I've read a few remarks on this site that people love The Music because it transports them away from the sleazy world dominated by the Bush/Blair axis, that we now exist in - and beGod, I wish at times I wasn't called into existence to bear witness now, to their filthy, power-mad shenanigans - poor Dr. David Kelly being the latest scapegoat (or would have been a scapegoat had he not chosen to shuffle off his mortal coil).
Sorry, I digress. My point is, that if anyone thinks they are escaping the 21st century and going back to a happier time... may I remind those of the content of many of the tragic songs that we treat as part of the furniture (songs are the pieces of music which are most easily accessible in this respect - a point I'll return to shortly)
Eg,
Bunch of Thyme.
Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore.
Annachie Gordon (although from Scotland - a source of many Big tragic songs).
My Bonnie Light Horseman (a song which I suspect was a sympathetic 'pop' song, as no-one so traumatised could possibly have been able to pen such a sensitive piece - please feel free to contradict me)....
My girl's name, Roisin, is from the song Mo Roisin Dubh, My Little Black Rose, which is a codified poetic name for Mother Ireland, like Kathleen ni Houlahan, your way's a stormy one!...
....Oh, yeah, songs have words thus easier to hang emotions onto, but let's not forget tunes, which were often codified as wink and a nod signs of resistance...
Where's the Age of Innocence in titles such as:
The Barmaid (sorry, the Maid behind the Bar)... (steady now, lads, ...yes, we've all been there, drooling over some lovely lassie,
but enough to inspire you to title a tune after her?)
Farewell to Erin....self explanatory.
The Battering Ram (maybe this needs some explanation: the favoured weapon by which landlords would crash through the doors of tenants who could not afford to keep up rent payments in the years after the Great Famine.)
Zina - I can't take it any other way....No other way. Sorry. I'm not trying it on.
I can listen, and get into, many other musical styles, and love them, but there's been nothing. Nothing. Never anything. That has turned my mind, to the extent that it influences how I choose to conduct the other bits of my life.
Well, I know lots of Irish who are rather apolitical who will happily sing both sides of the argument but who would never think of talking about it. And lots who are the other way round. So I think if you want to take the political influence of this stuff into account, you can, and if you don't want to, you don't have to. I don't think I'm the one to tell someone else that they must or mustn't believe wholeheartedly in rebel songs in order to sing them (though I certainly have my own political views and feelings on the subject that influence what I do personally).
There can be much discussion on "Folk Music" or traditional songs that reflect political or social views. I like to think that the more important an event the more songs or tunes you'll find that refer to it. Perhaps it won't be too long before someone writes a lament to Dr. David Kelly. Point is we may find as we trace our steps, this small event is to have either great or insignificant consequences. Whichever way it goes... count the tunes that refer to it and you might get a sense of how significant it was to the people and it doesn't matter which side of the fence you happen to sit on.
All points to this extent well taken. That said... music is indeed a story set to a tune, even instrumental bits, given imagination and context. Is it possible to sing a rebel song... a song about freedom denied, oppression, capitalistic tyranny, the entire human experience of pain and frustration and exploitation or all of the above...but not wholeheartedly believe in the words you are borrowing from the artist or orator that graced the world with them...certainly it is, if you are a hypocrite. But alas I cast shadows that need not be cast by a sun that rises and sets of my own opinion and accord. Sing and play that which is meaningful to you, act as you believe will best benefit the collective that is humanity, and above all remember that no true song of rebellion was ever written by an individual of questionable conviction…honor that conviction or choose other tunes.
Cordially,
fw
I think "hypocrite" is a bit strong. I was an actor. Got paid to do it and everything, and it was both an art and a craft for me. I've played villainesses and heroines, and I tried to play them all as simply human. I think that there's always another truth to a story besides the one that got told. There's rarely a case of someone who was simply and purely evil or good. I think it's a bit much to put too much credence, credit, and meaning into the simply drawn lines of a song.
There may be, as they say, no real grays, only black and whites that have gotten dirty. But in practicum, unless you think it's a wonderful thing to put the world to the flame, no matter who gets in the way, I'd watch the rhetoric.
Read Millay, or Sinclair, try young Dylan or better yet Connolly...perhaps verbage is simplistic, and likely inherently so, but possessed of a meaning running far deeper than could be fully appreciated if one had a limited understanding of the background information which is a requisite of any good story or song. I do not speak of songs of "simply drawn lines". To sing or perform true rebel songs with any less conviction than that with which they were written does a disservice to the author/artist and all of the people to whom that song is meaningful...not unlike a U.S. neo-conservative half-heartedly performing the Star Spangled Banner to the disdain of the family of Francis Scott Key.
As conviction is in and of itself a malleable characteristic, and highly variable amongst all people, as well as a necessary component in the explanation of hypocrisy (re: betrayal of a stated or portrayed conviction), than it is reasonable to say that individual perception of hypocrisy if also highly variable and as such due loose interpretation. This said, my thoughts are just that, my thoughts. No offense intended, though we are all ultimately at our leisure to take such.
fw
Which is why I don't really sing nationalistic songs of any stripe, really. Everybody is some mother's or father's son or daughter. How can I weep for one and wish the other dead? There's enough problems to wade through every day without adding that kind of stress...
A burning desire for freedom/justice/equality is not always (or often) concomitant with an ulterior motive of destructive or violent tendency. Consider as an example, two of the most poignant protest song of American Civil Rights History, "We Shall Overcome" and "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus". The power of these songs is matched only by their non-violent temperance. A rebel song is not a rebel song is not a rebel song. As performers we can entertain, educate, and enlighten. Those few that are truly gifted are able to do it all. This has been a most enjoyable exchange for which I thank all that participated. And now, I'll sleep. Please do not construe this as a self-indulgent need for the “last word”…I hope that more will follow and I eagerly wait the morning to see what has been said.
fw
I was merely referring to the songs themselves. I don't think you have to be Che Guevara to sing The Galtee Mountain Boy.
Hypocrites?
That makes us all hypocrites every time we play Farewell to Erin.
Rebel songs/protest songs - both are songs about things affecting our quality of life.
Where I play, we don't do songs, and we hardly ever remember or discuss the names of tunes.
Farwell to Erin? There are some tunes I know the names of, for maybe no other reason than I learned them off a record. Surely everyone knows that Diddley tune names are just stupid tags attatched to completly unrelated jumbles of notes. A quick run down the contents page of any tune book confirms this.
Anyone who thinks they can gain any insight whatsoever into the nature of a particular diddley tune via its name, has severely missed the point.
Actually, Danny's condition is quite common here in Glasgow (his home town I believe). It's often referred to as 'the born again Irishman'. These are people who have discovered their Irish roots, usually later in life, and it takes over their lives.
Common symptons are: a burning sense of injustice re the history of Ireland, learning the Irish language, giving their offspring Irish names, going over to Ireland as often as possible, adopting what they imagine to be Irish speech patterns e.g. 'good man yerself', a desire to to become involved in sessions by learning an instrument (usually bodhran) and musically, if it ain't Irish they don't want to know.
Oh and such is their desire to be Irish that actually being Scottish, for example, counts for very little even though they may have spent their entire lives here.
Nothing of the sort, Iain. I'm a Proddy for a start. Not that I care about that sort of thing. I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. I was merely making a comment along the lines that there was no golden age. If you had read some of my other posts that would have been patently obvious. If I were you I'd do my homework before I tried to diagnose someone. I know exactly the type of person to whom you refer - they're called Plastic Paddies by Irish people down here.
The more I think about your comments, the more I realise how ill-informed and rude they are.
Yikes, it that true? A pack of unemployed, depressed time travelers banging on the drum and getting drunk on dark ale. This whole thread paints a rather remorseful picture of music performance. Slapping each other on the back, "good man, yerself". Preferable to looting and pillaging, I suppose. Gives me a mental image of the 1930's. I am GLAD that is is not representative of the performances I am familiar with.
I’m sitting with Zina on this one. Since I do not ‘think it a wonderful thing to put the world to the flame’ (excellently put, Z), I don’t sing rebel songs. I do sing some songs which touch on the injustices of the past – they are fundamental to the tradition, and to Irish history, obviously – but nothing which enters into the realm of provocative rhetoric and certainly nothing which revels in bloodshed and revenge. *Follow Me Up to Carlow is a great tune and a great piece of song-craft, but I’m not going to sing a song which describes with relish the prospect of handing to a wife her husband’s head dripping with blood. I did sing it when I was 18 – but I see things very differently now. The war in Bosnia put all that rhetoric into *very* sharp focus for me. ‘Us and Them’ is a highly attractive but ferociously dangerous concept, and I don’t want to do anything that encourages it or any of its associated notions.
I certainly do follow a dictum of only singing what I believe in.
Irish music is political to me but in a very different way, I guess, from the way it is to Danny. To me, it represents a truly human form of expression, the product of a huge collective which spans many, many lifetimes and generations. By some wonderful process, it knits together an entire culture within itself, which places community, conviviality and respect at its heart and which produces the most phenomenal music. It has fought off the homogenising effects of mass consumerism and mechanical reproduction, and maintains its local, here-and-now, family and friends dynamic. I can’t think of any other cultural phenomenon which compares with it. That is political, to me. Perhaps that requires more explanation, but hey, I’m at work… I’m hoping you can fill in the blanks…
Danny, I’m sure the above aspects are highly important to you as well, I don’t mean to imply otherwise!
I'm sorry, maybe I'm being even more inarticulate than my usual, but I don't want to be portrayed as some chip-on-the-shoulder born-again Rebel-song-loving Plastic Proddy/Paddy plonker.
Hell. I wish I hadn't started this one. I seem to recall someone making a comment that they love the Music because it takes them away from the consumerist/capitalist crap world that we find ourselves in.
I'm just pointing out that life was crap then as well. Politics (however that is defined) was involved in determinig the crap. I wasn't making any actual political statement, as such. If I did or it's inferred by my comments I retract it/them.
Sorry Danny, I hope I didn't imply that you were any of those things! Obviously there's a lot in this thread since you started it, that doesn't reflect your own views, I was just chucking in my tuppence-worth on the whole general theme...
I certainly think it's valid to puncture notions of nostalgia, harking back to what Dolly Parton called 'the Good Old Days, when times were Bad'...
All those songs about emigration and poverty and hunger and tyranny do indeed refer to real and appalling conditions that people had to endure not so long ago, and we shouldn't forget it in any bucolic dream of ploughboys and dairymaids tripping over the verdant plain. So you do have a serious and relevant point there, even if it's set off a load of related fireworks. No harm stirring up the dust, is there?
Danny, I think your last post explains your point well. I'm also with Zina's comments. The "born-again Irishman" made me smile, Iann! But I've not met one who plays the bodhrán. I take that as a slur to goatwhackers everywhere!
LOL. Poor Danny. I don't think you're a chip on the shoulder born again rebel song loving plastic proddy paddy plonker, if that helps. Quite right, life is usually pretty miserable, though not necessarily overall if you're lucky. I saw a quote on a card today that I can't remember who said it, but it went something like "Love doesn't make the world go round. Love makes the trip worth taking." Not to go all hearts and flowers, but in real terms, whether we like the sentiment or not, life is pretty miserable, and so I cherish the good things and times.
Follow Me Up to Carlow is exactly the sort of song I was talking about, Helen, but couldn't think of one off hand, good on ya. Urg. Makes me nauseous to think of it. Hate has a lot of things to answer for, but ultimately it all comes down to people being human. Of course, so do all the good things. It's one of those things that you sooner or later have to deal with being true.
"The mother of folklore is poverty" writes A.L. Lloyd in his book Folk Song In England. Folk song I think has always been about personal living conditions - highly political - on one side and dreams, romance, fantasy on the other.
We don't have to be sheperds to sing about sheep shearing. A good song will transport something more than the words say. To do with psychology I suppose.
So go ahead singing rebel songs if they mean something to you. I would prefer not to.
Many of the songs referred to by Danny are from around the time of the famine when 4 million people either departed this life or departed this isle for America. That was half the entire population of the country - it's hardly surprising then that people penned songs about emigration and hate for those responsible for their dying and leaving! [Having seen how America has reacted to the tragic death of several thousand on 9/11 I shudder to think what they would do if half the population was starved, beaten, and driven to emigrate?]
It's all very well saying how awful it is to write songs about sending heads 'dripping in gore to Liza and her ladies' but you might consider the reasons for the song.
Many rebel songs, however, are not contemporaneous with the events in question since they are written in English - not the language of the common man of the time. There are, of course, many 'rebel' songs in Irish but probably not well known or sung today.
The rebel song is, however, as much a part of the tradition as songs about fair Venus the Grecian Queen, or the Dark Waters of Ophir and omitting it from the musical lexicon would make the music and tradition less true and representative.
I would equally argue that songs such as the Apprentice Boys song The Crimson Banner should also have their place. My father who was himself an IRA man in his younger days and who brought our family up speaking Irish as our first language sang it and the likes of The Protestant Boys, The Bold Orange Heroes of Comber, The Auld Orange Flute etc.
The tradition is enriched by all it's tributaries, the Scots tradition, Pipe Bands, diddley dee, Gaelic, Orangeism, Protestant, catholic and Dissenter AND rebel songs and we are the better for it all.
When my sisters and I would quarrel in our youth, my father would tell us to shut it down. Often we noisily tried to prove to him that we were variously in the right (of course, all three of us were certain we were in the right and our sibs were equally in the wrong), and he would listen with varying amounts of patience. Then he would invariably tell us that he didn't care who was right and who was wrong, what he cared about was that we learned to deal with our arguments in a civilized fashion that didn't end up with shouting and physical violence.
And so I've grown up believing that, while humans naturally want to conk people who disagree with them over the head and will always react badly to feeling oppressed, it's best not to go with that sort of impulse.
Though the songs of either side of the fence are a record of history and they certainly do have their place as historical records of human feeling, I still believe that singing them actively is a great way to glorify violence and foment and abet a darker part of human nature that is always inside us, ready to pop out and deny us our self-appointed "civilized" status..
As to "Carlow", I've never been sure why the thought of sending a woman the gory head of her husband would make anyone feel like a hero, regardless of the reasons for it. Now, if the woman was given a gun at that point, that might make the playing field a little more equal. And then you'd have an excuse to kill her, too, because it would be self-defense, right? Because, of course, violence begets violence and hate begets hate, just as sure as oppression leads to rebellion, all the way down the line. (I've never understood being able to actively starve other people right there in front of you so you can live high on the hog, either.)
All in all, I'd say that anything that treats other people has things instead of people is a bad thing.
Anyway, if you want a long and bloody history of oppression, violence, blood, and pure human horribleness, try the histories of China. Talk about glorifying violence, I still remember being dragged along to see Chinese films with my grandmother in Chinatown, with heros flying through the air, blood and guts spilling everywhere and swords sending sparks and heads flying. In the end of Chinese movies and stories, everyone always ends up dying or incredibly unhappy, which always made my grandmother happy; something I could never figure out. When I saw that Crouching Tiger movie, it was like being flipped into the past, and I kept expecting to see my grandmother in the chair next to me...
Zina?
Sisters? - you mean there's more than one version of your genotype at large on this planet?
Joking, of course.
But you're 100% correct. Any song glorifying, nay, even condoning any act of violence is sinking to the level of the violent act. But I'm a bit mixed up here. There are times when violence must be exerted to defend a culture (and without a cultural identity we are nothing...that's why I'm a Born Again Plastic{BAP}.)
(Even the relatively *recent* history of China is a litany of suffering.... the Japanese army actually disobeyed the Japanese government when it extended its grip on Manchuria and Northern China in the 30's & 40's of the previous century!!)
As for Queen Elizabeth of England (the present one is QE1 of UK) - I actually believe she did more good than harm to the world in general....no doubt I'll get shot down for that one.... but maybe it shows that I'm not a total Rah-supporter.
Zina, well said. The historical worth of the songs is one thing, but the provocative emotional effect of singing them should not be under-estimated. That is the whole point of them, after all.
Good point, Helen, I'd actually almost forgotten that in the sharp thrust of debate. *grin* Danny, my mother remembers, as a very small toddler, wandering around the deserted family farm, as all the men were off fighting and my grandmother and oldest aunt were hidden in a haystack for fear of rape, waiting for the Japanese to come through the farm. One of these days I need to ask her to finish that story; I don't think she ever said if the Japanese showed up or not. Perhaps she doesn't remember, she was only 3 or 4.
Yup, two sisters, both younger (bet no one's surprised that I'm an oldest, right?).
Sure, Danny, its true those songs and tunes came out of hard times. But it makes me think of something I heard on the radio
once. If you want to ask whether love is more powerful than fear ask yourself who from two thousand years or three thousand years is still talked of remembered and quoted? Is the the murderers and terrorists?
And in the same way, whats left of the bad times
is the tunes, sad, angry, but always beautiful. The spite, the suffering, the separation was buried with those people, but the spirit is still getting played.......
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence
I've read a few remarks on this site that people love The Music because it transports them away from the sleazy world dominated by the Bush/Blair axis, that we now exist in - and beGod, I wish at times I wasn't called into existence to bear witness now, to their filthy, power-mad shenanigans - poor Dr. David Kelly being the latest scapegoat (or would have been a scapegoat had he not chosen to shuffle off his mortal coil).
Sorry, I digress. My point is, that if anyone thinks they are escaping the 21st century and going back to a happier time... may I remind those of the content of many of the tragic songs that we treat as part of the furniture (songs are the pieces of music which are most easily accessible in this respect - a point I'll return to shortly)
Eg,
Bunch of Thyme.
Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore.
Annachie Gordon (although from Scotland - a source of many Big tragic songs).
My Bonnie Light Horseman (a song which I suspect was a sympathetic 'pop' song, as no-one so traumatised could possibly have been able to pen such a sensitive piece - please feel free to contradict me)....
My girl's name, Roisin, is from the song Mo Roisin Dubh, My Little Black Rose, which is a codified poetic name for Mother Ireland, like Kathleen ni Houlahan, your way's a stormy one!...
....Oh, yeah, songs have words thus easier to hang emotions onto, but let's not forget tunes, which were often codified as wink and a nod signs of resistance...
Where's the Age of Innocence in titles such as:
The Barmaid (sorry, the Maid behind the Bar)... (steady now, lads, ...yes, we've all been there, drooling over some lovely lassie,
but enough to inspire you to title a tune after her?)
Farewell to Erin....self explanatory.
The Battering Ram (maybe this needs some explanation: the favoured weapon by which landlords would crash through the doors of tenants who could not afford to keep up rent payments in the years after the Great Famine.)
WARNING:
Our Music is highly politically charged.
Handle With EXTREME Care.
Danny.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Politically charged like Forrest Gump when "We we all had to go to the White House - - again" I just want to kick the British out -again
Sorry I just haven't padded my fahey yet.
-dogma
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by dogmageek
Re: The Age of Innocence
Or, Danny, it isn't. As you choose to take it, I think.
Zina
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
Zina - I can't take it any other way....No other way. Sorry. I'm not trying it on.
I can listen, and get into, many other musical styles, and love them, but there's been nothing. Nothing. Never anything. That has turned my mind, to the extent that it influences how I choose to conduct the other bits of my life.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Well, I know lots of Irish who are rather apolitical who will happily sing both sides of the argument but who would never think of talking about it. And lots who are the other way round. So I think if you want to take the political influence of this stuff into account, you can, and if you don't want to, you don't have to. I don't think I'm the one to tell someone else that they must or mustn't believe wholeheartedly in rebel songs in order to sing them (though I certainly have my own political views and feelings on the subject that influence what I do personally).
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
There can be much discussion on "Folk Music" or traditional songs that reflect political or social views. I like to think that the more important an event the more songs or tunes you'll find that refer to it. Perhaps it won't be too long before someone writes a lament to Dr. David Kelly. Point is we may find as we trace our steps, this small event is to have either great or insignificant consequences. Whichever way it goes... count the tunes that refer to it and you might get a sense of how significant it was to the people and it doesn't matter which side of the fence you happen to sit on.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by ANNY
Re: The Age of Innocence
All points to this extent well taken. That said... music is indeed a story set to a tune, even instrumental bits, given imagination and context. Is it possible to sing a rebel song... a song about freedom denied, oppression, capitalistic tyranny, the entire human experience of pain and frustration and exploitation or all of the above...but not wholeheartedly believe in the words you are borrowing from the artist or orator that graced the world with them...certainly it is, if you are a hypocrite. But alas I cast shadows that need not be cast by a sun that rises and sets of my own opinion and accord. Sing and play that which is meaningful to you, act as you believe will best benefit the collective that is humanity, and above all remember that no true song of rebellion was ever written by an individual of questionable conviction…honor that conviction or choose other tunes.
Cordially,
fw
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by farquharson whistler
Re: The Age of Innocence
I think "hypocrite" is a bit strong. I was an actor. Got paid to do it and everything, and it was both an art and a craft for me. I've played villainesses and heroines, and I tried to play them all as simply human. I think that there's always another truth to a story besides the one that got told. There's rarely a case of someone who was simply and purely evil or good. I think it's a bit much to put too much credence, credit, and meaning into the simply drawn lines of a song.
There may be, as they say, no real grays, only black and whites that have gotten dirty. But in practicum, unless you think it's a wonderful thing to put the world to the flame, no matter who gets in the way, I'd watch the rhetoric.
zls
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
Read Millay, or Sinclair, try young Dylan or better yet Connolly...perhaps verbage is simplistic, and likely inherently so, but possessed of a meaning running far deeper than could be fully appreciated if one had a limited understanding of the background information which is a requisite of any good story or song. I do not speak of songs of "simply drawn lines". To sing or perform true rebel songs with any less conviction than that with which they were written does a disservice to the author/artist and all of the people to whom that song is meaningful...not unlike a U.S. neo-conservative half-heartedly performing the Star Spangled Banner to the disdain of the family of Francis Scott Key.
As conviction is in and of itself a malleable characteristic, and highly variable amongst all people, as well as a necessary component in the explanation of hypocrisy (re: betrayal of a stated or portrayed conviction), than it is reasonable to say that individual perception of hypocrisy if also highly variable and as such due loose interpretation. This said, my thoughts are just that, my thoughts. No offense intended, though we are all ultimately at our leisure to take such.
fw
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by farquharson whistler
Re: The Age of Innocence
Which is why I don't really sing nationalistic songs of any stripe, really. Everybody is some mother's or father's son or daughter. How can I weep for one and wish the other dead? There's enough problems to wade through every day without adding that kind of stress...
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
A burning desire for freedom/justice/equality is not always (or often) concomitant with an ulterior motive of destructive or violent tendency. Consider as an example, two of the most poignant protest song of American Civil Rights History, "We Shall Overcome" and "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus". The power of these songs is matched only by their non-violent temperance. A rebel song is not a rebel song is not a rebel song. As performers we can entertain, educate, and enlighten. Those few that are truly gifted are able to do it all. This has been a most enjoyable exchange for which I thank all that participated. And now, I'll sleep. Please do not construe this as a self-indulgent need for the “last word”…I hope that more will follow and I eagerly wait the morning to see what has been said.
fw
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by farquharson whistler
Re: The Age of Innocence
But those are protest songs, and not rebel songs. To me that's a different stripe altogether.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
I was merely referring to the songs themselves. I don't think you have to be Che Guevara to sing The Galtee Mountain Boy.
Hypocrites?
That makes us all hypocrites every time we play Farewell to Erin.
Rebel songs/protest songs - both are songs about things affecting our quality of life.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Where I play, we don't do songs, and we hardly ever remember or discuss the names of tunes.
Farwell to Erin? There are some tunes I know the names of, for maybe no other reason than I learned them off a record. Surely everyone knows that Diddley tune names are just stupid tags attatched to completly unrelated jumbles of notes. A quick run down the contents page of any tune book confirms this.
Anyone who thinks they can gain any insight whatsoever into the nature of a particular diddley tune via its name, has severely missed the point.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by llig leahcim
Re: The Age of Innocence
Actually, Danny's condition is quite common here in Glasgow (his home town I believe). It's often referred to as 'the born again Irishman'. These are people who have discovered their Irish roots, usually later in life, and it takes over their lives.
Common symptons are: a burning sense of injustice re the history of Ireland, learning the Irish language, giving their offspring Irish names, going over to Ireland as often as possible, adopting what they imagine to be Irish speech patterns e.g. 'good man yerself', a desire to to become involved in sessions by learning an instrument (usually bodhran) and musically, if it ain't Irish they don't want to know.
Oh and such is their desire to be Irish that actually being Scottish, for example, counts for very little even though they may have spent their entire lives here.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by iainr
Re: The Age of Innocence
Nothing of the sort, Iain. I'm a Proddy for a start. Not that I care about that sort of thing. I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. I was merely making a comment along the lines that there was no golden age. If you had read some of my other posts that would have been patently obvious. If I were you I'd do my homework before I tried to diagnose someone. I know exactly the type of person to whom you refer - they're called Plastic Paddies by Irish people down here.
The more I think about your comments, the more I realise how ill-informed and rude they are.
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Ha ha, a plastic proddy?
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by llig leahcim
Re: The Age of Innocence
Ay up Ian, don't be usurping my position as agent provocateur. I don't think they could handle two.
Piobair Breac
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Pied Piper
Re: The Age of Innocence
At least you don't get personal, Pied.
Plastic proddie - I like it!
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Plastic Proddy
Only for the fact that some (nearly all?) people wouldn't get the subtle joke, you could have had the band name conundrum sorted out!
# Posted on July 20th 2003 by Aidan Crossey
Re: The Age of Innocence
What band?
I didn't detect as much enthusiasm for that idea last night, as after last week's gig!
...after me mouthing off about it... never mind...
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
"by learning an instrument, (usually bodhran)"
Yikes, it that true? A pack of unemployed, depressed time travelers banging on the drum and getting drunk on dark ale. This whole thread paints a rather remorseful picture of music performance. Slapping each other on the back, "good man, yerself". Preferable to looting and pillaging, I suppose. Gives me a mental image of the 1930's. I am GLAD that is is not representative of the performances I am familiar with.
Blair, "power mad"... How so?
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by irish ruff
Re: The Age of Innocence
I’m sitting with Zina on this one. Since I do not ‘think it a wonderful thing to put the world to the flame’ (excellently put, Z), I don’t sing rebel songs. I do sing some songs which touch on the injustices of the past – they are fundamental to the tradition, and to Irish history, obviously – but nothing which enters into the realm of provocative rhetoric and certainly nothing which revels in bloodshed and revenge. *Follow Me Up to Carlow is a great tune and a great piece of song-craft, but I’m not going to sing a song which describes with relish the prospect of handing to a wife her husband’s head dripping with blood. I did sing it when I was 18 – but I see things very differently now. The war in Bosnia put all that rhetoric into *very* sharp focus for me. ‘Us and Them’ is a highly attractive but ferociously dangerous concept, and I don’t want to do anything that encourages it or any of its associated notions.
I certainly do follow a dictum of only singing what I believe in.
Irish music is political to me but in a very different way, I guess, from the way it is to Danny. To me, it represents a truly human form of expression, the product of a huge collective which spans many, many lifetimes and generations. By some wonderful process, it knits together an entire culture within itself, which places community, conviviality and respect at its heart and which produces the most phenomenal music. It has fought off the homogenising effects of mass consumerism and mechanical reproduction, and maintains its local, here-and-now, family and friends dynamic. I can’t think of any other cultural phenomenon which compares with it. That is political, to me. Perhaps that requires more explanation, but hey, I’m at work… I’m hoping you can fill in the blanks…
Danny, I’m sure the above aspects are highly important to you as well, I don’t mean to imply otherwise!
*http://www.acronet.net/~robokopp/eire/liftmac.htm - if you're not familiar with the song
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by Nell
Re: The Age of Innocence
I'm sorry, maybe I'm being even more inarticulate than my usual, but I don't want to be portrayed as some chip-on-the-shoulder born-again Rebel-song-loving Plastic Proddy/Paddy plonker.
Hell. I wish I hadn't started this one. I seem to recall someone making a comment that they love the Music because it takes them away from the consumerist/capitalist crap world that we find ourselves in.
I'm just pointing out that life was crap then as well. Politics (however that is defined) was involved in determinig the crap. I wasn't making any actual political statement, as such. If I did or it's inferred by my comments I retract it/them.
Danny.
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Sorry Danny, I hope I didn't imply that you were any of those things! Obviously there's a lot in this thread since you started it, that doesn't reflect your own views, I was just chucking in my tuppence-worth on the whole general theme...
I certainly think it's valid to puncture notions of nostalgia, harking back to what Dolly Parton called 'the Good Old Days, when times were Bad'...
All those songs about emigration and poverty and hunger and tyranny do indeed refer to real and appalling conditions that people had to endure not so long ago, and we shouldn't forget it in any bucolic dream of ploughboys and dairymaids tripping over the verdant plain. So you do have a serious and relevant point there, even if it's set off a load of related fireworks. No harm stirring up the dust, is there?
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by Nell
Re: The Age of Innocence
Danny, I think your last post explains your point well. I'm also with Zina's comments. The "born-again Irishman" made me smile, Iann! But I've not met one who plays the bodhrán. I take that as a slur to goatwhackers everywhere!
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by greenman
Re: The Age of Innocence
LOL. Poor Danny. I don't think you're a chip on the shoulder born again rebel song loving plastic proddy paddy plonker, if that helps. Quite right, life is usually pretty miserable, though not necessarily overall if you're lucky. I saw a quote on a card today that I can't remember who said it, but it went something like "Love doesn't make the world go round. Love makes the trip worth taking." Not to go all hearts and flowers, but in real terms, whether we like the sentiment or not, life is pretty miserable, and so I cherish the good things and times.
Follow Me Up to Carlow is exactly the sort of song I was talking about, Helen, but couldn't think of one off hand, good on ya. Urg. Makes me nauseous to think of it. Hate has a lot of things to answer for, but ultimately it all comes down to people being human. Of course, so do all the good things. It's one of those things that you sooner or later have to deal with being true.
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
"The mother of folklore is poverty" writes A.L. Lloyd in his book Folk Song In England. Folk song I think has always been about personal living conditions - highly political - on one side and dreams, romance, fantasy on the other.
We don't have to be sheperds to sing about sheep shearing. A good song will transport something more than the words say. To do with psychology I suppose.
So go ahead singing rebel songs if they mean something to you. I would prefer not to.
# Posted on July 21st 2003 by kuec
Re: The Age of Innocence
Many of the songs referred to by Danny are from around the time of the famine when 4 million people either departed this life or departed this isle for America. That was half the entire population of the country - it's hardly surprising then that people penned songs about emigration and hate for those responsible for their dying and leaving! [Having seen how America has reacted to the tragic death of several thousand on 9/11 I shudder to think what they would do if half the population was starved, beaten, and driven to emigrate?]
It's all very well saying how awful it is to write songs about sending heads 'dripping in gore to Liza and her ladies' but you might consider the reasons for the song.
Many rebel songs, however, are not contemporaneous with the events in question since they are written in English - not the language of the common man of the time. There are, of course, many 'rebel' songs in Irish but probably not well known or sung today.
The rebel song is, however, as much a part of the tradition as songs about fair Venus the Grecian Queen, or the Dark Waters of Ophir and omitting it from the musical lexicon would make the music and tradition less true and representative.
I would equally argue that songs such as the Apprentice Boys song The Crimson Banner should also have their place. My father who was himself an IRA man in his younger days and who brought our family up speaking Irish as our first language sang it and the likes of The Protestant Boys, The Bold Orange Heroes of Comber, The Auld Orange Flute etc.
The tradition is enriched by all it's tributaries, the Scots tradition, Pipe Bands, diddley dee, Gaelic, Orangeism, Protestant, catholic and Dissenter AND rebel songs and we are the better for it all.
# Posted on July 22nd 2003 by breandan
Re: The Age of Innocence
When my sisters and I would quarrel in our youth, my father would tell us to shut it down. Often we noisily tried to prove to him that we were variously in the right (of course, all three of us were certain we were in the right and our sibs were equally in the wrong), and he would listen with varying amounts of patience. Then he would invariably tell us that he didn't care who was right and who was wrong, what he cared about was that we learned to deal with our arguments in a civilized fashion that didn't end up with shouting and physical violence.
And so I've grown up believing that, while humans naturally want to conk people who disagree with them over the head and will always react badly to feeling oppressed, it's best not to go with that sort of impulse.
Though the songs of either side of the fence are a record of history and they certainly do have their place as historical records of human feeling, I still believe that singing them actively is a great way to glorify violence and foment and abet a darker part of human nature that is always inside us, ready to pop out and deny us our self-appointed "civilized" status..
As to "Carlow", I've never been sure why the thought of sending a woman the gory head of her husband would make anyone feel like a hero, regardless of the reasons for it. Now, if the woman was given a gun at that point, that might make the playing field a little more equal. And then you'd have an excuse to kill her, too, because it would be self-defense, right? Because, of course, violence begets violence and hate begets hate, just as sure as oppression leads to rebellion, all the way down the line. (I've never understood being able to actively starve other people right there in front of you so you can live high on the hog, either.)
All in all, I'd say that anything that treats other people has things instead of people is a bad thing.
Anyway, if you want a long and bloody history of oppression, violence, blood, and pure human horribleness, try the histories of China. Talk about glorifying violence, I still remember being dragged along to see Chinese films with my grandmother in Chinatown, with heros flying through the air, blood and guts spilling everywhere and swords sending sparks and heads flying. In the end of Chinese movies and stories, everyone always ends up dying or incredibly unhappy, which always made my grandmother happy; something I could never figure out. When I saw that Crouching Tiger movie, it was like being flipped into the past, and I kept expecting to see my grandmother in the chair next to me...
# Posted on July 22nd 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
Zina?
Sisters? - you mean there's more than one version of your genotype at large on this planet?
Joking, of course.
But you're 100% correct. Any song glorifying, nay, even condoning any act of violence is sinking to the level of the violent act. But I'm a bit mixed up here. There are times when violence must be exerted to defend a culture (and without a cultural identity we are nothing...that's why I'm a Born Again Plastic{BAP}.)
(Even the relatively *recent* history of China is a litany of suffering.... the Japanese army actually disobeyed the Japanese government when it extended its grip on Manchuria and Northern China in the 30's & 40's of the previous century!!)
As for Queen Elizabeth of England (the present one is QE1 of UK) - I actually believe she did more good than harm to the world in general....no doubt I'll get shot down for that one.... but maybe it shows that I'm not a total Rah-supporter.
Danny.
# Posted on July 22nd 2003 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: The Age of Innocence
Zina, well said. The historical worth of the songs is one thing, but the provocative emotional effect of singing them should not be under-estimated. That is the whole point of them, after all.
# Posted on July 22nd 2003 by Nell
Re: The Age of Innocence
Good point, Helen, I'd actually almost forgotten that in the sharp thrust of debate. *grin* Danny, my mother remembers, as a very small toddler, wandering around the deserted family farm, as all the men were off fighting and my grandmother and oldest aunt were hidden in a haystack for fear of rape, waiting for the Japanese to come through the farm. One of these days I need to ask her to finish that story; I don't think she ever said if the Japanese showed up or not. Perhaps she doesn't remember, she was only 3 or 4.
Yup, two sisters, both younger (bet no one's surprised that I'm an oldest, right?).
# Posted on July 22nd 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: The Age of Innocence
Sure, Danny, its true those songs and tunes came out of hard times. But it makes me think of something I heard on the radio
once. If you want to ask whether love is more powerful than fear ask yourself who from two thousand years or three thousand years is still talked of remembered and quoted? Is the the murderers and terrorists?
And in the same way, whats left of the bad times
is the tunes, sad, angry, but always beautiful. The spite, the suffering, the separation was buried with those people, but the spirit is still getting played.......
# Posted on August 13th 2003 by stewardy