Never mind the cephallically bloated novices giving lessons in Irish traditional music on YouTube.
Never mind the green beer and shamrock crowd working for no pay on behalf of the British monarchy to ensure another few centuries of cultural degradation.
Never mind the fusion junkies who need Irish music to match the mood found in elevators before unleashing their sanitized farm music in public--the crowd that find names like the Connacht Heifer or The Maid Behind the Bar embarrassing to their lofty goals of cool legitimacy through Irish-music-made-palatable.
Never mind the tuneless gate-keepers making their money and political gains with music columns and music business interests.
The biggest threat to Irish music comes from the great big horde of unemployed classical musicians who seem to be discovering a neglected genre of the European musical heritage because it might make them money. This crowd perform Irish music like Disney cartoons talk Jamaican patois, yet with the better than most self-promotion skills of the musical professional (or the novice on YouTube).
It seems to me that classical musicians are descending on Irish music with a dull sense of rhythm, and an attitude that condescends to the music's qualities--ignoring them in the process. But with the self-aggrandizing determination of the unemployed onto a good lead.
Classical music could of course be enriched by a rediscovery of Celtic influences. One could think of a Seán Ó Riada figure living up to the example of Chopin, who did much good with Polish music. Such a carefully bred interplay seems exciting to me. It requires the deep and probably native sympathies of someone forging a nation in the smithy of their soul. Maybe not.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the scores of musicians out there that see Irish music as something conquerable, because they can play Flight of the Bumblebee and make a crowd of punters cheer. No matter how boring their playing of Irish, they feel above the genre they seem to feel they'll have licked in a year or so by slumming it with the jigs and reels.
This is a real danger, so buy your canned goods now, and batten down the hatches. The self-declared musical aristocrats have set their eyes on some all-of-a-suddenly desirable farm in County Clare.
Nota Bene: I look forward to making a list of the great classical musicians who play Irish trad with all of the nyagh and none of the pretense that comes with feeling you have superior musical expertise as opposed to actually having deeper feeling.
NB a dó: I'm listening to Polonaise héroïque as I write this, one of Chopin's finest transmutations. He would have had a field day (anthology) with Pádraig O'Keefe's polka.
Final summation:
Classical music is for everybody. I guess Irish music has to be too.
O'Carolan/Ó Cearbhalláin has one foot in Europe and another in the Gaelic order, an important though maligned stream of European culture based in Ireland and Scotland.
His music became ignored by mainstream European court culture and moved with the rest of high Gaelic culture into the tin boxes of "low" Irish culture. That means that Gaelic airs became corrupted into popular music, like jigs and reels. So Irish culture conserves and holds precious that which was once high in lowly circumstances. It's a postmodern condition in a way, a cultural fix more often associated with the cool culture of African Americans.
What happens in all this mixing up of the low and the high forms of culture is that the Irish tradition developed askew to the mainstream trends of Europe, and produced a culture with its own standards. If O'Carolan is played badly by a traditional player, the tradition has its own standards to judge that performance. And they are high standards.
A classical musician might know the baroque conventions and apply them to Carolan, but it's the Irish traditional musician that has an intuitive and trained sense of the Gaelic Order (in low Irish forms). In other words the Irish trad musician understands Carolan's feeling more intimately, because it is their tradition that kept his music alive.
There's not much money in Trad is there, so why would it attract
'unemployed classical musicians'?
Also if you're talking about Ireland, wouldn't the punters know the real
thing from a fake if they heard it? But maybe I'm giving them too much
credit ... I think I know which Utube guy you're talking about; he posts
here on the Session so maybe he'll respond. His main sin is being a
Yank; I'm one myself so I apologise in advance.
Lamond Gillespie teaches classical violin at the 'Royal Scottish Academy
of Music and Drama' and has two good Trad albums ou (with John Blake
and Mick Leahy). But I don't think he's one of those interlopers you're
talking about.
~ speaking of O'Carolan
I believe he would appreciate the craic at a presentday session playing a lively version of "The Miss Margaret Brown Planxty".
Yes, he might especially enjoy that one.
;)
You're worrying too much. Classic FM was supposed to dumb down classical music. It didn't, because real classical aficionados don't suddenly conclude that bleeding chunks of Elgar's cello concerto and the like are the alpha and omega. The people who really love, understand and appreciate traditional Irish music won't be corrupted by the ersatz article. Also, I wouldn't tar everyone who is an accomplished musician but new to ITM with the same brush. You don't actually have to have guinness in your veins instead of blood to love it or play it well.
Hup:
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin seems to have a jazz background--I haven't researched that. And he's the head of the World Irish Music thing in Limerick, like Gillespie. His music isn't obviously traditional, it's inspired by it, and well I think. A lot of what's amazing about jazz is the harnessing of dance energy in a listening context, a quality Irish music often achieves, and does, as with jazz, usually in the hands of its masters.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ó Súilleabháin had a classical background as he has such mastery of his instrument. He's obviously deeply sensitive to Irish tradition and has an informed contribution to make. More like him.
Having a classical background is not going to be enough in an Irish music setting, as should be obvious but is not.
If your music doesn't inspire the need to dance, how can you know you're a good musician? That's a key question in Irish music to me. And it's seldom asked of the classical musician. And yet trad is often derided by the standards of a music that emphasizes different qualities. The Irish want to be driven to leap by music, or haunted with its honesty, no matter how directly put.
Secondly, Irish people love and collect melody, and all the best Irish tunes have such interesting hooks and runs and strategies for working within the haikus and sonnets of Irish conventions. Jazz is known for its riffs. Irish music has its own incantatory phrasing, and a reel seems to me sometimes like a series of riffs pulled together by steady hearty rhythm.The epic poems of Irish music, the symphonies, are not written maybe because the national culture and identity is not completely repaired.
So Irish music is incomplete, and not just because the musicians were murdered and the instruments destroyed by barbarians in fine clothing.
Someone insensitive to the massive project that something called tradition represents runs the danger of ruining that tradition by making it like everything else.
Random_notes:
That's the best reminder of all, that O'Carolan loved an Irish party. He brought it with him wherever he played his music, a talent not often associated with classical musicians.
You get out of bed the wrong side this morning, Scratch??
Yeah, we've all heard this stuff and you can guess very quickly that such and such a person was classically trained etc. But it's community music and belong to them as well in it's own way.
Nollaig Casey plays fiddle & violin, I think and she's a lovely trad singer to boot.
Steve Shaw:
Challenging this snobbery beast brought into traditional music sometimes by the occasional classical musician is a defense of scene, and may be unnecessary.
Irish music is passed down by the attention given to the oldest master, because recreating the Irish scene authentically only works when we reach back as far (back or forward) as the living tradition can reach.
The sheer audacity of Irish persistence and the reverence paid to the old corpus of music ensures the tradition of our peculiar collective memory is maintained with provisions that it remain particularly Irish and bound to the dinnshenchas of Ireland itself.
Irish music creates dance, and it creates memory, so that when something is played well it invokes past players, events, eras and communities. And if it is played really well is injects present circumstances into new memories.
Well posted Scratch. My particular favourite is the "traditional" musician who in falling into company with the high browed elite suddenly develops notions "well above their station". Classical music is slowly smothering traditional forms around here f'sure.
I think there's a bigger worry about what you're saying Scratch if you mean to include the college trained (usually youngsters) who think all that is necessary is to play, at the speed of light, their newly composed spiky charmless "tunes," "because it's easier to make up new tunes than learn the old ones," and whose bands are then booked by festival promoters because,
-they feel obliged to (for various reasons including "novelty")
-because they're cheap,
-because they, and the public, may not know the difference.
Ah shure you can't bate the auld box player with the eyes shut, the Guinness stains on the corners of his mouth and the fag with an inch of ash on it, dangling from his lips. By God sir, we'll show these Classical Players how it's done.
This all links to a conversation I was having the other night re a couple of musicians, ex-Royal Acadamy of Music, now working the folk clubs, playing interesting instruments with skill and vigour. However, when they sing, they take the p*ss out of the songs because they don't understand or respect them.
Ultimately trained classical musicians will either learn to respect the traditions they are hijacking, or they will be laughed out of court. I hope!
Setting aside the actual music / playing style, there's another difference between "folk" and "art" (eg classical) music practitioners.
Traditional music tends to played together in a very informal group where people are quite often both players and listeners at different times during the session. Classical music tends to be played in very different physical spaces, where there's a separation between performer and audience - this could be the space between the stage and the front row, the difference in height between stage and audience, the (often) unwritten rule that you don't talk to the audience and acknowledge them in a very ritual way, and the use of music stands and other stuff which (consciously or otherwise) acts as a barrier between performer and audience.
Is it just me, or are there two different groups of musicians being confused here?
I speak of:
1. Classically trained musicians who develop (or perhaps always had) a deep interest in and passion for traditional music;
2. Classically trained musicians who believe that their musical training is somehow all-encompassing and therefore, the skills that are required to play traditional music to the very highest level are merely a subset of whatever skills they already possess.
I think it is plain from ScratchYours's post that it is the 2nd category that he is referring to. I was, until now, unaware that either Lamond Gillespie or Nollaig Casey had classical training and would not have placed them in either category, but if anything, they belong in the 1st category. Micheal O Suillebhain, whilst I am aware of his classical music background, seems to involve himself with traditional music and musicians to such a degree as to suggest that he views it as a sphere of learning equal with, not subordinate to, classical music - so, very much the 2nd category. I would not be so bold as to compare their artistic merits, but referring back to Scratch's post, I would perhaps place O Suillebhain in the same class as Chopin.
The fact is, there are probably not many names we would have heard of that fit into the 2nd category, because, whilst they might be able to get gigs to get them through lean times, they're unlikely ever to have any clout within the traditional music world - and their attempts at traditional music are unlikely to arouse much interest in the classical music world.
I can't see that there is much risk of category-2-types making any impact on an existing healthy traditional music scene. The only real risk I can see is that, in an area without an established trad scene (or perhaps and already waning one), the earnest student of traditional music is likely to be overshadowed by the classical-virtuoso-turned-traddie, simply because they don't have the confidence or the technical prowess to wow their un-trad-initiated audience.
Not ITM, but can't help remembering with extreme distaste a concert by a fairly famous folk rock band in which their "fiddler" (classical background) played a series of undifferentiated sets called "Two tunes" "Three tunes" etc because he didn't know the names of any of them. Each was a high speed blast of equal notes without shape, accent or anything else. Hopefully he's learned better now.
The sound quality was fairly bad too, you couldn't really hear the words of any of the songs and the band got more and more resentful and sarky as they failed to receive the applause they felt they were entitled to.
"The only real risk I can see is that, in an area without an established trad scene (or perhaps and already waning one), the earnest student of traditional music is likely to be overshadowed by the classical-virtuoso-turned-traddie, simply because they don't have the confidence or the technical prowess to wow their un-trad-initiated audience."
That's the big concern around here. Although none of them would really be virtuosic... The nearest real community of irish music is in Toronto and outside of that, anything goes.
Either they'll get bored, or they'll make a fine living playing in Celtic Women or whatnot, or they'll figure out that Irish music is not a way to get rich. Or maybe, they'll learn. There are far more musicians out there with a classical background playing traditional music well than I think you know about or want to acknowledge. And as for the others... if they're not ruining your session at any given time, does it really affect you? You might enjoy more simply viewing their efforts (perhaps mine, too, I really have no idea) as a source of amusement. Not much use getting wound up about what other people don't know.
The classicals (at least the ones who I have played with a bit) are a pain in the butt.
If something isn't in the 'spots' then they get really stressed. God forbid you learned it from one of the old guys differently.
Someone mentioned O'Carolans. they get those Mel Bay spots of O'Neills and think they have found the freaking Holy Grail. And you better play the tune in 'F' in F.....because the piano player studyed piano and than sheet is a stone tablet from Moses mountain top!
Whew. Gruesome. Glad I don't get too many of those down this way. My biggest problem is with the Bluegrassers who barge in without a clue. We give them one quickly enough though.
When I was a lad, I had extensive classical training. I quit for a while and picked it back up to play nothing but 'the music' as an adult. The knowledge of actually how to play the instrument is about all I seemed to keep with me, though it's served me well. I can't imagine trying to serve two musical masters however. I know there's fiddlers who can do the American old-timey shuffle bowing and all that jazz, and then slip over into 'the music' and sound just fine. I'm not one of them though, so I'll stick with what's in me.
I studied under Michael O'Suilleabhain in the early nineties. He pulled a lot of strings and took a big risk by allowing myself and Niall Keegan, both history graduates to come and study for MA's in traditional music at UCC. In fact this 'classical' musician is largely responsible for the fact that trad can now be studied at graduate and post graduate level in Ireland on equal terms with classical. Another classical player who springs to mind is Siobhan Armstrong. She is Irelands leading historical harpist and one of Europes finest Baroque musicians. Yet she also a driving force behind the revival of the national instrument, the wire strung harp, and on this instrument she can play trad with the very best. So, we can't tar all the classical players with the same brush. I think the real danger to Irish music comes from within. It is the countless bands churning out over-produced commercial albums, all 'perfectly' played, yet about as interesting as elevator music, that I feel are far worse. I see a culture developing in Irish traditional music, where a style of virtuosic blandness is lauded as the pinnacle of our art. This is far more destructive than a few classical musicians not getting it quite right!
Brendan
With respect, I ask you frankly re the above video...why would someone DO that to Carolan's Concerto? I'm sure Michael O'S is a whiz musican and administrator etc....clearly his piano playing is amazing....however, what is happening in that vid seem incredibly insensitive to the actual music to my ears.
He's showing off. It's sad. And foolish.He should know better esp coming from where he does and given his knowledge etc. Don't you think?
Not being harsh here. Just calling a spade a spade.
Ps. I agree wholeheartedly with the "virtuosic blandness" take. Brilliantly put.
Yes, mtodd - O Suillebhain's performance in that video is very, erm, *clever*. (I think I prefer the one on the bagpipes). I'm sure I've heard him play better music than that.
i have to agree with brendan ring here. rather than focussing on whether people coming into the tradition we should look at the state of the tradition itself. there is a lot of over-producing these days, thats why personally i wouldnt listen to the likes of lunasa, mike mcgoldrick band and the like. but then again i think that course in UL is a reason for this. the fact that the course wants to be held in the same esteem as classical music is silly. is this not bad for irish music?
the course has lots of decent musicians on it but also a lot of very average ones aswell. there are far superior musicians of this age not on the course, yet the people who do it will come out with a degree which people will look upon thinking they are the pinnacle. sorry, but i dont buy into that. that along with Comhaltas is more of a problem than people coming in from other genres.
And what about the ones (utube passim) who ruin ITM, even with the sound off - you know, the ones with the enormous fixed grin, tossing their hair and weaving around from side to side as if in an earthquake?
oh yea and that ocarolans concerto is terrible. michael cant even get the bloody phrasing on the piano right, probably because its too bloody fast. thats what i call musical fluff - there's nothing substantive in it whatsoever. also michael is not an irish musician, more a jack of all trades who because his name is in irish is somehow thought of by non-trads as traditional. if i was thinking of trad piano players, even melody i would not think of him in a million years, sorry. thats my opinion.
i think anyone can tell from that playing there that they dont teach anything about having a 'musical ar' down in UL. there is a huge difference between being good technically and being musical. what is happening there is more technical and going through the motions. there is no taste to at all. O'Carolans Draft done by De Danann is how O'Carolan pieces should be played. simply and very tastefully.
Hey Brendan Ring,
The last I heard on myspace is that you were going offline and off the grid on the vegetable patch. Funnily enough I was listening to Troublesome Things the other day.
Aren't you the guy who plays the autoharp, Barn Owl?
I am currently looking for someone to accompany my arrangement of the 'I buried my wife and danced on her' concerto I have been learning on the Vulcan Arse Flute.
I think personally autoharp would sound great but it has to be in Bbm, as I haven't mastered the fifth octave yet.
I think O'Sully was having a bit of fun with it, a la Bach's Goldberg Variations. Any classical pianist would have spent some time with them, and with Glenn Gould's classic recording.
Not all the variations were that musical... the point is inventiveness rather than musicality... and sometimes there's a place for that, too. It's the musical equivalent of sparring.
O'Carolan played harp. We must strive to silence the inauthentic timbres brought into the music by fiddles, flutes, etc. Phony baloney non-harpist "sessions" grate on one's ears.
TRUE STORY: The only musician in heaven who O'Carolan will play Wii with is Derek Bell. And lunch? Again, only with Derek.
(No tiresome Teutonic tinkering neither: Glenn Gould debased J.S. Bach's works by recording them on that piano thang. Bach, however, still plays Xbox with Gould occasionally.)
I was actually referring in my post not to Michaels style but the opportunities he has given to traditional musicians. For instance, if you wanted to be a music teacher in Ireland you had to be a classical musician. Now you can qualify with trad as your major. This means that trad is in at school level on equal footing with classical. How can this be bad? This is largely down to Michael. As for the video(which I haven't watched), well, I'm sure we all have some musical skeletons in our cupboards,mine is full to bursting point! If you want to hear Micheal listen to the Dolphins Way, there is great music there. With regards to UL there isn't just one course and the musicians are not taught to play, they can play already. In the MA in trad performance the students choose their own tutors. They have to demonstrate they have learnt something from them, it can be simple or complicated. It is really an environment for musical development, if that is what you want. There seems to be a misconception that Niall Keegan and Michael impose their personal musical ethos on the students, but this is not the case. In short all I'm saying is that I think that he is a classical player who done good work for our musical community through having the vision to see that we are not second class musical citizens, in this context his playing is irrelevant. As for the ruination of Irish music, the most important thing here is how we play it ourselves and what we choose to elevate through listening. Personally I like to see a big picture. I play wire strung harp, uilleann pipes and low whistle. These three instruments span the entire history of our music. The harp was played for nearly a thousand years before that 'new' instrument the union pipes came along. Someday, the low whistle will be old and traditional! Change and innovation can be good, they stimulate and provoke debate, art should not become stagnant. At the moment we have bands and individuals basing themselves on forerunners from the seventies, but with neither the musical ability or creative genius that made them great. The greatest danger to Irish traditional music is mediocrity, there is no room for this in art, but if we keep buying these recordings and keep telling those that make them how wonderful they are, we have only ourselves to blame!
Brendan
You needn't worry about mediocrity and ITM as far as recordings go. Time has a habit of sorting that out. You can put out as many gimmicky, trite, 'novel', whizo ITM cds as you want, but in the end the audience and its pocket book has the last word. As with so many things, it's only a matter of time.
Today we will explore why gray-haired Caucasians reach the highest levels of cantankerousness when engaging in online discussions of the "ruination" of traditions. This is not a new topic. The elderly among our very ancient ancestors, australopithecus africanus, would howl and leap (or attempt to leap) when they spotted younger tribe members pounding the communal log drums with gazelle femurs, shunning the use of the traditional—and slightly lighter—gazelle tibias.
And so we're off and running. Welcome to the "Amateur Anthropologist's Half Hour." I am, of course, the very much wizened Clive Boffington-Hogg III.
P-K that would be a very short discussion I suspect there is only one worldwide organisation involved .
Nice to see you on the site Brendan I have fond memories of dancing to you and Ormond Waters in London in the 80,s
Patkiwi:
The trad musician that “suddenly develops notions well above their station” because he wants to get along with the high brow is indeed someone out to ruin the music. I think snobbery is the underlying emotion here. Snobbery will surely dampen the mood of Irish music--classical snobbery, trad musicians wanting to be respected like a classical musician, but also trad snobbery that sticks up the nose at every other player, while stating professorially, oh yes, Joe Shmoe is the BEST x-player in all of Ireland.
TomB-R:
Students with their new charmless compositions, lightning speed, and lacking traditional repertoire hogging up punter money could ruin the music. Yep.
Free Reed
That box player you describe is like a bluesman in the Mississippi Delta, and we need to make sure we exalt the old characters of the music, the ones that make the scene, and the masters within and that come out of the tradition, to whom said box player would himself look up to.
John Grover
Comhaltas wins first prize in this competition. I remember James Keane telling a story about how he founded the Sonny Brogan branch of Comhaltas in Dublin back when it was only a handful of great musicians like him and his brother and Mick O’Connor and James Kelly and the older musicians from John Kelly’s generation defending the music and the fun from the foreign flooding. When he founded that branch, Comhaltas was made up of “piccolo adjudicators,” judging trad from a classical point of view. Over-ornamentation will be exalted if the judge is not a master musician himself. Only better musicians are able to make meaningful criticism of another, and I think a lean-over whisper is better than a ribbon or a point deduction.
Guernsey Pete
Taking the p*ss out of the songs. It’s that whole British-propaganda-derived caricature of the Irish that lets their culture be talked down to, even and often by those who claim to really love it. There’s some kind of association with Irishness that people either give up, or retain in the back of their minds, and that condescending a priori ruins any hope they have of being authentic in their performance.
Mark Harmer
That’s it on the button, the classical musician is part of an aristocratic tradition that fosters exalted performance, but the kind that seems to require secret service agents. The classical musician is trained to stand apart and above the monkeys listening to their angel squealing.
Ragaman
I’m not knocking classical musicians, as I said I am a big Chopin fan, and I happen to really admire and enjoy the recordings of a number of amazing classical musicians. I’m warning the classical musicians, or trying to make a reasonable case for why I believe there’s a problem that can be overcome with consciousness. I agree there’s probably not a big threat, but Irish music often goes in and out of fashion, as tastes change, and as we’re at a new epoch, we should be aware that the last Depression nearly killed off traditional music, which had been defined by Michael Coleman only a decade before. In the span of ten years, Irish music buyers chose the manufactured Irish industry’s output over the real thing, and it could certainly happen again. The results? The death of real Irish style fun, and the erosion of a very old musical language. The whole thing is analogous to Gaeilge and even Hiberno English in my opinion.
Lissagriffin
I’ll look him up. What about John Field the Irish inventor of the nocturne? I’m sure he was influenced by Thomas Moore and vicariously by the tradition that Moore exploited. But did he have direct contact with it, the way Jonathan Swift once palled around with Turlough O’Carolan?
TomB-R
Fiddling becomes monotonous on an electric fiddle I think, but I’d like to be proven wrong as always.
Nico
That’s exactly it. I see the erosion outside Ireland where traditional master musicians are less in supply, and the result is band practice for Darby O’Gill’s orchestra. The sheer volume of bad representations of Irishness and Irish culture available to confuse even the most earnest novice is the threat being discussed, and indeed, classical musicians and their snob-induced ignorance can be a major pusher of the fake Irish stuff.
Kilfarboy
Oh wow. I had no idea. I have no more comments on Ó Súill after watching that. I remember some really jazzy thing he did once and I liked it, but it seemed only inspired by an Irish tune and a whole other thing. Wow. It was the walking around and the mini-bow at the end of the clip with the bagpipe. What?
Reenactor
I’m not worried necessarily, but I recognize the forces of conformity and there is a major force out there that threatens to overtake and compete the sentimental structure that has built up around a set of Irish masters and their proteges that comes from within the upper echelons of the tradition itself. It irks me to hear oohs and aahs about certain gimmick merchants when another great representative of the music and its depth is ignored. Following the masters is part of the tradition.
Zippydw
Druids were known to be masters of memory, disdaining the effects books had on the mental retention of knowledge. Waving a book in traditional music is like the Christian missionaries banishing the pagans into forgotten memory.
SWFL Fiddler
Isn’t that the point. The tradition is a life-time project to absorb and perform the millennial memory and music of an entire nation and the history of a talented culture. There should be more respect given to those exclusively dedicated to it, than the Johnny Come Latelys and their supremacist attitudes.
Mtodd
Not sure. I suspect Ó Súilleabháin of deep sympathies to the Irish tradition, and talent enough to make a contribution. How does he get on in a seisúin? What would he play? I’m not prepared to say he’s no Felix Dolan.
Brendan Ring
There’s definitely a gap in the tradition. The famine cut the 19th century off from their dignity and traditions. Vikings and British colonialism ended the Irish stream of musicians to the music university of medieval Europe in Gall, the Swiss holy place founded by the Irish scholar Gall. Siobhán Armstrong helping to bring the Irish harp back from the brink is all part of bridging the gap between the golden ages of Irish culture, across the erasing-times when Irish culture was a cancer to British and American establishment cultural imperialism, and into the future where we all hope the Irish way of evolving as human beings continues for as long as human culture survives.
Mtodd and Ragaman
What if some guy who grew up in Manhattan and went to jazz clubs his whole life decided to do something with Irish melodies? It’s going to happen, no matter what, I’d rather the guy doing it first is named Ó Súilleabháin, at least the Irish own their own experimentation, or a respectable part of it.
Fiddleruairi
Yeah the competition culture goes high class and gives out diplomas rather than trophies. The idea of Irish music being institutionalized speaks to the rise of Irish power, and demise of the Irish condition. Really finding in Irish music a body of neglected work seems to me to be an archival process. If you have a diploma for having found forgotten performances from the 1930s, represented them to the tradition and helped to revive the style and musical contributions of some great old Irish master, then you get a diploma. If you learned how to play reels and jigs from Ó S, I don’t think your diploma makes sense except to create class distinction.
Geoffwright
Enormous grins are a sure sign.
Barn Owl
p*ssing other musicians off seems to be an integral part of the Irish tradition.
Jwvansteenwyk
It’s about tastes and healthy musical snobbery too. There are criteria for sussing out the impostors. A liminal figure like Súilly is asking to be the butt of the on-going joke and debate. He’s well-kudo-ized to take it.
NEW Pure Drop
The tradition is strong enough to take a lot.
""I would perhaps place O Suillebhain in the same class as Chopin"
...Aw cmon this is a wind up right?""
A bit of a bold statement, granted - but I did say that I didn't mean to compare their artistic merits. In retrospect, 'class' was the wrong word to use. But in the sense that they both use the traditional music of their native country as the source of inspiration for a different genre of music, I think we can draw a parallel. I doubt very much that O Suillebhain would ever consider himself in the same class as Chopin or any other of the great composers, or indeed, in the same class as any of the great traditional musicians.
Sad to inform you, there will always be Kenny G, Andre Rieu, and many others to ruin perfectly fine genres of music. This will never change. My advice is to stop being so damned p*ssed off at it and just go play some tunes. My concern is when you lump entire groups of people together with Andre Rieu - that's just an affront to decent, hard-working folks who are trying to learn music.
hello! I feel like i need to defend classical musicians!
Of course there are many who only think that they're playing in a traditional way, but hey! even a professional classical musician is not completely lacking talent. If he or she really concentrates on traditional playing, why shouldn't it work? It's not fair to say, that they're all terrible ignorant wanna-bes in general, even if you're kindly mentioning "a few exceptions".
So often, I heard sentences like " 'classical' people would play it this way, but it actually sounds like this...".
I agree that "unemployed classical musicians" who dont know or dont want to know what they're doing with the irish stuff exist, but please dont put an understanding for different kinds of music past the "classics", you'd still belong to those who know it best
Maybe i got you wrong, but .. well .. mh.. the discussion sounded like this
I don't think anyone doubts the talent of classical musicians. The problems lie with those who make serious attempts at trad with either the arrogance to think they've got it because they're already accomplished musicians or the ignorance of playing it without listening properly to it. The two clips of Michael O'Suilleabhain above are absolutely horrible attempts at traditional music. I actually prefer (for the want of a better word) the terrible backing to the piping clip, at least it's honest. The O'Suilleabhain clips are examples of someone who should know better or at least pay more attention.
Someone said it above, classical musicians are up on high, behind music stands, bearing diplomas and aristocratic prestige, whereas trad is found around hearths, in public houses, spontaneously combusting from family and communal life. A trad concert can be lofty too of course, but it's hard to be snobby with the heritage of informality the Chieftains for example started at the Royal Albert and Carnegie Hall.
Existentially classical musicians present a philosophical problem for traditional music. No one is attacking them, that would be stupid and leave us open to the choicest insult of all, classical musicians play their instruments more dexterously.
And James Brown ain't no chump crooning next to Pavarotti.
It's hard to be assured of a classical musician's reverence for the heritage that gives traditional music that ever allusive turf aroma.
Seems to me that Irish music, like all musics...traditional and "classical" (whatever that means) are ruined by several groups:
1) Folks who do not understand, or at least attempt to understand, the music they want to play. This means, in ALL music (including classical) one needs to get beyond the dots and into the issues of correct style. There is not one classical style any more than there is one traditional style, and a good player needs to understand whatever styles s/he is playing. Consider what happens to irish trad tunes when played for contra dancing....
2) Folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change. This may take the form of limiting what instruments are "allowed" or refusing to pay attention to changes in style that come about and one style is transfused by another, or any number of other things. Comhaltas doubtless plays a role, unfortunately, here as it tries to walk the line between acceptable and not acceptable practices. The Chieftains have certainly open doors in this area, for better or worse.
3) Folks who ride the crest of the wave of popularity of a style and provide pap for masses to satisfy wishes that have little to do with the musical style they supposedly represent. Kenny G. and Andre Rieu have already been mentioned. For me Celtic Women generally fits into that group too. And don't get me started about "Great Moments in Classical Music."
Now a word in defense of the highly trained classical musician: Those folks have spent years being trained to reproduce the page within certain constraints. Some understand the styles they play (the truly good ones) and some are just human music reproducing machines. This is the heritage of 19th and 20th century classical music where players are expected to reproduce and, for the first time not improvise in any way (except an occasional cadenza). Most, however, are not trained in the nuances of traditional music. Shuffle bowing for example is usually something they can't "just do," though they can do the written out and somewhat altered versions in the Copland works. So, when they come to traditional music, Irish or other, they tend to reproduce the notes as they are on the page. This they can do easily and at blinding speeds. Unless they listen to what the music should be that is all they can do. They've also spent years dealing with large scale musical forms and find it difficult to find the interest in a 32 bar tune. However they've spent years learning to be capable of what a conductor wants. They can quickly learn what a tradition wants...if they want to. In sum, forgive them their backgrounds and help them understand what "it is all about." They'll quickly become excellent practitioners.
On point #2 cboody, if you are suggesting grumpy sorts are ruining traditional music then ~ how has it survived them up until this time?
I'm not defending, "folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change." Nor do I think we should follow their every word. Many traditions other than Irish music have grumpy people. A tradition may deteriorate when the community of people forget they are a community. The traditionalists' do not forget that; they just keep both feet firmly planted. A few of them are the roots.
Bloody hell Michael. Off topic but I stopped a loop of that tune from the CCE web site to go your link just as I was thinking that playing it with silly rhythyms might be test for how I was doing with it !
Matt Molloy funny enough always comes off as having more gravitas and substance when he's playing a duet with James Galway, who, even with golden flute, feels obliged to sprite about seeming to be at the point of leaping with every bounce of his eyebrows. Whereas Molloy is concentrating, exuding cool and doing justice to an iconic hornpipe.
Galway seems obliged to act like a leprechaun when he plays trad. Like 'I'm not to be taken seriously it's just fun I'm having, begorrah.'
It's maybe an attitude he was confronted with when he took his traditional background to the music academy and was patted on the head for his first little jig.
Irish music is judged against classical music routinely in order to put the thing in its place. But if trad were judged against contemporary pop melodies, trad is complicated.
Traditional Irish music in one form is pop from a generation when fiddle playing was the loudest electric guitar out there.
Trad is more complicated than the normal popular mind, and less complicated than the highly trained classical mind. The language of David Mamet is simpler than that of Shakespeare. Matt Molloy is just deeper than James Galway.
Yeah Joel, there's another clip from that same programme where Malloy and Lunny play The Bucks. And poor old James, sitting on his high stool above Malloy has this most extraordinary face of bewilderment. It is the most literal face of incomprehension you could ever hope to see. And the amazing thing about it is there is no admiration, no enjoyment, just that horrid fixed grin.
wow his smile and movements are really creepy. But maybe we just over-interpret it and he just waits and listens politely till the tune is over ;)
Maybe there's no admiration because he had heard Molloy playing this before a few times? What do you expect him too look
Randomnotes says:
On point #2 cboody, if you are suggesting grumpy sorts are ruining traditional music then ~ how has it survived them up until this time?
I'm not defending, "folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change." Nor do I think we should follow their every word. Many traditions other than Irish music have grumpy people. A tradition may deteriorate when the community of people forget they are a community. The traditionalists' do not forget that; they just keep both feet firmly planted. A few of them are the roots.
Heavens no that is not what I meant. There's a great difference between grumpy folks and rigid folks, and an even greater difference between grumpy folks and Celtic (or fill in the music type) Nazis. Those are the folks I deplore. The ones who would say, "No, you can't do that because in 1922 performer XX didn't do it that way." Those who are not "Nazis" would say something like "Have you considered how XX did that in 1922? He comes from the YY tradition and you might want to think about his interpretation." It is good to hear folks have strong feelings about how to perform music. It is not good to hear folks reject approaches other than their own for no better reason than it doesn't match their own. Now if the player hasn't a clue..... Well, you get the idea.
Can't wait to see which classically trained players you think might be worthy for consideration as masters of diddly. Really, please print some names. I am truly curious. I consider your opening paragraph to be the most interesting rant I've read yet on these pages, and I've read a lot. Moreover, as an inveterate bitcher, I love nothing more than an intelligent and trenchant railing when appropriate.
Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Scratch.
Some new topics seem to be previous discussions with a slightly different approach.
A thread from this week brought me back here for a fresh read. Funny thing is I had not seen the "Danny Boy" clip the 1st time, even though it was apparently in response to 1 of my comments. I only glanced at it this time. I get the gist.
Anyway ~ "The Bucks of Oranmore" is always good. While here I will link to this related thread;
New game - What is that whistle?
"Here's something I discovered on YouTube - very beautiful music and very nice playing by Sir James Galway . . . "
February 28th 2009 by Jocelyne http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20807
& the spinoff from there;
Vibrato
" . . . Why does vibrato exist? Used well it can be very expressive, and it does indeed enrich the tone by generating extra harmonics. This is also why it is so easy to overdo.'
March 1st 2009 by lazyhound http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20811
Hi there,
Apologies...
Probably a bit late to add to this thread, it seems to have gone elsewhere since it started!
I understand what is meant by this jibe on classical musicians, I've heard it and I have grimaced and occasionally stifled a swelling urge to vomit at some of the clean cut interpretations of traditional music (Dave Swarbrick has almost always had this effect on me, despite his undeniable skills.)
- I grew up around folk musicians and know it to be music that creates a warmth, it has a life; something more than just coldly played tunes.
However, I REALLY wanted to add this (I am aware this has already been said but...)
*My uncle inspired me to first pick up a fiddle when I was seven as his jigs reels etc. set my world on fire!- he played and toured with classical orchestras for years.
*An extremely close friend of mine studied violin at an academy in France and taught at the Royal academy in London. He is something of a folk oracle.
*Another dear friend plays a lot of classical music and also plays at the Kilkenny in South London, among other places.
The thing that truly unites these three people is that they are, for me, the best three fiddle players I have ever heard ( I used to run a folk club and am a keen festival goer, so I have heard so many, oh so many...) Whatever they play hums, buzzes and dances. Hearing any of these three people play just transports me, they are incredible! ... They all have some classical training, if not a lot.
Yes there are muicians who stick themselves in their niche and are quite happy to stay there, trying to be king of all they behold, but there are also those who love whatever they create.
By the way, this classical-isation of traditional tunes isn't new, composers across the globe have borrowed a great deal from the 'music of the people'.
My double bassist friend Steve, who plays across many genres(a veritable king of the giant four strings) makes the same complaint about jazz ... too many folkies or squeaky clean classicists, too few people simply creating spontaneously from their heart. He makes a good point that these things should be done like you mean it.
Who wants to "Ruin Irish Music?" probably no-one except me, in festival season; for when I return to the sleepy little villages in Dorset from whence I first came, I find that every single whistler, fiddler, singer etc. is sitting around a table of Guinness playing The Butterfly, Saddle the Pony, Foxhunter's etc. etc. and singing "She Moved Through The Fair"... double stopping all over any English tune someone might try and dust off...Just who do these out of work Irish musicians think they are? They come over here, steal 'our' sessions...
- Okay, I'm just teasing!- I enjoy it all, wherever it comes from
Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Never mind the fake bodhrán players.
Never mind the cephallically bloated novices giving lessons in Irish traditional music on YouTube.
Never mind the green beer and shamrock crowd working for no pay on behalf of the British monarchy to ensure another few centuries of cultural degradation.
Never mind the fusion junkies who need Irish music to match the mood found in elevators before unleashing their sanitized farm music in public--the crowd that find names like the Connacht Heifer or The Maid Behind the Bar embarrassing to their lofty goals of cool legitimacy through Irish-music-made-palatable.
Never mind the tuneless gate-keepers making their money and political gains with music columns and music business interests.
The biggest threat to Irish music comes from the great big horde of unemployed classical musicians who seem to be discovering a neglected genre of the European musical heritage because it might make them money. This crowd perform Irish music like Disney cartoons talk Jamaican patois, yet with the better than most self-promotion skills of the musical professional (or the novice on YouTube).
It seems to me that classical musicians are descending on Irish music with a dull sense of rhythm, and an attitude that condescends to the music's qualities--ignoring them in the process. But with the self-aggrandizing determination of the unemployed onto a good lead.
Classical music could of course be enriched by a rediscovery of Celtic influences. One could think of a Seán Ó Riada figure living up to the example of Chopin, who did much good with Polish music. Such a carefully bred interplay seems exciting to me. It requires the deep and probably native sympathies of someone forging a nation in the smithy of their soul. Maybe not.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the scores of musicians out there that see Irish music as something conquerable, because they can play Flight of the Bumblebee and make a crowd of punters cheer. No matter how boring their playing of Irish, they feel above the genre they seem to feel they'll have licked in a year or so by slumming it with the jigs and reels.
This is a real danger, so buy your canned goods now, and batten down the hatches. The self-declared musical aristocrats have set their eyes on some all-of-a-suddenly desirable farm in County Clare.
Nota Bene: I look forward to making a list of the great classical musicians who play Irish trad with all of the nyagh and none of the pretense that comes with feeling you have superior musical expertise as opposed to actually having deeper feeling.
NB a dó: I'm listening to Polonaise héroïque as I write this, one of Chopin's finest transmutations. He would have had a field day (anthology) with Pádraig O'Keefe's polka.
Final summation:
Classical music is for everybody. I guess Irish music has to be too.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I wonder how many classical musicians wince at the way trad-heads play O'Carolan?
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by jwvansteenwyk
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
O'Carolan/Ó Cearbhalláin has one foot in Europe and another in the Gaelic order, an important though maligned stream of European culture based in Ireland and Scotland.
His music became ignored by mainstream European court culture and moved with the rest of high Gaelic culture into the tin boxes of "low" Irish culture. That means that Gaelic airs became corrupted into popular music, like jigs and reels. So Irish culture conserves and holds precious that which was once high in lowly circumstances. It's a postmodern condition in a way, a cultural fix more often associated with the cool culture of African Americans.
What happens in all this mixing up of the low and the high forms of culture is that the Irish tradition developed askew to the mainstream trends of Europe, and produced a culture with its own standards. If O'Carolan is played badly by a traditional player, the tradition has its own standards to judge that performance. And they are high standards.
A classical musician might know the baroque conventions and apply them to Carolan, but it's the Irish traditional musician that has an intuitive and trained sense of the Gaelic Order (in low Irish forms). In other words the Irish trad musician understands Carolan's feeling more intimately, because it is their tradition that kept his music alive.
Isn't that right?
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
There's not much money in Trad is there, so why would it attract
'unemployed classical musicians'?
Also if you're talking about Ireland, wouldn't the punters know the real
thing from a fake if they heard it? But maybe I'm giving them too much
credit ... I think I know which Utube guy you're talking about; he posts
here on the Session so maybe he'll respond. His main sin is being a
Yank; I'm one myself so I apologise in advance.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Hup
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Lamond Gillespie teaches classical violin at the 'Royal Scottish Academy
of Music and Drama' and has two good Trad albums ou (with John Blake
and Mick Leahy). But I don't think he's one of those interlopers you're
talking about.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Hup
I read 1 post
~ speaking of O'Carolan
I believe he would appreciate the craic at a presentday session playing a lively version of "The Miss Margaret Brown Planxty".
Yes, he might especially enjoy that one.
;)
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
You're worrying too much. Classic FM was supposed to dumb down classical music. It didn't, because real classical aficionados don't suddenly conclude that bleeding chunks of Elgar's cello concerto and the like are the alpha and omega. The people who really love, understand and appreciate traditional Irish music won't be corrupted by the ersatz article. Also, I wouldn't tar everyone who is an accomplished musician but new to ITM with the same brush. You don't actually have to have guinness in your veins instead of blood to love it or play it well.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Hup:
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin seems to have a jazz background--I haven't researched that. And he's the head of the World Irish Music thing in Limerick, like Gillespie. His music isn't obviously traditional, it's inspired by it, and well I think. A lot of what's amazing about jazz is the harnessing of dance energy in a listening context, a quality Irish music often achieves, and does, as with jazz, usually in the hands of its masters.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ó Súilleabháin had a classical background as he has such mastery of his instrument. He's obviously deeply sensitive to Irish tradition and has an informed contribution to make. More like him.
Having a classical background is not going to be enough in an Irish music setting, as should be obvious but is not.
If your music doesn't inspire the need to dance, how can you know you're a good musician? That's a key question in Irish music to me. And it's seldom asked of the classical musician. And yet trad is often derided by the standards of a music that emphasizes different qualities. The Irish want to be driven to leap by music, or haunted with its honesty, no matter how directly put.
Secondly, Irish people love and collect melody, and all the best Irish tunes have such interesting hooks and runs and strategies for working within the haikus and sonnets of Irish conventions. Jazz is known for its riffs. Irish music has its own incantatory phrasing, and a reel seems to me sometimes like a series of riffs pulled together by steady hearty rhythm.The epic poems of Irish music, the symphonies, are not written maybe because the national culture and identity is not completely repaired.
So Irish music is incomplete, and not just because the musicians were murdered and the instruments destroyed by barbarians in fine clothing.
Someone insensitive to the massive project that something called tradition represents runs the danger of ruining that tradition by making it like everything else.
Random_notes:
That's the best reminder of all, that O'Carolan loved an Irish party. He brought it with him wherever he played his music, a talent not often associated with classical musicians.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Yes, the foot-tappingness is the key (or one of them). I agree,
it's dead if you don't have it.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Hup
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I remember James Galway playing an oul tune or two on the whistle. Great stuff!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by pipewatcher
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
You get out of bed the wrong side this morning, Scratch??
Yeah, we've all heard this stuff and you can guess very quickly that such and such a person was classically trained etc. But it's community music and belong to them as well in it's own way.
Nollaig Casey plays fiddle & violin, I think and she's a lovely trad singer to boot.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by the wounded hussar
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Steve Shaw:
Challenging this snobbery beast brought into traditional music sometimes by the occasional classical musician is a defense of scene, and may be unnecessary.
Irish music is passed down by the attention given to the oldest master, because recreating the Irish scene authentically only works when we reach back as far (back or forward) as the living tradition can reach.
The sheer audacity of Irish persistence and the reverence paid to the old corpus of music ensures the tradition of our peculiar collective memory is maintained with provisions that it remain particularly Irish and bound to the dinnshenchas of Ireland itself.
Irish music creates dance, and it creates memory, so that when something is played well it invokes past players, events, eras and communities. And if it is played really well is injects present circumstances into new memories.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Well posted Scratch. My particular favourite is the "traditional" musician who in falling into company with the high browed elite suddenly develops notions "well above their station". Classical music is slowly smothering traditional forms around here f'sure.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I think there's a bigger worry about what you're saying Scratch if you mean to include the college trained (usually youngsters) who think all that is necessary is to play, at the speed of light, their newly composed spiky charmless "tunes," "because it's easier to make up new tunes than learn the old ones," and whose bands are then booked by festival promoters because,
-they feel obliged to (for various reasons including "novelty")
-because they're cheap,
-because they, and the public, may not know the difference.
Or maybe not....
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by TomB-R
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Ah shure you can't bate the auld box player with the eyes shut, the Guinness stains on the corners of his mouth and the fag with an inch of ash on it, dangling from his lips. By God sir, we'll show these Classical Players how it's done.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Free Reed
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
This all links to a conversation I was having the other night re a couple of musicians, ex-Royal Acadamy of Music, now working the folk clubs, playing interesting instruments with skill and vigour. However, when they sing, they take the p*ss out of the songs because they don't understand or respect them.
Ultimately trained classical musicians will either learn to respect the traditions they are hijacking, or they will be laughed out of court. I hope!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Setting aside the actual music / playing style, there's another difference between "folk" and "art" (eg classical) music practitioners.
Traditional music tends to played together in a very informal group where people are quite often both players and listeners at different times during the session. Classical music tends to be played in very different physical spaces, where there's a separation between performer and audience - this could be the space between the stage and the front row, the difference in height between stage and audience, the (often) unwritten rule that you don't talk to the audience and acknowledge them in a very ritual way, and the use of music stands and other stuff which (consciously or otherwise) acts as a barrier between performer and audience.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Mark Harmer
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
...ie it's more than playing a different style of music, it's a very different genre in lots of ways.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Mark Harmer
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Is it just me, or are there two different groups of musicians being confused here?
I speak of:
1. Classically trained musicians who develop (or perhaps always had) a deep interest in and passion for traditional music;
2. Classically trained musicians who believe that their musical training is somehow all-encompassing and therefore, the skills that are required to play traditional music to the very highest level are merely a subset of whatever skills they already possess.
I think it is plain from ScratchYours's post that it is the 2nd category that he is referring to. I was, until now, unaware that either Lamond Gillespie or Nollaig Casey had classical training and would not have placed them in either category, but if anything, they belong in the 1st category. Micheal O Suillebhain, whilst I am aware of his classical music background, seems to involve himself with traditional music and musicians to such a degree as to suggest that he views it as a sphere of learning equal with, not subordinate to, classical music - so, very much the 2nd category. I would not be so bold as to compare their artistic merits, but referring back to Scratch's post, I would perhaps place O Suillebhain in the same class as Chopin.
The fact is, there are probably not many names we would have heard of that fit into the 2nd category, because, whilst they might be able to get gigs to get them through lean times, they're unlikely ever to have any clout within the traditional music world - and their attempts at traditional music are unlikely to arouse much interest in the classical music world.
I can't see that there is much risk of category-2-types making any impact on an existing healthy traditional music scene. The only real risk I can see is that, in an area without an established trad scene (or perhaps and already waning one), the earnest student of traditional music is likely to be overshadowed by the classical-virtuoso-turned-traddie, simply because they don't have the confidence or the technical prowess to wow their un-trad-initiated audience.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"Classical music could of course be enriched by celtic influences."
--and is. English composer Peter Maxwell Davies, for example.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Lissagriffin
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Not ITM, but can't help remembering with extreme distaste a concert by a fairly famous folk rock band in which their "fiddler" (classical background) played a series of undifferentiated sets called "Two tunes" "Three tunes" etc because he didn't know the names of any of them. Each was a high speed blast of equal notes without shape, accent or anything else. Hopefully he's learned better now.
The sound quality was fairly bad too, you couldn't really hear the words of any of the songs and the band got more and more resentful and sarky as they failed to receive the applause they felt they were entitled to.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by TomB-R
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"The only real risk I can see is that, in an area without an established trad scene (or perhaps and already waning one), the earnest student of traditional music is likely to be overshadowed by the classical-virtuoso-turned-traddie, simply because they don't have the confidence or the technical prowess to wow their un-trad-initiated audience."
That's the big concern around here. Although none of them would really be virtuosic... The nearest real community of irish music is in Toronto and outside of that, anything goes.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Nico
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"Although none of them would really be virtuosic..."
No. I use the term with a tinge of irony. The real classical *virtuoso* is unlikely to feel the need to re-invent themself as a trad musician.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Here's some of the worst trad backing of all time....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqfw3tD2Zk
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=_qKKMhYpmCc&feature=related
best to forget that altogether
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"Here's some of the worst trad backing of all time...."
I though he was quite good on the flute, actually.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
He was a hero on the flute to play through that.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
You know what Scratch?
Either they'll get bored, or they'll make a fine living playing in Celtic Women or whatnot, or they'll figure out that Irish music is not a way to get rich. Or maybe, they'll learn. There are far more musicians out there with a classical background playing traditional music well than I think you know about or want to acknowledge. And as for the others... if they're not ruining your session at any given time, does it really affect you? You might enjoy more simply viewing their efforts (perhaps mine, too, I really have no idea) as a source of amusement. Not much use getting wound up about what other people don't know.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by reenactor
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Bogman, there's always this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooaCYEU9wt0
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by reenactor
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
The classicals (at least the ones who I have played with a bit) are a pain in the butt.
If something isn't in the 'spots' then they get really stressed. God forbid you learned it from one of the old guys differently.
Someone mentioned O'Carolans. they get those Mel Bay spots of O'Neills and think they have found the freaking Holy Grail. And you better play the tune in 'F' in F.....because the piano player studyed piano and than sheet is a stone tablet from Moses mountain top!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by zippydw
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Whew. Gruesome. Glad I don't get too many of those down this way. My biggest problem is with the Bluegrassers who barge in without a clue. We give them one quickly enough though.
When I was a lad, I had extensive classical training. I quit for a while and picked it back up to play nothing but 'the music' as an adult. The knowledge of actually how to play the instrument is about all I seemed to keep with me, though it's served me well. I can't imagine trying to serve two musical masters however. I know there's fiddlers who can do the American old-timey shuffle bowing and all that jazz, and then slip over into 'the music' and sound just fine. I'm not one of them though, so I'll stick with what's in me.
zippy, amen on the dot fascists. Ugh. [shudder]
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
...and getting back to the topic, I think that's the problem, trying to serve two masters and doing 'the music' no justice in the process.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
In the spirit of bad taste and not knowing when to quite I offer this:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=01RI02N_N48&feature=related
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
sorry, "when to quit"
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I studied under Michael O'Suilleabhain in the early nineties. He pulled a lot of strings and took a big risk by allowing myself and Niall Keegan, both history graduates to come and study for MA's in traditional music at UCC. In fact this 'classical' musician is largely responsible for the fact that trad can now be studied at graduate and post graduate level in Ireland on equal terms with classical. Another classical player who springs to mind is Siobhan Armstrong. She is Irelands leading historical harpist and one of Europes finest Baroque musicians. Yet she also a driving force behind the revival of the national instrument, the wire strung harp, and on this instrument she can play trad with the very best. So, we can't tar all the classical players with the same brush. I think the real danger to Irish music comes from within. It is the countless bands churning out over-produced commercial albums, all 'perfectly' played, yet about as interesting as elevator music, that I feel are far worse. I see a culture developing in Irish traditional music, where a style of virtuosic blandness is lauded as the pinnacle of our art. This is far more destructive than a few classical musicians not getting it quite right!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by brendan ring
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Brendan
With respect, I ask you frankly re the above video...why would someone DO that to Carolan's Concerto? I'm sure Michael O'S is a whiz musican and administrator etc....clearly his piano playing is amazing....however, what is happening in that vid seem incredibly insensitive to the actual music to my ears.
He's showing off. It's sad. And foolish.He should know better esp coming from where he does and given his knowledge etc. Don't you think?
Not being harsh here. Just calling a spade a spade.
Ps. I agree wholeheartedly with the "virtuosic blandness" take. Brilliantly put.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Yes, mtodd - O Suillebhain's performance in that video is very, erm, *clever*. (I think I prefer the one on the bagpipes). I'm sure I've heard him play better music than that.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
i have to agree with brendan ring here. rather than focussing on whether people coming into the tradition we should look at the state of the tradition itself. there is a lot of over-producing these days, thats why personally i wouldnt listen to the likes of lunasa, mike mcgoldrick band and the like. but then again i think that course in UL is a reason for this. the fact that the course wants to be held in the same esteem as classical music is silly. is this not bad for irish music?
the course has lots of decent musicians on it but also a lot of very average ones aswell. there are far superior musicians of this age not on the course, yet the people who do it will come out with a degree which people will look upon thinking they are the pinnacle. sorry, but i dont buy into that. that along with Comhaltas is more of a problem than people coming in from other genres.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by fiddleruairi
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
And what about the ones (utube passim) who ruin ITM, even with the sound off - you know, the ones with the enormous fixed grin, tossing their hair and weaving around from side to side as if in an earthquake?
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by geoffwright
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
oh yea and that ocarolans concerto is terrible. michael cant even get the bloody phrasing on the piano right, probably because its too bloody fast. thats what i call musical fluff - there's nothing substantive in it whatsoever. also michael is not an irish musician, more a jack of all trades who because his name is in irish is somehow thought of by non-trads as traditional. if i was thinking of trad piano players, even melody i would not think of him in a million years, sorry. thats my opinion.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by fiddleruairi
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
i think anyone can tell from that playing there that they dont teach anything about having a 'musical ar' down in UL. there is a huge difference between being good technically and being musical. what is happening there is more technical and going through the motions. there is no taste to at all. O'Carolans Draft done by De Danann is how O'Carolan pieces should be played. simply and very tastefully.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by fiddleruairi
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
me
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Barn Owl
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
just to p*ss you off
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Barn Owl
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Hey Brendan Ring,
The last I heard on myspace is that you were going offline and off the grid on the vegetable patch. Funnily enough I was listening to Troublesome Things the other day.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Aren't you the guy who plays the autoharp, Barn Owl?
I am currently looking for someone to accompany my arrangement of the 'I buried my wife and danced on her' concerto I have been learning on the Vulcan Arse Flute.
I think personally autoharp would sound great but it has to be in Bbm, as I haven't mastered the fifth octave yet.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by banjoburger
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I think O'Sully was having a bit of fun with it, a la Bach's Goldberg Variations. Any classical pianist would have spent some time with them, and with Glenn Gould's classic recording.
Not all the variations were that musical... the point is inventiveness rather than musicality... and sometimes there's a place for that, too. It's the musical equivalent of sparring.
Lighten up.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by jwvansteenwyk
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
O'Carolan played harp. We must strive to silence the inauthentic timbres brought into the music by fiddles, flutes, etc. Phony baloney non-harpist "sessions" grate on one's ears.
TRUE STORY: The only musician in heaven who O'Carolan will play Wii with is Derek Bell. And lunch? Again, only with Derek.
(No tiresome Teutonic tinkering neither: Glenn Gould debased J.S. Bach's works by recording them on that piano thang. Bach, however, still plays Xbox with Gould occasionally.)
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I was actually referring in my post not to Michaels style but the opportunities he has given to traditional musicians. For instance, if you wanted to be a music teacher in Ireland you had to be a classical musician. Now you can qualify with trad as your major. This means that trad is in at school level on equal footing with classical. How can this be bad? This is largely down to Michael. As for the video(which I haven't watched), well, I'm sure we all have some musical skeletons in our cupboards,mine is full to bursting point! If you want to hear Micheal listen to the Dolphins Way, there is great music there. With regards to UL there isn't just one course and the musicians are not taught to play, they can play already. In the MA in trad performance the students choose their own tutors. They have to demonstrate they have learnt something from them, it can be simple or complicated. It is really an environment for musical development, if that is what you want. There seems to be a misconception that Niall Keegan and Michael impose their personal musical ethos on the students, but this is not the case. In short all I'm saying is that I think that he is a classical player who done good work for our musical community through having the vision to see that we are not second class musical citizens, in this context his playing is irrelevant. As for the ruination of Irish music, the most important thing here is how we play it ourselves and what we choose to elevate through listening. Personally I like to see a big picture. I play wire strung harp, uilleann pipes and low whistle. These three instruments span the entire history of our music. The harp was played for nearly a thousand years before that 'new' instrument the union pipes came along. Someday, the low whistle will be old and traditional! Change and innovation can be good, they stimulate and provoke debate, art should not become stagnant. At the moment we have bands and individuals basing themselves on forerunners from the seventies, but with neither the musical ability or creative genius that made them great. The greatest danger to Irish traditional music is mediocrity, there is no room for this in art, but if we keep buying these recordings and keep telling those that make them how wonderful they are, we have only ourselves to blame!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by brendan ring
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Brendan
You needn't worry about mediocrity and ITM as far as recordings go. Time has a habit of sorting that out. You can put out as many gimmicky, trite, 'novel', whizo ITM cds as you want, but in the end the audience and its pocket book has the last word. As with so many things, it's only a matter of time.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Patkiwi
Life with the vegetables is great!
Mtodd
I think your right but I just get frustrated sometimes!
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by brendan ring
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
For a second, I misread that as 'Who Wants to Run Irish Music?'
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Today we will explore why gray-haired Caucasians reach the highest levels of cantankerousness when engaging in online discussions of the "ruination" of traditions. This is not a new topic. The elderly among our very ancient ancestors, australopithecus africanus, would howl and leap (or attempt to leap) when they spotted younger tribe members pounding the communal log drums with gazelle femurs, shunning the use of the traditional—and slightly lighter—gazelle tibias.
And so we're off and running. Welcome to the "Amateur Anthropologist's Half Hour." I am, of course, the very much wizened Clive Boffington-Hogg III.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
P-K that would be a very short discussion I suspect there is only one worldwide organisation involved
.
Nice to see you on the site Brendan I have fond memories of dancing to you and Ormond Waters in London in the 80,s
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Patkiwi:
The trad musician that “suddenly develops notions well above their station” because he wants to get along with the high brow is indeed someone out to ruin the music. I think snobbery is the underlying emotion here. Snobbery will surely dampen the mood of Irish music--classical snobbery, trad musicians wanting to be respected like a classical musician, but also trad snobbery that sticks up the nose at every other player, while stating professorially, oh yes, Joe Shmoe is the BEST x-player in all of Ireland.
TomB-R:
Students with their new charmless compositions, lightning speed, and lacking traditional repertoire hogging up punter money could ruin the music. Yep.
Free Reed
That box player you describe is like a bluesman in the Mississippi Delta, and we need to make sure we exalt the old characters of the music, the ones that make the scene, and the masters within and that come out of the tradition, to whom said box player would himself look up to.
John Grover
Comhaltas wins first prize in this competition. I remember James Keane telling a story about how he founded the Sonny Brogan branch of Comhaltas in Dublin back when it was only a handful of great musicians like him and his brother and Mick O’Connor and James Kelly and the older musicians from John Kelly’s generation defending the music and the fun from the foreign flooding. When he founded that branch, Comhaltas was made up of “piccolo adjudicators,” judging trad from a classical point of view. Over-ornamentation will be exalted if the judge is not a master musician himself. Only better musicians are able to make meaningful criticism of another, and I think a lean-over whisper is better than a ribbon or a point deduction.
Guernsey Pete
Taking the p*ss out of the songs. It’s that whole British-propaganda-derived caricature of the Irish that lets their culture be talked down to, even and often by those who claim to really love it. There’s some kind of association with Irishness that people either give up, or retain in the back of their minds, and that condescending a priori ruins any hope they have of being authentic in their performance.
Mark Harmer
That’s it on the button, the classical musician is part of an aristocratic tradition that fosters exalted performance, but the kind that seems to require secret service agents. The classical musician is trained to stand apart and above the monkeys listening to their angel squealing.
Ragaman
I’m not knocking classical musicians, as I said I am a big Chopin fan, and I happen to really admire and enjoy the recordings of a number of amazing classical musicians. I’m warning the classical musicians, or trying to make a reasonable case for why I believe there’s a problem that can be overcome with consciousness. I agree there’s probably not a big threat, but Irish music often goes in and out of fashion, as tastes change, and as we’re at a new epoch, we should be aware that the last Depression nearly killed off traditional music, which had been defined by Michael Coleman only a decade before. In the span of ten years, Irish music buyers chose the manufactured Irish industry’s output over the real thing, and it could certainly happen again. The results? The death of real Irish style fun, and the erosion of a very old musical language. The whole thing is analogous to Gaeilge and even Hiberno English in my opinion.
Lissagriffin
I’ll look him up. What about John Field the Irish inventor of the nocturne? I’m sure he was influenced by Thomas Moore and vicariously by the tradition that Moore exploited. But did he have direct contact with it, the way Jonathan Swift once palled around with Turlough O’Carolan?
TomB-R
Fiddling becomes monotonous on an electric fiddle I think, but I’d like to be proven wrong as always.
Nico
That’s exactly it. I see the erosion outside Ireland where traditional master musicians are less in supply, and the result is band practice for Darby O’Gill’s orchestra. The sheer volume of bad representations of Irishness and Irish culture available to confuse even the most earnest novice is the threat being discussed, and indeed, classical musicians and their snob-induced ignorance can be a major pusher of the fake Irish stuff.
Kilfarboy
Oh wow. I had no idea. I have no more comments on Ó Súill after watching that. I remember some really jazzy thing he did once and I liked it, but it seemed only inspired by an Irish tune and a whole other thing. Wow. It was the walking around and the mini-bow at the end of the clip with the bagpipe. What?
Reenactor
I’m not worried necessarily, but I recognize the forces of conformity and there is a major force out there that threatens to overtake and compete the sentimental structure that has built up around a set of Irish masters and their proteges that comes from within the upper echelons of the tradition itself. It irks me to hear oohs and aahs about certain gimmick merchants when another great representative of the music and its depth is ignored. Following the masters is part of the tradition.
Zippydw
Druids were known to be masters of memory, disdaining the effects books had on the mental retention of knowledge. Waving a book in traditional music is like the Christian missionaries banishing the pagans into forgotten memory.
SWFL Fiddler
Isn’t that the point. The tradition is a life-time project to absorb and perform the millennial memory and music of an entire nation and the history of a talented culture. There should be more respect given to those exclusively dedicated to it, than the Johnny Come Latelys and their supremacist attitudes.
Mtodd
Not sure. I suspect Ó Súilleabháin of deep sympathies to the Irish tradition, and talent enough to make a contribution. How does he get on in a seisúin? What would he play? I’m not prepared to say he’s no Felix Dolan.
Brendan Ring
There’s definitely a gap in the tradition. The famine cut the 19th century off from their dignity and traditions. Vikings and British colonialism ended the Irish stream of musicians to the music university of medieval Europe in Gall, the Swiss holy place founded by the Irish scholar Gall. Siobhán Armstrong helping to bring the Irish harp back from the brink is all part of bridging the gap between the golden ages of Irish culture, across the erasing-times when Irish culture was a cancer to British and American establishment cultural imperialism, and into the future where we all hope the Irish way of evolving as human beings continues for as long as human culture survives.
Mtodd and Ragaman
What if some guy who grew up in Manhattan and went to jazz clubs his whole life decided to do something with Irish melodies? It’s going to happen, no matter what, I’d rather the guy doing it first is named Ó Súilleabháin, at least the Irish own their own experimentation, or a respectable part of it.
Fiddleruairi
Yeah the competition culture goes high class and gives out diplomas rather than trophies. The idea of Irish music being institutionalized speaks to the rise of Irish power, and demise of the Irish condition. Really finding in Irish music a body of neglected work seems to me to be an archival process. If you have a diploma for having found forgotten performances from the 1930s, represented them to the tradition and helped to revive the style and musical contributions of some great old Irish master, then you get a diploma. If you learned how to play reels and jigs from Ó S, I don’t think your diploma makes sense except to create class distinction.
Geoffwright
Enormous grins are a sure sign.
Barn Owl
p*ssing other musicians off seems to be an integral part of the Irish tradition.
Jwvansteenwyk
It’s about tastes and healthy musical snobbery too. There are criteria for sussing out the impostors. A liminal figure like Súilly is asking to be the butt of the on-going joke and debate. He’s well-kudo-ized to take it.
NEW Pure Drop
The tradition is strong enough to take a lot.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Clive Boffington-Hogg III?
http://tinyurl.com/32f7az
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
A very interesting thread Scratch, thanks.
# Posted on January 13th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Thank you all, learning a lot, refining my taste by the input. Putting words to feelings, measuring the reasoning against reasoning and description.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"I would perhaps place O Suillebhain in the same class as Chopin"
...Aw cmon this is a wind up right?
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by Gerry1972
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
You guys! You'll turn it into a religion yet!
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by Barn Owl
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Too late- it already is. People get incensed. I blame the thurifer.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
@Mark Harmer
I'm guessing you don't have any classical music-playing friends!
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by Presumin Ed
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
""I would perhaps place O Suillebhain in the same class as Chopin"
...Aw cmon this is a wind up right?""
A bit of a bold statement, granted - but I did say that I didn't mean to compare their artistic merits. In retrospect, 'class' was the wrong word to use. But in the sense that they both use the traditional music of their native country as the source of inspiration for a different genre of music, I think we can draw a parallel. I doubt very much that O Suillebhain would ever consider himself in the same class as Chopin or any other of the great composers, or indeed, in the same class as any of the great traditional musicians.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
...there again, I haven't heard much of his work. Perhaps there's more to him than meets the eye.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I only made the comparison because both names had been brought up as examples.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Sad to inform you, there will always be Kenny G, Andre Rieu, and many others to ruin perfectly fine genres of music. This will never change. My advice is to stop being so damned p*ssed off at it and just go play some tunes. My concern is when you lump entire groups of people together with Andre Rieu - that's just an affront to decent, hard-working folks who are trying to learn music.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by reenactor
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
hello! I feel like i need to defend classical musicians!
Of course there are many who only think that they're playing in a traditional way, but hey! even a professional classical musician is not completely lacking talent. If he or she really concentrates on traditional playing, why shouldn't it work? It's not fair to say, that they're all terrible ignorant wanna-bes in general, even if you're kindly mentioning "a few exceptions".
So often, I heard sentences like " 'classical' people would play it this way, but it actually sounds like this...".
I agree that "unemployed classical musicians" who dont know or dont want to know what they're doing with the irish stuff exist, but please dont put an understanding for different kinds of music past the "classics", you'd still belong to those who know it best
Maybe i got you wrong, but .. well .. mh.. the discussion sounded like this
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by Henni
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I don't think anyone doubts the talent of classical musicians. The problems lie with those who make serious attempts at trad with either the arrogance to think they've got it because they're already accomplished musicians or the ignorance of playing it without listening properly to it. The two clips of Michael O'Suilleabhain above are absolutely horrible attempts at traditional music. I actually prefer (for the want of a better word) the terrible backing to the piping clip, at least it's honest. The O'Suilleabhain clips are examples of someone who should know better or at least pay more attention.
# Posted on January 14th 2009 by bogman
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Someone said it above, classical musicians are up on high, behind music stands, bearing diplomas and aristocratic prestige, whereas trad is found around hearths, in public houses, spontaneously combusting from family and communal life. A trad concert can be lofty too of course, but it's hard to be snobby with the heritage of informality the Chieftains for example started at the Royal Albert and Carnegie Hall.
Existentially classical musicians present a philosophical problem for traditional music. No one is attacking them, that would be stupid and leave us open to the choicest insult of all, classical musicians play their instruments more dexterously.
And James Brown ain't no chump crooning next to Pavarotti.
It's hard to be assured of a classical musician's reverence for the heritage that gives traditional music that ever allusive turf aroma.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Seems to me that Irish music, like all musics...traditional and "classical" (whatever that means) are ruined by several groups:
1) Folks who do not understand, or at least attempt to understand, the music they want to play. This means, in ALL music (including classical) one needs to get beyond the dots and into the issues of correct style. There is not one classical style any more than there is one traditional style, and a good player needs to understand whatever styles s/he is playing. Consider what happens to irish trad tunes when played for contra dancing....
2) Folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change. This may take the form of limiting what instruments are "allowed" or refusing to pay attention to changes in style that come about and one style is transfused by another, or any number of other things. Comhaltas doubtless plays a role, unfortunately, here as it tries to walk the line between acceptable and not acceptable practices. The Chieftains have certainly open doors in this area, for better or worse.
3) Folks who ride the crest of the wave of popularity of a style and provide pap for masses to satisfy wishes that have little to do with the musical style they supposedly represent. Kenny G. and Andre Rieu have already been mentioned. For me Celtic Women generally fits into that group too. And don't get me started about "Great Moments in Classical Music."
Now a word in defense of the highly trained classical musician: Those folks have spent years being trained to reproduce the page within certain constraints. Some understand the styles they play (the truly good ones) and some are just human music reproducing machines. This is the heritage of 19th and 20th century classical music where players are expected to reproduce and, for the first time not improvise in any way (except an occasional cadenza). Most, however, are not trained in the nuances of traditional music. Shuffle bowing for example is usually something they can't "just do," though they can do the written out and somewhat altered versions in the Copland works. So, when they come to traditional music, Irish or other, they tend to reproduce the notes as they are on the page. This they can do easily and at blinding speeds. Unless they listen to what the music should be that is all they can do. They've also spent years dealing with large scale musical forms and find it difficult to find the interest in a 32 bar tune. However they've spent years learning to be capable of what a conductor wants. They can quickly learn what a tradition wants...if they want to. In sum, forgive them their backgrounds and help them understand what "it is all about." They'll quickly become excellent practitioners.
Enough....
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by cboody
The 2nd of 3 points
On point #2 cboody, if you are suggesting grumpy sorts are ruining traditional music then ~ how has it survived them up until this time?
I'm not defending, "folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change." Nor do I think we should follow their every word. Many traditions other than Irish music have grumpy people. A tradition may deteriorate when the community of people forget they are a community. The traditionalists' do not forget that; they just keep both feet firmly planted. A few of them are the roots.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Warning: Have one of those little brown paper bags they supply you with on plains handy .....
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RbM-RQeP_4Y
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ...
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Christ almighty, I've just watched that one again and broke my monitor when I threw my shoe at it.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ...
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Bloody hell Michael. Off topic but I stopped a loop of that tune from the CCE web site to go your link just as I was thinking that playing it with silly rhythyms might be test for how I was doing with it !
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by David50
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
> classical musicians are up on high, behind music stands, bearing diplomas and aristocratic prestige
Errr...no.
The vast majority of 'em are just like the people who visit this website.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Presumin Ed
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Hey, llig, that galway fella must be a cunning linguist, eh, it's all tongue with him ain't it ?
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
"classical musicians are up on high, behind music stands, bearing diplomas and aristocratic prestige"
Errr ... yeah. Check out the status of the seating arrangment for Matt and James.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ...
Who Wants Share Irish Music?
You might want to be careful about sharing your favourite YouTube links w/strangers.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
You mean like this? .....
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vCz_Y7qBDf8&feature=related
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Matt Molloy funny enough always comes off as having more gravitas and substance when he's playing a duet with James Galway, who, even with golden flute, feels obliged to sprite about seeming to be at the point of leaping with every bounce of his eyebrows. Whereas Molloy is concentrating, exuding cool and doing justice to an iconic hornpipe.
Galway seems obliged to act like a leprechaun when he plays trad. Like 'I'm not to be taken seriously it's just fun I'm having, begorrah.'
It's maybe an attitude he was confronted with when he took his traditional background to the music academy and was patted on the head for his first little jig.
Irish music is judged against classical music routinely in order to put the thing in its place. But if trad were judged against contemporary pop melodies, trad is complicated.
Traditional Irish music in one form is pop from a generation when fiddle playing was the loudest electric guitar out there.
Trad is more complicated than the normal popular mind, and less complicated than the highly trained classical mind. The language of David Mamet is simpler than that of Shakespeare. Matt Molloy is just deeper than James Galway.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Yeah, I'm not big on the Olympian ranking game. Galway is a top class instrumentalist no matter his habit of clowning while slumming it.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by ScratchYours
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I'm not a flute player, but wow - seeing that James Galway clip and hearing that horrible vibrato he slathers over everything... pass the sick bag!
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Mark Harmer
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
'Christ almighty, I've just watched that one again and broke my monitor when I threw my shoe at it.'
Llig did you notice how embarrassed Misters Molloy and Lunny seemed to be? At least they (probably) were paid some money.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by McDermott
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Yeah Joel, there's another clip from that same programme where Malloy and Lunny play The Bucks. And poor old James, sitting on his high stool above Malloy has this most extraordinary face of bewilderment. It is the most literal face of incomprehension you could ever hope to see. And the amazing thing about it is there is no admiration, no enjoyment, just that horrid fixed grin.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by ...
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I always thought he looked a little shellshocked, or dumbfounded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0NtTh5iHc
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
wow his smile and movements are really creepy. But maybe we just over-interpret it and he just waits and listens politely till the tune is over ;)
Maybe there's no admiration because he had heard Molloy playing this before a few times? What do you expect him too look
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Henni
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
I expect gim to get off his lofty stool and wash Matts feet with his tears.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by ...
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
ah :D
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Henni
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Randomnotes says:
On point #2 cboody, if you are suggesting grumpy sorts are ruining traditional music then ~ how has it survived them up until this time?
I'm not defending, "folks who are so hide bound by tradition that they are unwilling to let a style grow and change." Nor do I think we should follow their every word. Many traditions other than Irish music have grumpy people. A tradition may deteriorate when the community of people forget they are a community. The traditionalists' do not forget that; they just keep both feet firmly planted. A few of them are the roots.
Heavens no that is not what I meant. There's a great difference between grumpy folks and rigid folks, and an even greater difference between grumpy folks and Celtic (or fill in the music type) Nazis. Those are the folks I deplore. The ones who would say, "No, you can't do that because in 1922 performer XX didn't do it that way." Those who are not "Nazis" would say something like "Have you considered how XX did that in 1922? He comes from the YY tradition and you might want to think about his interpretation." It is good to hear folks have strong feelings about how to perform music. It is not good to hear folks reject approaches other than their own for no better reason than it doesn't match their own. Now if the player hasn't a clue..... Well, you get the idea.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by cboody
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Thanks for getting back on that cboody. I just came back to the read through the thread again.
Cheers!
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Can't wait to see which classically trained players you think might be worthy for consideration as masters of diddly. Really, please print some names. I am truly curious. I consider your opening paragraph to be the most interesting rant I've read yet on these pages, and I've read a lot. Moreover, as an inveterate bitcher, I love nothing more than an intelligent and trenchant railing when appropriate.
Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Scratch.
# Posted on January 26th 2009 by hauke
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Some new topics seem to be previous discussions with a slightly different approach.
A thread from this week brought me back here for a fresh read. Funny thing is I had not seen the "Danny Boy" clip the 1st time, even though it was apparently in response to 1 of my comments. I only glanced at it this time. I get the gist.
Anyway ~ "The Bucks of Oranmore" is always good. While here I will link to this related thread;
New game - What is that whistle?
"Here's something I discovered on YouTube - very beautiful music and very nice playing by Sir James Galway . . . "
February 28th 2009 by Jocelyne
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20807
& the spinoff from there;
Vibrato
" . . . Why does vibrato exist? Used well it can be very expressive, and it does indeed enrich the tone by generating extra harmonics. This is also why it is so easy to overdo.'
March 1st 2009 by lazyhound
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20811
# Posted on March 3rd 2009 by Ben Steen
*
. . . or a 180° opposite approach.
# Posted on March 3rd 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Who's Wants to Ruin Irish Music?
Hi there,
Apologies...
Probably a bit late to add to this thread, it seems to have gone elsewhere since it started!
I understand what is meant by this jibe on classical musicians, I've heard it and I have grimaced and occasionally stifled a swelling urge to vomit at some of the clean cut interpretations of traditional music (Dave Swarbrick has almost always had this effect on me, despite his undeniable skills.)
- I grew up around folk musicians and know it to be music that creates a warmth, it has a life; something more than just coldly played tunes.
However, I REALLY wanted to add this (I am aware this has already been said but...)
*My uncle inspired me to first pick up a fiddle when I was seven as his jigs reels etc. set my world on fire!- he played and toured with classical orchestras for years.
*An extremely close friend of mine studied violin at an academy in France and taught at the Royal academy in London. He is something of a folk oracle.
*Another dear friend plays a lot of classical music and also plays at the Kilkenny in South London, among other places.
The thing that truly unites these three people is that they are, for me, the best three fiddle players I have ever heard ( I used to run a folk club and am a keen festival goer, so I have heard so many, oh so many...) Whatever they play hums, buzzes and dances. Hearing any of these three people play just transports me, they are incredible! ... They all have some classical training, if not a lot.
Yes there are muicians who stick themselves in their niche and are quite happy to stay there, trying to be king of all they behold, but there are also those who love whatever they create.
By the way, this classical-isation of traditional tunes isn't new, composers across the globe have borrowed a great deal from the 'music of the people'.
My double bassist friend Steve, who plays across many genres(a veritable king of the giant four strings) makes the same complaint about jazz ... too many folkies or squeaky clean classicists, too few people simply creating spontaneously from their heart. He makes a good point that these things should be done like you mean it.
Who wants to "Ruin Irish Music?" probably no-one except me, in festival season; for when I return to the sleepy little villages in Dorset from whence I first came, I find that every single whistler, fiddler, singer etc. is sitting around a table of Guinness playing The Butterfly, Saddle the Pony, Foxhunter's etc. etc. and singing "She Moved Through The Fair"... double stopping all over any English tune someone might try and dust off...Just who do these out of work Irish musicians think they are? They come over here, steal 'our' sessions...
- Okay, I'm just teasing!- I enjoy it all, wherever it comes from
# Posted on March 4th 2009 by Lindsey fiddle