How many here are musicians who play or have played lots of different types of music and how many are people who only do (and have only ever done) ITM?
I was chatting to a guy the other night at a session and was astonished to hear that he has never played any other genre and seemed to have a very limited knowledge and opinion of others! I know some folks may exclusively play ITM now but they have dabbled or even excelled in other forms before arriving at ITM. Conversely, there are those who start at ITM and have subsequently diversified but still carry on with the ITM with that broader base of experience.
In the forty years I have been playing all sorts of music (I’m quite new to ITM!) I’ve rarely met any musicians that haven’t done a bit of nearly everything or at least know enough to have an opinion!!
Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?
"Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?"
I'm sure many people here will argue that this is actually an essential requirement to being a good Irish player!! Or, at least, they seem to give this impression.
Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity or move in the right circles to be that much of a purist re Irish music...even if I wanted too.
However, I'd suggest that to become a really good player in a particular genre you have to really focus and immerse yourself in it. Probably to the exclusion of everything else. At least for a while.
Here be an interesting thread.
I played a lot of other kinds of music before settling on ITM. I was in a Metallica cover band in high school, and a jazz band, but I never really got into jazz that much (probably because I sucked at it). My mom listens to classical and opera, so I grew up hearing that all the time. I was still in high school when I heard a great Irish band called Colcannon from Denver, and that was pretty much it for everything else. I dropped everything and focused on ITM and have been doing it ever since.
I think that the more skilled you get at anything, the more you appreciate the talent, hard work and creativity of others. So for me, I do pay attention to the other music around me, and I appreciate it. But I don't think that there's any music that I'll ever love so much as ITM.
I started with ITM but have wandered into many different genres. I play at the intermediate level and enjoy playing (or trying to play) most types of music. Yes, even classical.
ITM is still my first love.
I also do church music. Catholic-Anglicanesque to the point of hoping Latin comes back Organ and Current "contemporary Catholic music mill milk-sop piano crap. But it pays. Also play some straight up Anglican on an as needed basis.
the ITM is what I play because I want to and gets most of the focus. I constantly tell my our music director there is very little in Catholic Churchh music to get excited about, and sontantly threaten that if they don't treat me right, I will find a bar where music is played and chuck the church stuff.
Not too many churchies around any more, so they are patient with me.
The ITM though helps the other stuff immensely though. Since I am being taught (button box) by ear ('the proper way") I have much better attention to the sheet music details I used to blow through and handle my vocalsts f-ups much more smoothly.
I started playing ITM in my mid-50s, adding to to my many experiences, and I don't think my ability will ever rise above the "hobby" level. Nevertheless, I enjoy it and work hard to improve and learn the tunes within the tradtion.
As far as other genres go, I would estimate that I am
60% symphonic (double bass)
20% ITM (flute and whistle)
10% concert band (trumpet)
5% GB gigs (bass and guitar)
5% paid church choir gig
I think we all draw influences from other music. Whether or not we set out to do so is another question entirely! I set out in life playing diddly on a mandolin, rapidly followed by a Rory Galagher phase, then on to Thin Lizzy, who in their early phase as a three piece, played in a hall in Kilkenny almost every week . I loved Beatles, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Tom Petty, and many, many more, all in their own little time frames, and endeavoured to emulate all of them, playing several instruments (badly), ...................................................and very many more besides. Of late I find myself delving in the music favoured by my children ( grown up) and listen to Steve Vai, Hoobastank , everything! I still play mostly diddly, but not exclusively.
I can still get very emotional when I hear "Taimse Im Choladh", but Johnny Cash's version of U2's "One" is up there on an emotional level with a lot of the "pure drop". IMHO
I've met a few fiddlers who've grown up on classical and taken up ITM. A friend assured me this won't spoil their ability to pick up on classical again - I'd hate to think it might.
I started to play in the Seventies partly because my friends all seemed to play an instrument, and I badly wanted to play *something*. So I got a whistle, as it seemed the easiest way into music for somebody with no music experience at all. Well, the whistle isn't necessarily *that* easy to play well, but I'm sure it's easier to learn than the fiddle.
I susequently got into melodeon and now have a 2 1/2 row with accidentals available, so at last can take on melodies outside the UK and Irish traditional modes - Gilbert & Sullivan, Yiddish, Greek, Beatles, whatever. But I am very lazy about practising these days. For the last thirty years I have hardly moved out from ITM and related forms of trad, and when I do, I use their playing styles and ornaments, which generally transfer pretty well. ITM has been and will remain my musical "capital", or idiom.
There may well be a lot of people like me who got into music and ITM together, after childhood, and who have been too preoccupied with learning and progressing in it in the first place to play much or anything else.
"A friend assured me this won't spoil their ability to pick up on classical again - I'd hate to think it might."
I dunno, Nicholas. My experience is that if I come across a roll (or "turn") in a classical piece I've got to pay attention to make sure I don't play the ITM roll without thinking. For those who aren't sure about the difference, the classical roll (or "turn" as they call it it) is more deliberate, almost melodic in fact, whereas the ITM version is distinctly percussive. Knowing this, you can understand why they mustn't be mixed up!
The day I do play an ITM roll in a classical concert there'll be no hope for me
Reminds me of when Maura O'Connell said people ask her about Irish traditional music. She grew up in Ennis but is not a session musician. She would tell them to ask Tim O'Brien or John Prine who do go looking for sessions.
For myself ~ I used to play piano & would try anything. Then I was playing fiddle tunes on recorder & my friend told me to get a pennywhistle. The so-called fiddle tunes walked out the door & Irish came in. More recently I have expanded into Breton, Asturian, Galician, etc . . . still cannot do a decent strathspey. To me that is classic music.
. . . it is apparently possible to meet someone who, "has never played any other genre and seemed to have a very limited knowledge and opinion of others!"
I played classical music since age 10, dabbled in rock and jazz along the way, and came to Irish music in my 20's. I now play Irish music almost exclusively. I still enjoy listening to a pretty wide range of music, but I listen to Irish music more than any other genre.
Got started on Cajun (I still play it), most of my playing is now concentrated on ITM , Scottish & Cape Breton with forays into French Canadian music. (it's all related anyway).
just got myself a bandoneon and I anticipate a steep learning curve on Argentinian and Uruguayan music. That's problably overly ambitious, but what matters is to have fun right ?
I'm an exclusive ITM fiddlin' fascist, except when my buddy's prog-rock jam-band collective kidnaps me, feeds me psychoactives, plants me in front of a microphone and makes me noodle for hours on end along with them and their spaced-out Grateful Dead/Phish-style funk-fusion wanderings.
Come to think of it, where are those guys anyway? I need to give them a call...hope they didn't get lost on that road trip to the Fourth Dimension...
Want to give a pack of neo-hippies a heart attack? Launch into Scotch Mary at top speed through a reverb pedal after an hour-long blues/space-jam has put them in la-la land. It's always amusing. Spilled falafel everywhere.
...and I personally feel that wit is the highest form of sarcasm, however, it's all subject to opinion.
I like all sorts of music, I can enjoy music from as far apart as Kerry and Donegal. When I first started it was more about learning tunes which included American , French, English and Scottish but the more I learned the more focussed I get on the Irish. I made the jump from listening to heavy metal to ITM at the age of 17.
I never had interest in music growing up . I even remember looking at a trad. session and saying to myself jayus are they ever going to sing a song but thats when I was blind to the beauty of trad.so the little bit I know about music is all trad. There is so much to learn about trad I don't think I'll ever get a chance to look else where but I don't mind because it changed my life for the better.......
i have a jones for just about all the modal-minor genres, which i discovered quite a while before learning that my ethnic heritage is irish, swedish, appalachian hillbilly (and NO, i do NOT believe in "dna required," just love the confluence). in any event, i played southern clawhammer banjo before turning to itm, and am getting back to playing that again. i also mess around with, and would do more seriously if i had the time---the darker scandinavian stuff, eastern european, including rom & klezmer, and middle-eastern as well as pakistan/india. concertina and button accordion actually work great for all of the above......
Used to play with two singer/songwriter guitarists just a few years ago. The gigs were pleasant, but messing around in one of their kitchens on a Wednesday night was sheer bliss (pun intended).
Their own songs, Dylan, Waits, McTell, Taylor, Simon, Cohen, Lightfoot et al, absolute magic.
And no, I wasn't playing the bodhran. Blues harp, mandolin, maybe a bit of whistle, and bongo drums, just to keep the hand in.
Most of the old ITM musicians that I knew when I was young, had a hatred for any other type of music. They didn't mind playing the Waltzes all right, but if asked for anything modern like a quickstep for instance, the response was 'We're not playing that auld jazz'. Thankfully they are all dead now..... It's amazing what you can play when there is a few shillings involved. Unfortunately ITM doesn't pay all that well, and if it's any consolation nor does 'That Auld Jazz' Example - Back in the late sixties I was playing drums with a modern jazz trio in a pub and getting thirty shilling per night. At the same time my mate (more a time keeper than a drummer) was playing drums with a C/W group and getting three pounds per gig. I loved the jazz, but I soon forced myself to also love C/W. Now wasn't that a strange thing...
If you were referring to anyone in the Blythe, then, apart from ludicrously calling Chris's own composition "English sounding", you weren't paying enough attention...or more like no-one was paying you any attention.
At least one and sometimes two of the regular fiddle players are in the first instance English players (as in English trad music), one of the flute players is a pro jazz saxophonist, another bloke writes and plays his own songs (ok, they are Irish, but that is more folk than trad.) I like to play around with tunes from other traditions (mostly on the box) ie Scottish, French, Italian and a few others, and these occasionally surface at sessions. If you're meaning classical or rock/blues, don't ask us about that here - I for one am not interested (in playing r&b anyway, you hear enough of it in its ubiquity - I enjoy listening to some so-called classical). Apart from that we're all one dimensional Irish-trad robots.
Oh, and by the way, there is more than enough in this genre to keep refreshing "one's" interest, and as a player of nearly three decades I still feel I am very much scratching the surface of it. Your question is typical of a Jack of All Trades ne'er to be master of any, and shows not so much naievety, but that you have missed the point completely of this music. And if you can't see it now, having been out to sessions, you never will. And I can't help you, nor would I have the time or the patience to try.
I love Irish/Scottish/Northumbrian traditional and I love classical music. The only thing I can do at all well is play traditional tunes on the harmonica. I can't do blues on it and I'm a duffer on the chromatic harp. I've dabbled with the bodhran but I just leave it at home now. I started too late.
Well I'm happy to admit I'm just dipping my toe into ITM and have played many other types through the years, in dance bands and backing singers.
Including C&W (both kinds). I grew up in the bush and at first country music and bush ballads was all I knew. Working in the outback, later on it was a common musical currency too.
"Jack of All Trades ne'er to be master of any" would be a fair description and there's no shame in that. The object for me is joy rather than perfection, though I do strive.
And ~ most of the ITM musicians of old I've known, source folk, had no difficulty appreciating the talents of others, inside or outside ITM, or in appreciating a good melody from elsewhere. Quite a few things were spread via radio waves, and a considerable amount from either side of the isle, such as from America and Scotland, but not limited to those other realms. So, those ol' codgers I used to value and share music with, Irish to the core, weren't 'exclusive' either.
And, to risk repeating myself, ITM ain't 'exclusive'... It has always been pretty well open to other influences, despite the few mad folk that have tried to rail against 'foreign' influence in its music, dance, food, dress, hair styles, whatever... Funny thing is, those red necks, those ultra-conservatives, are usually not the most informed for making any decision as to what to 'exclude' or 'condemn'. On the whole, from my experiences with the 'type', they tend to be pretty damned ignorant. Now let's see, what would they have us start to purge ~ all waltz forms? ~ including mazurkas of course, and there's those damned polkas, and ~ ... So, how far back do we go to establish the pure drop? Do we really have to give up all slip jigs too?
My current band, fronted by my wife (who also writes and arranges all of the music), plays at least 15 different styles. We are literally all over the map. Put your iPod on shuffle... Russian, Romanian and Balkan Gypsy, Greek Horos, Klezmer, Cajun/Zydeco, Polka, Surf, Rock, Finnish waltzes, Jigs and Reels, Swing Blues, French Cabaret, Ska, Reggae... All in one show. ITM is what my wife and I work on when the gigging season slows down. It's what I practice daily to keep my fingers in shape.
Don't forget about the great Josie McDermott, who in addition to his fine traditional flute and whistle playing also played jazz sax and trumpet.
From Tom Walsh's review of "Darby's Farewell:"
"Not to say that Josie confined himself to the traditional stuff. In his younger days he played and toured with show bands and jazz combos, delivering the business on trumpet and saxophone (upon which he also once took an All-Ireland title in the 'miscellaneous instruments' category)." http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/mcdermot.htm
In the album's sleeve notes, McDermott is credited as saying, "If you put a good ceili band, a good traditional jazz band, a good country and western band and a small orchestra, in four halls, I'd find it very hard to know which of them I'd go to hear. I'd want to hear the four of them!"
Immersion is important for deeply learning a style of music, but I don't find virtue in excluding all others.
C&W's genuinely popular as far as I can see across what's left of the English countryside and towns in or adjoining it. In Durham Market there's a stall devoted to C&W and C&Irish - it has been there for years, must have its clientele, and I am starting to explore its products...And the HMV has twice as much space devoted to Country as to folk/world. Again, someone must be buying.
For many years there was a pub in Upper Weardale west of here that gloried in the name Rancho Del Rio! It attracted plenty of Stetsoned, holstered, etc. devotees to its events. (It has now become something more demure.) In the past, a lot of people from Weardale, then a lead-mining area, emigrated to America, particularly to join in the gold rushes.
Truly bizarre. I don't get the fascination. Is this not the very aspect of America that people despise so much around the world, ignorant cowboys, etc?
Seeing Irish people dressed up like Cowboys and Indians makes me cringe something awful, which is the same feeling they get when they see Americans dressed in green sequins on St. Patrick's Day barfing on their shoes while singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", I would wager.
there's actually a lot of good c&w music around these days. Alison K, Gillian W etc etc to name but a very few. AFAIK it's gone through some fairly hefty renovation as a genre in the last several years
Don't forget there is C&W and then there is Country and Irish, and that can be a bit puerile at times to say the least. One of my all time favourite drummers, the late great Buddy Rich, was about to undergo heart surgery. When asked if there was anything he was allergic to, he replied 'Yeah..Country and Western music' As I said previous 'for many musicians it's all about putting bread on the table'.....now how does that tune go again...'But remember the red river valley and the cowboy who loved you so true'.
Country and Western is MASSIVE in Ireland. In Donegal for instance, if it was not for visiting Belfast people playing a few tunes, all the music in pubs would be C and W.
The "outlaws" of C and W are not bad. Hank Williams a legend, Prine, Kristofferson, even good Johnny Cash. It's the nonsense about "my little ol' mama/papa/granny and the dog dying" that drives me insane. And Irish people singing "My lil' ol' horm in Dunn gayn on" in a bad septic tank accent.
By the way that is "My little old home in Dungannon".
Thanks for the Buddy Rich quote, I won't forget that one.
The distinction to be made for me is between Old-Timey and Bluegrass versus C&W. The former sounds authentic and I enjoy some of it, however C&W always comes off to me as contrived and hokey. Certainly modern C&W does, posing in front of the flag, fireworks, etc. Obviously Bluegrass and Old-Timey American music shows their roots to the older musical traditions of The Isles and Africa more than C&W does, so I'm sure that's why I enjoy some of it.
Not that genre dictates anyone's authenticity, so I'm mixing personal taste in.
...and if you're getting paid, then carry on, for heaven's sakes. Don't let me stop ya.
...and the outlaws are good too bb, they qualify for the 'authenticity' thing I was mentioning above.
"Take me home, to the place, I adore, West Donegal, Country Momma, take me home, take me home..." ???
OK, I got to go. Session starts in 30 minutes. Up the street. I was just reading while I ate dinner. You guys must be done yours on that side of the 'pond'.
"Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?"
Yes. A hundred years ago in a little isolated fishing village in west Clare there wouldn't have been other styles of music, but there would have been some great players. I'm not trying to get all nostalgic or "it's not the same any more" and yes, I did use an exaggerated example, but in the past it would have been true in many places at many times in many musical styles. Probably still is in some places.
i used to hate Country and Western music with a passion.Then in 2001 i did a road trip from Florida to Alaska. Somewhere in Kansas or Missouri i was looking out the window and had a sudden epiphany..it was an instantaneous "aaaaah, it makes sense!" Suddenly, looking at that scenery, C and W made sense! It was like "that is the only possible music for this environment"..and I've liked it ever since.
Sad to think that in this unspiritual age one of my only life epiphanies was about Country music!!!!!!
but i feel so much about music is to do with environment..take a 70's heavy metal band like Black Sabbath..to so many people that form of music is totally foreign and repugnant..until you drive round some of the industrial areas of Birmingham (BS came from Birmingham)..and as you pass the chimneys and smoke and dirt and pollution suddenly it's "ahhhh. i get it now". the music is appropriate to the environment.
Actually, country music is fine. It's the "western" part that I don't like.
There's lots of great American music and crap stuff too...just as there is Irish and Scottish.
Country (and western)music is often used as a catch all term but it doesn't really begin to describe all the different possibilities.
Mind you, I dislike the term "Americana" too as I also do "Celtic", of course.
I am not a fan of contemporary C and W. I am an American and find most of it like 'fingernails on a chalk board', particularly the wailing girl front singers. It reminds me of useless exercises like NASCAR races and phony conservative preachers.
But one part of it comes directly out of the Appalachian mountain music tradition that comes directly from ITM. Protestant Irish were the early settlers of the Virginias, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee. Regardless of what you think of what passes for C/W these days with its over abundance of Amy Grant wannabees, traditional mountain music is some the the finest American traditional music there is.
No surprise that much of it is IT tunes or variants on IT tunes. So no surprise that it would find so much crossover popularity in Ireland.
It's funny to me, reading all these references to Country & Western music. I think people really involved in the music and the serious fans stopped using that bi-modal term decades ago, if in fact they ever did use it. As far as I could ever tell, it was just a record store category. Country music and Western music sort of overlap now and then, but they're at least as distinct as ITM and S(cottish)TM.
Just catching up, I see Johnny J has taken note of the false category, also.
I've never played any style exclusively. There is *sooo* much good music out there and I just can't resist tasting other flavors. A lot of my bluegrass friends don't play anything else, but a lot of that is because bluegrass is so technically demanding that it can use up all your musical energy.
Exclusively an ITM player?
Exclusively an ITM player?
How many here are musicians who play or have played lots of different types of music and how many are people who only do (and have only ever done) ITM?
I was chatting to a guy the other night at a session and was astonished to hear that he has never played any other genre and seemed to have a very limited knowledge and opinion of others! I know some folks may exclusively play ITM now but they have dabbled or even excelled in other forms before arriving at ITM. Conversely, there are those who start at ITM and have subsequently diversified but still carry on with the ITM with that broader base of experience.
In the forty years I have been playing all sorts of music (I’m quite new to ITM!) I’ve rarely met any musicians that haven’t done a bit of nearly everything or at least know enough to have an opinion!!
Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
"Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?"
I'm sure many people here will argue that this is actually an essential requirement to being a good Irish player!! Or, at least, they seem to give this impression.
Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity or move in the right circles to be that much of a purist re Irish music...even if I wanted too.
However, I'd suggest that to become a really good player in a particular genre you have to really focus and immerse yourself in it. Probably to the exclusion of everything else. At least for a while.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Johannes J
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Here be an interesting thread.
I played a lot of other kinds of music before settling on ITM. I was in a Metallica cover band in high school, and a jazz band, but I never really got into jazz that much (probably because I sucked at it). My mom listens to classical and opera, so I grew up hearing that all the time. I was still in high school when I heard a great Irish band called Colcannon from Denver, and that was pretty much it for everything else. I dropped everything and focused on ITM and have been doing it ever since.
I think that the more skilled you get at anything, the more you appreciate the talent, hard work and creativity of others. So for me, I do pay attention to the other music around me, and I appreciate it. But I don't think that there's any music that I'll ever love so much as ITM.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by MartySmith
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I started with ITM but have wandered into many different genres. I play at the intermediate level and enjoy playing (or trying to play) most types of music. Yes, even classical.
ITM is still my first love.
Mary
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I also do church music. Catholic-Anglicanesque to the point of hoping Latin comes back Organ and Current "contemporary Catholic music mill milk-sop piano crap. But it pays. Also play some straight up Anglican on an as needed basis.
the ITM is what I play because I want to and gets most of the focus. I constantly tell my our music director there is very little in Catholic Churchh music to get excited about, and sontantly threaten that if they don't treat me right, I will find a bar where music is played and chuck the church stuff.
Not too many churchies around any more, so they are patient with me.
The ITM though helps the other stuff immensely though. Since I am being taught (button box) by ear ('the proper way") I have much better attention to the sheet music details I used to blow through and handle my vocalsts f-ups much more smoothly.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I started playing ITM in my mid-50s, adding to to my many experiences, and I don't think my ability will ever rise above the "hobby" level. Nevertheless, I enjoy it and work hard to improve and learn the tunes within the tradtion.
As far as other genres go, I would estimate that I am
60% symphonic (double bass)
20% ITM (flute and whistle)
10% concert band (trumpet)
5% GB gigs (bass and guitar)
5% paid church choir gig
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I think we all draw influences from other music. Whether or not we set out to do so is another question entirely! I set out in life playing diddly on a mandolin, rapidly followed by a Rory Galagher phase, then on to Thin Lizzy, who in their early phase as a three piece, played in a hall in Kilkenny almost every week . I loved Beatles, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Tom Petty, and many, many more, all in their own little time frames, and endeavoured to emulate all of them, playing several instruments (badly), ...................................................and very many more besides. Of late I find myself delving in the music favoured by my children ( grown up) and listen to Steve Vai, Hoobastank , everything! I still play mostly diddly, but not exclusively.
I can still get very emotional when I hear "Taimse Im Choladh", but Johnny Cash's version of U2's "One" is up there on an emotional level with a lot of the "pure drop". IMHO
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Backer
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I've met a few fiddlers who've grown up on classical and taken up ITM. A friend assured me this won't spoil their ability to pick up on classical again - I'd hate to think it might.
I started to play in the Seventies partly because my friends all seemed to play an instrument, and I badly wanted to play *something*. So I got a whistle, as it seemed the easiest way into music for somebody with no music experience at all. Well, the whistle isn't necessarily *that* easy to play well, but I'm sure it's easier to learn than the fiddle.
I susequently got into melodeon and now have a 2 1/2 row with accidentals available, so at last can take on melodies outside the UK and Irish traditional modes - Gilbert & Sullivan, Yiddish, Greek, Beatles, whatever. But I am very lazy about practising these days. For the last thirty years I have hardly moved out from ITM and related forms of trad, and when I do, I use their playing styles and ornaments, which generally transfer pretty well. ITM has been and will remain my musical "capital", or idiom.
There may well be a lot of people like me who got into music and ITM together, after childhood, and who have been too preoccupied with learning and progressing in it in the first place to play much or anything else.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
"A friend assured me this won't spoil their ability to pick up on classical again - I'd hate to think it might."
I dunno, Nicholas. My experience is that if I come across a roll (or "turn") in a classical piece I've got to pay attention to make sure I don't play the ITM roll without thinking. For those who aren't sure about the difference, the classical roll (or "turn" as they call it it) is more deliberate, almost melodic in fact, whereas the ITM version is distinctly percussive. Knowing this, you can understand why they mustn't be mixed up!
The day I do play an ITM roll in a classical concert there'll be no hope for me
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Well, this has been an absolute revelation! No one had told me there were other types of music ...
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Ottery
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Now,now.Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by dafydd
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I also play music from britanny and other areas of France
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Tirno
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Reminds me of when Maura O'Connell said people ask her about Irish traditional music. She grew up in Ennis but is not a session musician. She would tell them to ask Tim O'Brien or John Prine who do go looking for sessions.
For myself ~ I used to play piano & would try anything. Then I was playing fiddle tunes on recorder & my friend told me to get a pennywhistle. The so-called fiddle tunes walked out the door & Irish came in. More recently I have expanded into Breton, Asturian, Galician, etc . . . still cannot do a decent strathspey. To me that is classic music.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Random_notes
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
ITM isn't exclusive...
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
. . . it is apparently possible to meet someone who, "has never played any other genre and seemed to have a very limited knowledge and opinion of others!"
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Random_notes
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I played classical music since age 10, dabbled in rock and jazz along the way, and came to Irish music in my 20's. I now play Irish music almost exclusively. I still enjoy listening to a pretty wide range of music, but I listen to Irish music more than any other genre.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Tintin
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Got started on Cajun (I still play it), most of my playing is now concentrated on ITM , Scottish & Cape Breton with forays into French Canadian music. (it's all related anyway).
just got myself a bandoneon and I anticipate a steep learning curve on Argentinian and Uruguayan music. That's problably overly ambitious, but what matters is to have fun right ?
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by pennhorse
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I'm an exclusive ITM fiddlin' fascist, except when my buddy's prog-rock jam-band collective kidnaps me, feeds me psychoactives, plants me in front of a microphone and makes me noodle for hours on end along with them and their spaced-out Grateful Dead/Phish-style funk-fusion wanderings.
Come to think of it, where are those guys anyway? I need to give them a call...hope they didn't get lost on that road trip to the Fourth Dimension...
Want to give a pack of neo-hippies a heart attack? Launch into Scotch Mary at top speed through a reverb pedal after an hour-long blues/space-jam has put them in la-la land. It's always amusing. Spilled falafel everywhere.
...and I personally feel that wit is the highest form of sarcasm, however, it's all subject to opinion.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I like all sorts of music, I can enjoy music from as far apart as Kerry and Donegal. When I first started it was more about learning tunes which included American , French, English and Scottish but the more I learned the more focussed I get on the Irish. I made the jump from listening to heavy metal to ITM at the age of 17.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by tlittlewazzock
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I never had interest in music growing up . I even remember looking at a trad. session and saying to myself jayus are they ever going to sing a song but thats when I was blind to the beauty of trad.so the little bit I know about music is all trad. There is so much to learn about trad I don't think I'll ever get a chance to look else where but I don't mind because it changed my life for the better.......
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Saint
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
i have a jones for just about all the modal-minor genres, which i discovered quite a while before learning that my ethnic heritage is irish, swedish, appalachian hillbilly (and NO, i do NOT believe in "dna required," just love the confluence). in any event, i played southern clawhammer banjo before turning to itm, and am getting back to playing that again. i also mess around with, and would do more seriously if i had the time---the darker scandinavian stuff, eastern european, including rom & klezmer, and middle-eastern as well as pakistan/india. concertina and button accordion actually work great for all of the above......
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Irish all the way
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by dinn2
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Used to play with two singer/songwriter guitarists just a few years ago. The gigs were pleasant, but messing around in one of their kitchens on a Wednesday night was sheer bliss (pun intended).
Their own songs, Dylan, Waits, McTell, Taylor, Simon, Cohen, Lightfoot et al, absolute magic.
And no, I wasn't playing the bodhran. Blues harp, mandolin, maybe a bit of whistle, and bongo drums, just to keep the hand in.
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Most of the old ITM musicians that I knew when I was young, had a hatred for any other type of music. They didn't mind playing the Waltzes all right, but if asked for anything modern like a quickstep for instance, the response was 'We're not playing that auld jazz'. Thankfully they are all dead now..... It's amazing what you can play when there is a few shillings involved. Unfortunately ITM doesn't pay all that well, and if it's any consolation nor does 'That Auld Jazz' Example - Back in the late sixties I was playing drums with a modern jazz trio in a pub and getting thirty shilling per night. At the same time my mate (more a time keeper than a drummer) was playing drums with a C/W group and getting three pounds per gig. I loved the jazz, but I soon forced myself to also love C/W. Now wasn't that a strange thing...
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by Free Reed
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
No, I could never bring myself to that. Not C and W, I don't care what they are paying, respect is more important than money.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
If you were referring to anyone in the Blythe, then, apart from ludicrously calling Chris's own composition "English sounding", you weren't paying enough attention...or more like no-one was paying you any attention.
At least one and sometimes two of the regular fiddle players are in the first instance English players (as in English trad music), one of the flute players is a pro jazz saxophonist, another bloke writes and plays his own songs (ok, they are Irish, but that is more folk than trad.) I like to play around with tunes from other traditions (mostly on the box) ie Scottish, French, Italian and a few others, and these occasionally surface at sessions. If you're meaning classical or rock/blues, don't ask us about that here - I for one am not interested (in playing r&b anyway, you hear enough of it in its ubiquity - I enjoy listening to some so-called classical). Apart from that we're all one dimensional Irish-trad robots.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Oh, and by the way, there is more than enough in this genre to keep refreshing "one's" interest, and as a player of nearly three decades I still feel I am very much scratching the surface of it. Your question is typical of a Jack of All Trades ne'er to be master of any, and shows not so much naievety, but that you have missed the point completely of this music. And if you can't see it now, having been out to sessions, you never will. And I can't help you, nor would I have the time or the patience to try.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I love Irish/Scottish/Northumbrian traditional and I love classical music. The only thing I can do at all well is play traditional tunes on the harmonica. I can't do blues on it and I'm a duffer on the chromatic harp. I've dabbled with the bodhran but I just leave it at home now. I started too late.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Well I'm happy to admit I'm just dipping my toe into ITM and have played many other types through the years, in dance bands and backing singers.
Including C&W (both kinds). I grew up in the bush and at first country music and bush ballads was all I knew. Working in the outback, later on it was a common musical currency too.
"Jack of All Trades ne'er to be master of any" would be a fair description and there's no shame in that. The object for me is joy rather than perfection, though I do strive.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Bren
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
And ~ most of the ITM musicians of old I've known, source folk, had no difficulty appreciating the talents of others, inside or outside ITM, or in appreciating a good melody from elsewhere. Quite a few things were spread via radio waves, and a considerable amount from either side of the isle, such as from America and Scotland, but not limited to those other realms. So, those ol' codgers I used to value and share music with, Irish to the core, weren't 'exclusive' either.
And, to risk repeating myself, ITM ain't 'exclusive'... It has always been pretty well open to other influences, despite the few mad folk that have tried to rail against 'foreign' influence in its music, dance, food, dress, hair styles, whatever... Funny thing is, those red necks, those ultra-conservatives, are usually not the most informed for making any decision as to what to 'exclude' or 'condemn'. On the whole, from my experiences with the 'type', they tend to be pretty damned ignorant. Now let's see, what would they have us start to purge ~ all waltz forms? ~ including mazurkas of course, and there's those damned polkas, and ~ ... So, how far back do we go to establish the pure drop? Do we really have to give up all slip jigs too?
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
My current band, fronted by my wife (who also writes and arranges all of the music), plays at least 15 different styles. We are literally all over the map. Put your iPod on shuffle... Russian, Romanian and Balkan Gypsy, Greek Horos, Klezmer, Cajun/Zydeco, Polka, Surf, Rock, Finnish waltzes, Jigs and Reels, Swing Blues, French Cabaret, Ska, Reggae... All in one show. ITM is what my wife and I work on when the gigging season slows down. It's what I practice daily to keep my fingers in shape.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by gw
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Don't forget about the great Josie McDermott, who in addition to his fine traditional flute and whistle playing also played jazz sax and trumpet.
From Tom Walsh's review of "Darby's Farewell:"
"Not to say that Josie confined himself to the traditional stuff. In his younger days he played and toured with show bands and jazz combos, delivering the business on trumpet and saxophone (upon which he also once took an All-Ireland title in the 'miscellaneous instruments' category)."
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/mcdermot.htm
In the album's sleeve notes, McDermott is credited as saying, "If you put a good ceili band, a good traditional jazz band, a good country and western band and a small orchestra, in four halls, I'd find it very hard to know which of them I'd go to hear. I'd want to hear the four of them!"
Immersion is important for deeply learning a style of music, but I don't find virtue in excluding all others.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Tintin
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I'm amazed at folks not in America who enjoy C&W.
Actually, I'm pretty amazed at anyone who enjoys C&W.
Stuff makes me break out in a rash all over, hives, cold sweats... [shivers]
Let's hear it for Irish C&W sensations Big Chief and The Squaw of The Apachees!
http://www.irish-showbands.com/images/dwane/ddxbigchiefsquaw.htm
Irish Showbands.com, Currently listing 222 Country & Cabaret Acts
http://www.irish-showbands.com/c_&_w_bands.htm
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
They're too handsome to be ITM players, that's for sure; is that the trouble?!
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
C&W's genuinely popular as far as I can see across what's left of the English countryside and towns in or adjoining it. In Durham Market there's a stall devoted to C&W and C&Irish - it has been there for years, must have its clientele, and I am starting to explore its products...And the HMV has twice as much space devoted to Country as to folk/world. Again, someone must be buying.
For many years there was a pub in Upper Weardale west of here that gloried in the name Rancho Del Rio! It attracted plenty of Stetsoned, holstered, etc. devotees to its events. (It has now become something more demure.) In the past, a lot of people from Weardale, then a lead-mining area, emigrated to America, particularly to join in the gold rushes.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Truly bizarre. I don't get the fascination. Is this not the very aspect of America that people despise so much around the world, ignorant cowboys, etc?
Seeing Irish people dressed up like Cowboys and Indians makes me cringe something awful, which is the same feeling they get when they see Americans dressed in green sequins on St. Patrick's Day barfing on their shoes while singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", I would wager.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
there's actually a lot of good c&w music around these days. Alison K, Gillian W etc etc to name but a very few. AFAIK it's gone through some fairly hefty renovation as a genre in the last several years
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by pavlf
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I'm a big fan of Hank Williams. I suppose after him the rest of C&W has a lot of catching up to do.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I'll play pretty much any instrument and genre. Musical whore that I am.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Wurzel
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Don't forget there is C&W and then there is Country and Irish, and that can be a bit puerile at times to say the least. One of my all time favourite drummers, the late great Buddy Rich, was about to undergo heart surgery. When asked if there was anything he was allergic to, he replied 'Yeah..Country and Western music' As I said previous 'for many musicians it's all about putting bread on the table'.....now how does that tune go again...'But remember the red river valley and the cowboy who loved you so true'.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by Free Reed
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Country and Western is MASSIVE in Ireland. In Donegal for instance, if it was not for visiting Belfast people playing a few tunes, all the music in pubs would be C and W.
The "outlaws" of C and W are not bad. Hank Williams a legend, Prine, Kristofferson, even good Johnny Cash. It's the nonsense about "my little ol' mama/papa/granny and the dog dying" that drives me insane. And Irish people singing "My lil' ol' horm in Dunn gayn on" in a bad septic tank accent.
By the way that is "My little old home in Dungannon".
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Thanks for the Buddy Rich quote, I won't forget that one.
The distinction to be made for me is between Old-Timey and Bluegrass versus C&W. The former sounds authentic and I enjoy some of it, however C&W always comes off to me as contrived and hokey. Certainly modern C&W does, posing in front of the flag, fireworks, etc. Obviously Bluegrass and Old-Timey American music shows their roots to the older musical traditions of The Isles and Africa more than C&W does, so I'm sure that's why I enjoy some of it.
Not that genre dictates anyone's authenticity, so I'm mixing personal taste in.
...and if you're getting paid, then carry on, for heaven's sakes. Don't let me stop ya.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
...and the outlaws are good too bb, they qualify for the 'authenticity' thing I was mentioning above.
"Take me home, to the place, I adore, West Donegal, Country Momma, take me home, take me home..." ???
OK, I got to go. Session starts in 30 minutes. Up the street. I was just reading while I ate dinner. You guys must be done yours on that side of the 'pond'.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
"Can you be a good ITM musician and not pay attention to the other music around you?"
Yes. A hundred years ago in a little isolated fishing village in west Clare there wouldn't have been other styles of music, but there would have been some great players. I'm not trying to get all nostalgic or "it's not the same any more" and yes, I did use an exaggerated example, but in the past it would have been true in many places at many times in many musical styles. Probably still is in some places.
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by kjay_bc_box
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
i used to hate Country and Western music with a passion.Then in 2001 i did a road trip from Florida to Alaska. Somewhere in Kansas or Missouri i was looking out the window and had a sudden epiphany..it was an instantaneous "aaaaah, it makes sense!" Suddenly, looking at that scenery, C and W made sense! It was like "that is the only possible music for this environment"..and I've liked it ever since.
Sad to think that in this unspiritual age one of my only life epiphanies was about Country music!!!!!!
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by hakanozel
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
but i feel so much about music is to do with environment..take a 70's heavy metal band like Black Sabbath..to so many people that form of music is totally foreign and repugnant..until you drive round some of the industrial areas of Birmingham (BS came from Birmingham)..and as you pass the chimneys and smoke and dirt and pollution suddenly it's "ahhhh. i get it now". the music is appropriate to the environment.
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by hakanozel
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Actually, country music is fine. It's the "western" part that I don't like.
There's lots of great American music and crap stuff too...just as there is Irish and Scottish.
Country (and western)music is often used as a catch all term but it doesn't really begin to describe all the different possibilities.
Mind you, I dislike the term "Americana" too as I also do "Celtic", of course.
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by Johannes J
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
I am not a fan of contemporary C and W. I am an American and find most of it like 'fingernails on a chalk board', particularly the wailing girl front singers. It reminds me of useless exercises like NASCAR races and phony conservative preachers.
But one part of it comes directly out of the Appalachian mountain music tradition that comes directly from ITM. Protestant Irish were the early settlers of the Virginias, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee. Regardless of what you think of what passes for C/W these days with its over abundance of Amy Grant wannabees, traditional mountain music is some the the finest American traditional music there is.
No surprise that much of it is IT tunes or variants on IT tunes. So no surprise that it would find so much crossover popularity in Ireland.
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
(Footnote - Erratum: the HMV in Durham doesn't stock twice as much C&W as folk, as I stated above - I'd included the jazz section in with the C&W!...)
# Posted on August 8th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
It's funny to me, reading all these references to Country & Western music. I think people really involved in the music and the serious fans stopped using that bi-modal term decades ago, if in fact they ever did use it. As far as I could ever tell, it was just a record store category. Country music and Western music sort of overlap now and then, but they're at least as distinct as ITM and S(cottish)TM.
Just catching up, I see Johnny J has taken note of the false category, also.
I've never played any style exclusively. There is *sooo* much good music out there and I just can't resist tasting other flavors. A lot of my bluegrass friends don't play anything else, but a lot of that is because bluegrass is so technically demanding that it can use up all your musical energy.
# Posted on August 9th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
...Or maybe the C&W name has taken on a new life across the pond?
# Posted on August 9th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Hazel Dickens for the real thing - http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=126215154
# Posted on August 9th 2007 by RichardB
Re: Exclusively an ITM player?
Buy a ukulele. Lifechanging.......
# Posted on August 18th 2007 by Jay-eye