reels are from Scotland and hornpipes are from England?
I've also heard that polkas are from Bohemia (nowadays Czech Rep.) and Mazurkas, from Poland, entered the Irish tradition via America.
Why is there such a well-collected, and played, body of Irish music worldwide compared to a country of similar size and population, say, Scotland (although I'm told that in Northern Pakistan, the tribesmen are fierce defenders of the tradition of piping and pipe tune composing, believing it to be their own. And I mean Scottish Pipes. To the best of my knowledge this is true!)
OK, maybe not Scotland. What about Switzerland? You don't hear of many Swiss sessions taking off in Vancouver, or Melbourne, or Philadelphia, never mind London or even Galway City.
Is there something inherently subliminally Celtic in the tunes of the Irish tradition, like the twists in the jig Tatter Jack Walsh, or the In Your Face directness of The Sally Gardens (reel)?
Please feel free to discuss: Anything including: Poverty & 19th century Ireland, tunes predating the C19th, eg Carolan (although he was basically doing Italian stuff - argue that one if you will).
And why, would anyone sincerely believe, that there is a genuine and uniquely Celtic, ethnomusicological link with the Gallegos (Galicians) and the Bretons, and the Irish, other than that put about by those engaged, via the music industry, in making money out of it.
St. Paul, in the New Testament, wrote a letter to the Galatians, who were Celts who, in 2nd century BC, had settled in North-Central Anatolia (Turkey), so maybe someone should go record their music before George W. bombs them flat. They're Celts after all, although I bet they didn't go round calling themselves that.
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
According to John Davies, the history of the Celts (who never existed as a tribe which called itself Celtic) and the definition of Celticity are two separate things.
To quote from his description of picking up young hitchhikers on the Doolin road, who told him that August jollity in Doolin "'is Celtic,' they say, ' and Celtic is wonderful.' There seemed to be something ironic in all this. Here they are, teens and twenties from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and, also, so I was told, increasingly from Hungary and the Czech Republic, converging on the distant shores of Munster to become engrossed in the charms of Celticity. They come from Mitteleuropa, the region traditionally considered to be the original heartland of the Celts, and yet to them that heartland is in the furthest reaches of Europe on the coasts and islands down from Galway Bay.
'What is so wonderful about this Celtic thing?' I ask. The answers come thick and fast, not only from the Austrians but from a Belgian to whom I also give a lift. Adjectives tumble out: anarchic, spiritual, unmaterialistic, companionable, romantic, unregimented, soulful, unhurried, instinctive -- all qualities, it seems, that their own societies have come to lack. This then is what they want to find, these pilgrims form the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine. They are seeking, as one of them put it, 'the world we have lost and should not have lost'.
It is one definition of Celticity and, judging by the world's appetitie for books on Celtic spirituality, music, myths, art, magic and landscapes, it is the definition most widely held today. It may not have much relevance to the real history of the Celts, but it does confirm an abiding feature of Celticity: that the word, to quote Humpty Dumpty, means what those who use it choose it to mean."
So, yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus. *grin* Doesn't sound too much unlike our various definitions of "traditional music" now does it?
Greek writers in the sixth and fifth centuries BC first used the word Celt as the name of a people or peoples inhabiting the vincinity around Massalia. Later classical writers applied the word to an even larger area.
In the early 1700s, the Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd analyzed the Irish, Breton, Welsh and Gaulish languages and identified what would become (in the mid 1800s) a linguistic group of the Indo-European family of languages. He called this group "Celtic". Before the researchs of Lhuyd, none of these groups had ever called themselves Celts, and no classical writer had ever described the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as Celts.
William Stukeley began the habit of applying the term Celtic to any material evidence of the pre-Roman era. The salt-mine workers of Hallstat and the watery grave of the Le T
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Zina Lee
P.S.
I frankly have absolutely no idea what a first generation Chinese American woman finds to connect her to things Irish, but I am a stepdancer and teacher, I make Irish stepdancing costumes, and I play the Irish fiddle.
Go figure.
zls
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
My Lord Zina! Did you actually pull all that information from the top of your head? Wow!
One small bit of information regarding the Greek word "Keltoi". It wasn't exactly a term of enderment. By the name, "Keltoi", the Greeks meant "barbarians" or "non-Greeks". The following website has a bit more information on the subject.
http://www.angelfire.com/me/ik/celt.html
So why can we find an Irish session in nearly every corner of the world but not a German traditional jam session? My first reaction is 'Have you ever HEARD a German polka?! They're HORRIBLE!". Still, it begs the question. Obviously, I love Irish Trad, so it doesn't suprise me that the music has global appeal. As to why the world loves Irish music and not German, I haven't got a clue.
Perhaps it's the oddness of the Irish modes. Western enough to be recognizable, but still odd enough to be interesting. The bones of the tunes are quite simple, but the swing and lift the genre demands pushes the tune into a strange complexity.
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Caoimghgin
BTW, I'm an American cursed/blessed with an Irish surname (like a lot of Americans are). My Dad would play Tommy Makem and Clancy Brothers records at every holiday, often embarrasing us kids with the hokeyness of it all. Grew to like it eventually and I got into the dance music much later in life.
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: Irish music, and history
Domhniaill Mac Aoidh,
I love this topic(s)--there is so much to discuss here. I hope I can provide a thoughtful contribution at this early hour of the morning.
I am not at all Irish, either. My grandparents were Jews from Poland and Russia. No one in my family understands my passion for Irish music. They still don't even know what it is. And they don't really care. I know Klezmer music is becoming all the rage lately, but it doesn't attract me the way ITM does. My family was not musical at all, maybe if I grew up with it it would resonate more for me.
being in the ITM community, going to sessions, music lessons, has given me a sort of family experience that I didn't really get from my own family. And as they say in the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, "Tradition!"--I feel, even if in a small way, that I am contributing to the perpetuation of the music, by learning it playing it, and hopefully passing it on.
But all of this is actually just icing on the cake, I never expected the music to become so dear to me, the people to become so loved and important. In the beginning I just knew that I liked it, and wanted to learn to play it.
That being said, when I got married, I could have taken my husband's very Irish surname, and it would look so cool on my "business" cards, and everyone would just think I was Irish--but I didn't, because it was important for me to keep my own name, and somehow it drives it home to me that I am an outsider who has stumbled in from the cold, and have been taken in by the warmth and hospitality of the Irish people and their music.
P.S. Zina--I wish I could hang out with you sometime--you know so much and seem like such an interesting person!
# Posted on December 6th 2002 by Andee
Re: Irish music, and history
Great ramble through the park, Zina! If they every come out with an Irish Jeopardy game show, you'll reign champion for years....
Maybe my next thought is so obvious no one dares mention it, but I would hazard a guess that Irish music is popular in so many far flung places in part because the Irish themselves are pretty far flung. I mean, you don't hear stories about Swiss police chiefs in Chicago writing down the old milking songs of the thousands of Swiss immigrants filling the bouroughs of the Windy City, do you?
A long history of Irish hardships (occupation, famine) drove much of that dispersion, and probably also imbued the music with more heart and soul than we hear in other folk forms. Hardships tend to make you passionate about life, and people respond passionately to whatever others do, especially music, with passion.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I'm 2nd or 3rd generation American on my Dad's side. His family came from Co. Roscommon to New York City and promptly tried to lose their Irishness to avoid prejudice. My family is musical, but never Irish. I was introduced to the music thanks to Mick Moloney's public radio broadcasts back in the 1970s. And it connected instantly.
# Posted on December 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Irish music, and history
Uh...or Swiss *fire* chiefs, either (for a more adept analogy
.
# Posted on December 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Irish music, and history
Good heavens. No, I don't keep all that stuff up in my head! Especially quotes of that length. *grin* But I'm a writer and writers tend to keep references around close by their computers - I've often wondered what Will's office looks like. Of course, now I'm feeling a little uncomfy about the Helen Brannan quote, since I didn't go look that one up and did indeed pull that one out of the hat and I should probably make sure that that info was correct, and of course I had to go look up the Galician tribal names to make sure I had them spelled correctly (I mean, "Tolistobogii"?), and now I'm wondering what Alisdair Frasier bases his belief about the reels on and.... Heh
I'm not actually all that interesting, Andee. Mainly I read a lot. *snort* If you couldn't tell.
Good point about the diaspora, Will.
I miss Glauber already. I'd love to see what he'd say on this subject.
Zina
# Posted on December 7th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
I've started to write and wiped out comments on this subject about 3 times now. Mostly because I feel, I have absolutely no qualification to speak or write with any real knowledge, just observances. I tend to agree with Will's comments about scattered peoples. I live in a country that was "settled" and in this part often by people who were transported. I grew up in a community that was settled primarily by Scots, Irish and English with the odd Ukrainian thrown in. Each brought a musical influence with them. The Metis tradition of this area can be traced to a primarily Scottish influence brought by exiled or transported Scots who were making their way trading furs to Hudson's Bay. Much of the music I heard growing up was this interesting combination of influences and yet when I hear an Irish tune, it's instantly more familiar. I'll find myself learning a new tune that I find that I know from somewhere way back only to play it for my Dad who can tell me that they used to play that at the dances when I was learning to dance standing on his feet. All that said, I've recently become interested in making musical connections to historical events. One of the ways in which conquering nations have tried to solidify their influence on a society has been to bannish the music and the language of the conquered people. Those who had the freedom to continue playing the music or speaking the language were often those who were exiled. If one person remembers the tradition continues. With Irish music, the thing that never fails to surprise me is the depth of the tradition and perhaps that's the thing that "hooks" us. There is always more to discover and another angle to discover it from. We all seem to be a bit like social historians and the further you delve into it the more you have to discover and learn. If you look at the resources and the quality of comments on many of these discussion pages you'll see what I mean which is I guess why I feel humbled by it all.
# Posted on December 7th 2002 by ANNY
Re: Irish music, and history
Zina,
A most impressive posting, thanks. Chinese American? Maybe your ancestors were Tocharian & the Irish music genes are now being expressed. Only joking. I heard some Chinese musicians busking once in Covent Garden, a trendy part of this town, and from a distance I mistook it for Irish music. Lovely stuff. So maybe it's not such a tenuous link.
Another musing - wrt those kids from Central Europe grooving to the celtic vibe - they more than likely are ancestors of true celts.
Did you ever read about Cheddar Man, a post-Ice Age skeleton found in the Cheddar Gorge in England? Scientists extracted his mitochondrial DNA and compared the sequence to a modern-day bloke, Mr. Adrian Targett, and found a close match. The implication was that a substantial proportion of people in modern Britain form part of local kinship groups which have had a continuous existence for 300- 400 generations. Each of those generations has adapted itself to each successive cultural and linguistic wave over the millennia.This debunks the notion that Britain's "Island Race" was the sum total of numerous mass invasions, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings etc. So no matter what language you speak, if your forebears are from around a certain area, they've probably been there since the Ice Age.
There.
So that's my Thought for the Day.
By the way, Anny, forgive my ignorance, but what is the Metis tradition?
# Posted on December 7th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
What a great discussion....I don't know why I love this music! I'm only lately finding it a part of my life and it's taking over. I don't know why and it's interesting to find out and hear all the history and ideas. I just know it's fun to play....interesting to learn with lots of turns and twists and harmony that's unexptectedly familiar. I've come to use my 30 years of music teaching experience and college and graduate degrees in ways I never expected. It's complicated and simple...It's intellectual and spiritual....It's joyful and sad....It's the most complete music I've come to know. More! More!.......
Brent
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by bknjholl
Re: Irish music, and history
Oh, Zina, I forgot to mention, Gallician music. The chief exponents these days are Milladoiro and Citania, and there are many others, Iike Susana Seivane, check out on the Green Linnet website, lovely stuff:
http://www.greenlinnet.com/listen/realaudio.htm
Also, this discussion is going very well so far, but I was hoping to steer it a bit more in the direction of things like how and why did sessions originate, history of specific tunes (and types of tune), and why some tunes survive and others don't, and so on and why we even bother!
Still, mustn't grumble...I admit I didn't specify those points earlier and discussions should be open-ended and democratic. I'm also curious as to whether non-musicians would be "allowed" to contribute as there are tons & tons of people out there who love the stuff, but who haven't got round to making enough noise to prove it (just thought I'd throw that one in to open it out even more).
All views, news, screws welcome.
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
I laughed so much to read what Will said about Swiss police/fire chiefs. I don't think I have any Irish genes, but am from English, Swiss, German, Austrian and possibly French Huguenot background (but then, who really knows what secret some great great grandparent never chose to divulge?) I grew up in Birmingham, UK and have now lived in Toronto for 32 years. So why have I always loved ITM? I've been wondering why I love ITM so much for a long time. I doubt I'll ever know, I just know I'm having a lot of fun whenever I get the chance to play it (and now I'm even getting into Scottish music too - I never believed that would happen!) I still love other kinds of music, and make my living as a violin teacher, so get lots of opportunity to introduce students to any kind of music that interests me. I'm so lucky!
History of various musics and people is always fascinating, I'm glad I found this site, where so many of you put such stimulating comments.
Thanks to all of you!
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by fiddlefingers
Re: Irish music, and history
Perhaps this thread should be titled "Irish Music, History and Language". Just a thought. I wonder if there is a deep hidden connection between the language of a celtic people and their music. In the case of Irish music could the music perhaps mirror some fundamental structures of Gaelic? I'm probably talking gibberish but PhD dissertations have been written with even less secure foundations.
trevor
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Irish music, and history
Trevor,
It's not gibberish at all to suggest that connection. There was a fascinating thread not too long ago on that topic or something very similar. It was a bit over my head at times, but emily-az or one of those other brainiacs should be able to give you the exact thread. (no offense emily, I thought some of your ideas and thoughts were brilliant!)
Not quite off the topic, but you can definitely see a connection to the music and the visual art of celtic knotwork--the endless looping, the rich ornamentation of a "simple" visual theme. The details embellishing, but never taking away from the whole. Both structured and organic
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Andee
Re: Irish music, and history
Metis! It's wonderful stuff, both the music and dancing. Anny, do you play Metis? I was astounded when I first saw this bunch of native American musicians come out on stage at a festival and from out of their instruments came Drops of Brandy.
Zina
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
--- So why can we find an Irish session in nearly every corner of the world but not a German traditional jam session? ---
My answer is the Irish Diaspora. Millions of irishmen and irishwomen spread all over the world during and after the famine years, so that contributed a lot to the fact that ITM can be found mostly everywhere. But yes. That's not enough to keep the music being played since late 1800's, isn't it?? So what is it? Caoimghgin says a German polka is horrible. The same applies to any traditional music from my country, Catalonia, and I'd dare saying the same about Spanish music (please. No offence, fellow spaniards). So it must be the inherent beauty of ITM that cacthes us. I must say, whenever I hear a reel, a jig, or whatever I immediatly and unscounsciosly start tapping my feet. A round later I'm already humming the tune and, whatever is my mood at that moment the music just lifts my heart. Another good reason: it's just FUN. I'm really sorry to say this again (the bloody movie has been commented too many times already), but one of the most remembered moments of the Titanic thing is the Irish party held on the third class of the vessel. Does that explain why ITM is being played all over the world??
And remember the wise irish words: Ceol agus craic.
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Toni Ribas
Re: Irish music, and history
When you don't watch TV, what else is there to do?
Bob
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by Laughtonb
Re: Irish music, and history
Maybe one of the reasons it's so wide spread is 'cause it's quite easy to play.
You don't see many Bulgarian sessions.
Now I know that's not the whole story, English music is easier and the english are as wide spread, but not many people play that. That could be 'cause its not as good.
But the Scots are very wide spread and I'd argue that Scottish music is just as good as Irish. But what seems to have happened with that particular brand of Celtic twang as it travelled is it got lumped together with the general diddly, lost its Scottish edge and is now homogenised. (I know about that, that's how I and most diddlers I know know play Scottish music)
As mentioned before in this posting, Irish music is a rag bag of many traditions not even all celtic. I'd like to bet that not even half the people who play it are Irish. Is this a good thing? Of course it is. Irish music seems to have settled on a perfect blend of attractive subtlety and ease of technicality.
Bulagarian music may be better, but too hard.
Scottish music is just as good, but too precice.
English music is easy enough, but rubbish.
# Posted on December 8th 2002 by ...
Re: Irish music, and history
Metis means mixed blood. The metis fiddle tradition is a unique blend of Scots, Irish, French tunes set in a narrative fashion to remember stories of the people. It's unique sound is partly attibuted to the fact that there is no formal bar structure (although people have tried). It's highly rythmic with lots of double stops and in one of the most popular pieces the G string is tuned up to an A to provide a drone throughout. It's interesting to listen to because often you can hear the thread of the Scots or Irish influence, little snipets of the original tune but it's not the same at all. Zina, no sorry I can't play in the Metis style, although many people around here do. Mostly I don't play it because when I started to play fiddle, I learned Irish style and secondly because my double stops suck the big one. I've tried but I figure it will be a few more years before I could actually do it.
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by ANNY
Re: Irish music, and history
One thing that I think has been overlooked is culture. Different cultures put more emphasis on things than others. Education is very stressed in the Korean culture, sports is an important part of the Black American culture, and music is an important part of the Irish culture. With the emphasis on music in Irish culture, more people learn to play, more songs are written, and the best songs and players wash out to give a much fuller and richer tradition. There are tunes that speak to people's sad and reflective moods as well as tunes to reflect people's sheer joy and exhuberance for living. Of this large quantity of tunes that were created, the aweful stuff didn't survive while a good number of the really beautiful and catchy tunes carried on. The increased participation explains why each county would be able to cultivate its own style. Where else has this happened?
I am hooked partially because of the down-to-earthedness of the music. I shy away from other forms of music that I view as stuffy, uptight, and restrictive. Irish traditional music was written by common people for common people. Therefore its easy to learn and play enough to sound good, yet complicated enough to give you something to work on for the rest of your life.
I also am attracted to it as a fiddle player because so many tunes were composed and played on the fiddle. This makes it easier to play good sounding music on a fiddle.
-Troy
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by RTP
Re: Irish music, and history
What a great post and thread! Very interesting subject. I am, of course, no expert, but this is an interesting topic; I
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by MTMajor
Re: Irish music, and history
Great post, Marty, and on the personal end of things, I think your post (and many of the other posts) puts the emphasis on something very important: for every single person, there will be a different way of looking at the music, they'll get different things out of it, they'll be attracted to different things about the music, and those things may shift around and change from minute to minute.
And each person may have kinds of music that will leave them cold even though it sends another person over the moon. (For me, that's country western. It does absolutely nothing for me. As Troy says, one person will see one kind of music as stuffy and uptight or whatever, whereas another will find all sorts of freedoms in it -- classical music is famous for this differing effect on different people.)
I mean, sick as it sounds, I even personally know people who quite enjoy German polkas. *grin* I can't remember who wrote it (probably Terry Pratchett, who I know I quote endlessly, sorry) but someone once referred to something like this as comparable to a monk who has been cloistered all his life -- he knows there's such a thing as vice and debauchery, and he knows that there are people out there who partake in such things and even enjoy them but, in his very heart of hearts, he can't quite believe such a thing happens or exists. Heh.
Zina
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history - what history?
Not many contributions on the subjects of history of the music, or the history of tunes happening here, apart from what most people already know, ,just people mass-debating their own personal histories.
Yawwnnn......
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
Not much into the personal stuff, huh, Dan? Most of us regulars here tend to treat this forum as we do regular sessions, with digressions in conversations and all. It's not usual, really, for our threads to stick to one thing and one thing only, besides which Domhniaill Mac Aoidh *did* give us permission to digress, you know. But don't let us go boring you -- like the television, you can always change to another thread. *grin* Bet I know where a certain cheeky wee minx gets it...
zls
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
zls - Lest you haven't guessed it yet, o great one, he and me are the same.
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
Hey dan maybe you should enlighten us on the history of trad. Dont know about you lads but I personally have always been of the opinion 'you are were you are born' I dont feel any connection to any other country - I might have a dual citizenship but I will always be an aussie through and through so I dont think that has anything to do with why I play, except that it is a family tradition. I dont do it cause I want to connect with my family of 100 years ago, but I do do it cause I grew up with it and Ive heard it all my life. personally and no offence to anyone on the site I quite like Spanish music - theres a band called Felpayu (??) and they are galician I think - they are really good - on the other hand I hate scottish music. But then you cant have everything - Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world - it just wounldnt be fair if the music was brilliant as well!
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by bb
Re: Irish music, and history
bb: I presume you're the aussie banjo player who turned up with Andy at the Woodman a while back - nice playing!
History of trad? I've often wondered myself, and apart from reading here & there, have tried to figure a few things out. For example in Robert Burns' Tam O' Shanter, published in 1791, where the wiches' dance is described, there are a few telling lines:
"Warlocks and witches in a dance:
Nae cotillon brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels"
Implying, of course, that those quoted musical forms were old even then.
According to Breandan Breathnach, trotting the hay or hey was noted around 1670, in the Pale with wilder forms beyond. The term hey survived in Scotland into the C18th when it was superceded by the term Reel.
From Marie McCarthy's "Passing It On", a self-explanatory title, which was originally her Ph.D. thesis, (there's tons of stuff, actually), referring to around 1841:
"...many communities were immersed in the transmission of their own musical traditions locally, they were increasingly connected to the imagined national community through political and cultural organisations such as the Young Ireland movement, the Gaelic League, and not least, national education."
She goes on to demonstrate how the role of [traditional] music then was a powerful political force in the Nationalist movement - a point not previously made on this thread, and is still valid today, both in Ireland and amongst expatriates, whether or not they are of the belief that "you are where you're born".
These are just a few little pearls for your approbation, and this is the kind of thing I'd be more interested in discussing, but I'm tired as it's gone midnight, so "Booooing!!!!"
Dan
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
Dan - close - I'm the fiddler who turned up with andybanjo and the other banjo player (dan)
Interesting topic but its true what zina said - as you know we all just ramble on about whatever. To be honest I'd rather just play tunes and I dont really want to discuss the history (sorry!!!) I'd rather sit down at a pub and have a pint and a few tunes. Unfortunatly I have to work - which is why I'm always on this site - next best thing to actually playing I guess.
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by bb
Re: Irish music, and history
Well, Dan, then you haven't much of an excuse, yes? *grin* Watch what you ask for then, because you'll get it. You asked why people thought there's so much Irish music being played all over the world, and people told you -- they think it's because it strikes a personal chord, and the chord it strikes is going to be different for each person, Irish or no.
I find history interesting. I also find other people's viewpoints and opinions interesting, too.
By the by, history is actually only people, you know -- moreso than just about anything else, because we make it up as we go along. One of the things that's so endlessly fascinating about Irish trad is that the history of it is really the people who play it. That would be these folks here, as well as those who went before. The stories of those who went before wouldn't necessarily be any more erudite than what you've gotten here. Can't you just see it? "Hey, this is the way they're playing hornpipes now in Dublin, lads, come over from England!" "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, that's awful!" "D'you think? I quite like it." "Leave it to the damned English to f--k up a decent hornpipe!" *snort*
Now, if you're really interested in ruminating over the bones of the history of the music in technicolor, nitpicky detail, I'd suggest you trot on over to IRate Trad. They're always happy to pick until it's raw over there.
Zina
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
Well put, Zina. I love the personal stories. It is "folk" music after all. It also allows me to share and to get to know all of you a little better, too.
# Posted on December 9th 2002 by Andee
Re: Irish music, and history
I still stand by what I had previously posted. There is nothing wrong with wanting to understand a phenomenon from a historical perspective.
What I did ask people to post was, if you scroll to the top, was firstly what makes the music popular with the correspondents. This has been fairly exhaustively answered. I then asked from, (to quote myself) "in particular those who have knowledge of a particular historical slant", then I gave a few examples to get the ball rolling, ie jigs etc. When I said feel free to discuss "Anything....etc." I was hoping to get more of how history impacted upon the music. I thought that was implicit, going by what I had just written.
I was hoping people may have had a few nice little historical nuggets to share (and there have been, for which thanks).
Incidentally when my session pals and I have a chat between tunes quite often the subject IS about various historical apochrypha relating to the tunes and musicians.
I personally am not particularly interested in whether the music (note the judicious avoidance of the term ITM, which I despise {I would NEVER call it that in a session} - I prefer "the music" - I think we all know to which music we're referring) makes a correspondent's chest swell. That's a platitude. We all get that buzz, and it wasn't what this string was meant to be about.
History is actually only people? You can get natural history (dinosaurs etc.) and you can get the history of specific disciplines, eg the history of eg. microscopy, medicine, etc. and what I was hoping we'd discuss was the history of "the music".
Shame it all had to fizzle out in acrimony.
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by Rudall the time
Re: Irish music, and history
Danny/Domhniaill
Do you always get this cranky when the conversation doesn't completely go your way? Maybe my initial post was a bit platitudinous (read trite), and other "correspondants" posts were as well, but it's not really very nice to point that out to people--it's kind of insulting actually. And, yes it is a bit rough for me out on the boy's playground as you asked me before. I prefer to play nice and make friends.
# Posted on December 10th 2002 by Andee
Re: Irish music, and history
couple of things....
irish modes?? all the modes we play where put together buy interestingly the greeks, they are also named after greek clan or tribes.
the word hornpipe in conection with a type of tune originated around 1700's for no apperent reason other than to name them.
the stereotype everyone has now heard of that reels are from scotland etc. comes from a show put on in britten somewhere can't quite remember where where a dance from each country was performed unfortunately this stuck.
this isn't extremly precise as i'm really tred just felt a need to say something
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by szifty
Re: Irish music, and history
Is that what you talk about in sessions dan?? The people I play tunes with usually talk about social things and how everyone got on during the week. I can honestly say that our sessions have never had conversations about the particular history of a particular tune, I think I'm with Andee on this one I prefer to make friends rather than over analyze the tunes ;) You do seem to be getting quite uptight that you didnt get it your own way - maybe you should take zina's advice about ITRAD - they love to over analyze everything too. By the by I would never ever ever call it ITM either - thats just plain weird - I just call it trad.
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by bb
Re: Irish music, and history
*sigh* Dan, I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at the historical perspective either.
What I *do* think there's something wrong with is going "yaawwwwn" at people because they chose to answer one facet of your question(s) rather than another. That's all. I don't think I was all that acrimonious, really.
Now, enough, don't you think? Peace out, dude. *snort*
Zina
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Irish music, and history
Hey, thanks bb and zina. I thought I was a lone cry in the wilderness. Maybe I will say trad instead of ITM from now on--It does seem like a better abbreviation.
# Posted on December 11th 2002 by Andee
ITM, Diddly, trad, the music, the tchunes....
Just to clarify: Many moons ago someone on this site (it wasn't me, honest
started using the acronym ITM to distinguish Irish traditional music from other genre's. My recollection is that the discussion revolved around many other forms of music, and folks needed a shorthand (much like the emoticons we use online) to be clear about when they meant just Irish traditional music. Hence, ITM.
It's not my favorite term either, and I would never say "EYE-TEA-EM" in the real world. So it's just an acronym some of us have used on this site for the sake of clarity and brevity, probably the same sorts of reasons other people call it diddly or trad.
So...I agree that most of the time on this site, we can simply say, "the music" or "the tunes," but there are conversations where people want to distinguish between, say, Irish and Scottish tunes (where saying "trad" wouldn't work because they're both traditional), or Irish traditional music and classical, etc., and then it's handy to have some shorthand to do so.
I would be leary of pegging someone as knowledgeable or not just based on their online vocabulary--this format compells us to adjust and adapt if we want to communicate clearly and to as diverse a crowd of people as we are here.
That said, if someone can come up with a better suggestion than ITM, that will work in the situations I've just described and save me from typing "I-r-i-s-h T-r-a-d-i-t-i-o-n-a-l M-u-s-i-c" all the time, I'd use it.
# Posted on December 12th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Irish music, and history
Regarding musical diasporas, Germany did have one: in the USA, a lot of people in Nebraska particularly are of German descent and, I read somewhere, German polkas etc. remain part of their music.
# Posted on August 25th 2006 by nicholas