Were they or are they musicians? What instruments? My house was filled with music growing up but never Irish music. I can't remember my dad without also remembering the music he listened to. It played such an important part in his life. And not to forget mom on her big day, the same goes for her. She will forever be linked to that damned Boots Randolph melody that won't get out of my head!
I wish I could remember more about my grandmother, who was scotsxirish, and definitely sang, but she died when I was seven. One of these times when you want a Tardis, or a total recall memory.
My Grandparents were musicians, my great grandfather played concertina and made violins. He was also a blacksmith and repaired guns. I didn't grow up near them and only saw them a handful of times in life.
My Great-Uncle Bob played fiddle and also killed pigs for a living. He told me that the secret was the angle that the blade went in, to the pig, that is!
Apparently my great-grandad played the whistle. I actually have an old C whistle that used to be his. Apart from that though, not really. My dad has been a fan of Irish music all his life, but never actually played it (although he knows a lot of songs by heart, and does sing them). My mum learnt classical piano up to grade 6, but I don't think that counts as being a 'musician'...
My maternal grandfather was a synagogue cantor - a traditional singer, albeit not an Irish one. Unfortunately, he died 7 years before I was born, so I can't claim to have inherited his music.
"My mum learnt classical piano up to grade 6, but I don't think that counts as being a 'musician'"
That depends whether she played music for music's sake or just went through the motions. There's plenty of great music that doesn't require grade 6 technique to play.
My mom was not musical, but my dad was, and played the trumpet. And both of them encouraged us toward music. All my brothers played music at one time or another, and most played multiple instruments. Dad was a great lover of trad, but it was New Orleans trad, and I grew up surrounded by jazz. I am the only one who drifted toward Irish music, however.
No one in my family plays apart from me. I come from a very sports orientated family . When i was in primary school a newletter for lessons at the local high school was given to us and I nagged my mum and dad to play flute. I had no idea what one was or what one looked or sounded like. My grandfather tried to talk me into playing clarinet . Thank goodness I was a detirmined and stubborn 10 year old and he didn't suceed , As now I can't stand clarinet ( no offence to anyone who plays) and would have given up.
My dad was a singer. He listened to Pavarotti, Harry Belafonte, The Sons of the Pioneers. He was a tenor and made some recordings in back in the 1930's. He sang hymns at funerals during the depression. It was a small source of income for him during the depression. There was always a piano in our house and dad taught us to sing when we were very young. I really can't remember not singing. I found Irish music on my own and he passed on long before I could really play anything.
Creadur - I know, I should have been more explicit. My mum is very much not a musician. She appreciates music, but she'll freely admit she isn't one. She learnt piano and took grades, just as many teenagers do, and stopped once she left school. When I was starting out on the violin, she used to accompany me from books like "Jigs, Reels & Hornpipes - arranged for violin and piano", but that soon stopped, once I started getting reasonably good!
My Mum would sing around the house all the time. She had a great voice but never sang professionally. Dad was Irish and loved Irish music. When I was very young I remember it was The Clancys and Tommy Makem and also lots of the old songs. Then along came The Chieftains, The Bothy Band and Planxty etc and he never looked back. When I was about 10 he made a bodhran and learnt to play really well. I have him to thank for my obsession with this music.
My dad is a wonderful fiddler, tenor/five-string banjo player, mandolin player, bouzouki player, singer, and guitarist. He plays mostly old-time and bluegrass, though, or did until I started listening to Irish and got really into it. He had friends who played it, so we started learning ITM together. While I wasn't exposed to Irish growing up, I'd say that I probably wouldn't have learned without Dad.
My old man plays the concertina. Growing up I heard Irish music being played in the house for pleasure and he'd go out at nights to play Scottish music in a ceilidh band for money. Make of that what you will!
He's still going strong and we enjoyed an all too infrequent play last night on board a puffer on the Clyde.
Mom sings, Pop plays whistle and box. They live near me now and we all session together. His Grandmother played concertina. I'll second the wish for a Tardis. There are such great stories of his Grandparents Mitchell from Tyrone holding Friday night kitchen hoolies in their W Philly home in the 40s an 50s.
My father didn't play any instruments but he did encourage me to listen to and enjoy a wide variety of music. He came with me to an Irish music session once. He enjoyed listening to the music.
My mother was a music teacher who taught me how to play the piano. She knows a few imitation Irish songs but is unfamiliar with Irish instrumental music. Her musical gods were composers such as Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, etc. I suspect she got too thorough a brainwashing and indoctrination while she was in college working on her music education degree. I haven't been able to persuade my mother to come to an Irish music session yet.
I'm the "black" sheep in my family. Nobody has ever shown any interest in music or was even an avid listener. My mom listened to the radio all day long, but it was for the talkie bits, which was embedded in really horrible, cheezy music (the German Schlagermusik is unrivaled in the Western world in this regard). My dad only listened to his favorite music (Dixie) on very rare occasions because it would drive my mom crazy (can't say I care to much for it, either).
I had to fight for several years (starting when I was 7 or 8) before I finally got a piano, after several attempts from my parent to side-track me to some cheaper instruments such as recorder, harmonica or melodica. They finally gave in and I played classical piano, and later Boehm flute for many years - before I was enlightened and found my way to Irish traditional music.
I have no idea from where (or from whom) my musical gene comes... Must have skipped a good many generations...
Neither parent plays or has ever played a musical instrument. Aside from my niece, I'm the only one in my family to be musically inclined. My father was a redneck who didn't know anything except farming and welding, and couldn't have cared less about music. My mother, however, was very supportive.
fauxcelt -
Sorry to hear about that. No big surprise, though. The academic-music world seems to have a conditioned disdain for anything that is not what they call "real music." I took a music history class at college once and the instructor could not have been a bigger snob. She required us to attend a music event and write a review of it as an assignment. Of course, only certain types of music events were allowed. About the only thing that was not strict orchestral music that was allowed was if we happened to find a baroque music event. I approached her on the side about a music event I saw that concentrated on old celtic music, like a "roots of celtic music kind of thing, and if that would be okay for the assignment and she shot it down pretty quick, and had a very indignant attitude about it. Yeah, I dropped that class.
Dad played trad – but American trad – on guitar and harmonica, mostly. Old time folk songs like John Hardy, Boll Weevil, Careless Love. I imagine this was as influenced as much by the big 50s-60s Folk Scare coming over the radio as from his relatives up the holler in Kentucky. Mom played cello but gave it up after marrying Dad and raising five kids. Lots of singing in the home as I was growing up. I’m the only one of my siblings to play music, though.
I believe me and my brother were the only ones blessed with the gift of music. My father and mother both listened to music 24/7 growing up which helped out with my musical journey. Also playing music from the time I was 4 years old and being introduced to fiddle music helped... But really, my family is very good at story-telling, which I am horrible at!
Well thank you all so much for sharing a glimpse of your lives. And please feel free to continue adding stories about music and family. I guess, naturally then, my next question is..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(see next discussion)
Jimmy B - although not about music, that reminds me of my daughters' encounter with one academic on her Uni course - if this lady had had any sense of humour, and cottoned on to what my daughter was trying to do, she'd have had an altogether different mark for that part of her course, and maybe a 1st instead of a 2:1.
Never mind. My daughter not only has an impressive CV of ever-upward career progression, she's an outstanding open-mike performer of her humorous writings - so there !
But yes, music academics are a strange lot. If it's not 'art' they don't seem to want to know. Apart from the odd person like Cecil Sharpe, of course.
I think academics and art are like oil and water. I know I'm stereotyping but...in my experience the people who study it and disect it make poor artists. On the other hand the matter of art is just personal opinion no matter what the academics say. A picture of a horse drawn by my daughter is more meaningful to me than anything hanging in a museum. I think sometimes 'art' is over rated by self important blow hards.
"music academics are a strange lot. If it's not 'art' they don't seem to want to know. Apart from the odd person like Cecil Sharpe, of course."
Ethnomusicologists, comparitive musiciologists, or whatever they call themselves these days, are another kettle. If it *is* art, they don't want to know.
Jimmy B, when I was taking music classes at the University of Absolutely Last Resort (UALR), most of my music professors and instructors were tolerant of my interest in ragtime music even if they couldn't allow me to do any research papers on that particular genre of popular music. The youngest of these professors grew up listening to the Beatles and other popular bands of the 1960's.
My father's parents liked to listen to people such as Jimmie Rodgers (the Singing Brakeman) as well as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. My father didn't learn to appreciate, listen to, and enjoy so-called "classical" music until he grew up and moved away from home. My father's favorite composer is Beethoven.
Apparently my Dad used to be a handy tin whistle player but won;t even play it these days. Family are all very musical, none particularly interested in trad. Interesting stories all
ma is a singer and self taught piano key accordian and whistle player, both of which she never plays now. im a whistler but learned it in primary school and early secondary school, now teach myself.
Nope. No one in my family plays, and no one is as hooked on Irish traditional music as I am. Our grandparents were born in Limerick, and I do find it a little odd sometimes that it is SO important to me and only me.
Our mum always loved playing the old Scottish rebel songs on her guitar whenever she got bored, and teaching us all about the words to the songs when we were tiny, and at all our big family get togethers her 2 brothers my uncles would always get their guitars out too and start singing all the good old Scottish and some Irish songs too, so we have good memories of all that. Don't know where that came from though because their parents my gran/grandad aren't really musical, apart from all the usual old film songs people their age normally like... My mum always encouraged us to learn instruments, especially the traditional music, because she loved to be surrounded by it and wanted us to be able to play to her! So most of us had started to play something by our mid teens. Saying that, we all kind of gave up by our late teens (too interested in other things) but we've all taken our instruments back up, and other new ones too, since we hit about our mid 20's. And when us sisters get together when mum's not around (we all live really spread out) we love nothing better than playing all the old songs we grew up with, once we've got a drink in us, more so since we started getting older.
I'd definitely say my parents (dad was into Cajun music and although we weren't into it at the time as kids and he never played an instrument, it introduced us to different styles of traditional music at an early age) got us into the whole thing from an early age, and we ALWAYS reminisce about those family gettogethers and try to play all that stuff especially the older we get.
dad, now 81, still plays the box (as did his mum) and we did a family band thing from 1979-86 on the london club cicuirt, so i acknowledge my musical heritage there
while my mums side of the family are music-loving party heads, between them i've been fortuneatly blessed with an inexplicable love of music, and a particular drive in irish trad with no escape . . .
Did your parents play trad?
Did your parents play trad?
Were they or are they musicians? What instruments? My house was filled with music growing up but never Irish music. I can't remember my dad without also remembering the music he listened to. It played such an important part in his life. And not to forget mom on her big day, the same goes for her. She will forever be linked to that damned Boots Randolph melody that won't get out of my head!
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by shanty
Re: Did your parents play trad?
I wish I could remember more about my grandmother, who was scotsxirish, and definitely sang, but she died when I was seven. One of these times when you want a Tardis, or a total recall memory.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My Grandparents were musicians, my great grandfather played concertina and made violins. He was also a blacksmith and repaired guns. I didn't grow up near them and only saw them a handful of times in life.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by shanty
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My granda played the trombone in a band in the 40s but other than that, I'm the only one.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by ruaidhri
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My Great-Uncle Bob played fiddle and also killed pigs for a living. He told me that the secret was the angle that the blade went in, to the pig, that is!
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by strayaway
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Apparently my great-grandad played the whistle. I actually have an old C whistle that used to be his. Apart from that though, not really. My dad has been a fan of Irish music all his life, but never actually played it (although he knows a lot of songs by heart, and does sing them). My mum learnt classical piano up to grade 6, but I don't think that counts as being a 'musician'...
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by Joe CSS
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My maternal grandfather was a synagogue cantor - a traditional singer, albeit not an Irish one. Unfortunately, he died 7 years before I was born, so I can't claim to have inherited his music.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Did your parents play trad?
"My mum learnt classical piano up to grade 6, but I don't think that counts as being a 'musician'"
That depends whether she played music for music's sake or just went through the motions. There's plenty of great music that doesn't require grade 6 technique to play.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My Dad was a piper and so were my grandfather and great-grandfather. My Dad also played harmonica and jews harp.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by gam
Re: Did your parents play trad?
I'm a northerner. I have a good deal of euphonium and E flat bass in my family.
# Posted on May 9th 2010 by Steve Shaw
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My mom was not musical, but my dad was, and played the trumpet. And both of them encouraged us toward music. All my brothers played music at one time or another, and most played multiple instruments. Dad was a great lover of trad, but it was New Orleans trad, and I grew up surrounded by jazz. I am the only one who drifted toward Irish music, however.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Did your parents play trad?
No one in my family plays apart from me. I come from a very sports orientated family . When i was in primary school a newletter for lessons at the local high school was given to us and I nagged my mum and dad to play flute. I had no idea what one was or what one looked or sounded like. My grandfather tried to talk me into playing clarinet . Thank goodness I was a detirmined and stubborn 10 year old and he didn't suceed , As now I can't stand clarinet ( no offence to anyone who plays) and would have given up.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by frogeyes
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My dad was a singer. He listened to Pavarotti, Harry Belafonte, The Sons of the Pioneers. He was a tenor and made some recordings in back in the 1930's. He sang hymns at funerals during the depression. It was a small source of income for him during the depression. There was always a piano in our house and dad taught us to sing when we were very young. I really can't remember not singing. I found Irish music on my own and he passed on long before I could really play anything.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by Gone to work
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Creadur - I know, I should have been more explicit. My mum is very much not a musician. She appreciates music, but she'll freely admit she isn't one. She learnt piano and took grades, just as many teenagers do, and stopped once she left school. When I was starting out on the violin, she used to accompany me from books like "Jigs, Reels & Hornpipes - arranged for violin and piano", but that soon stopped, once I started getting reasonably good!
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by Joe CSS
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My Mum would sing around the house all the time. She had a great voice but never sang professionally. Dad was Irish and loved Irish music. When I was very young I remember it was The Clancys and Tommy Makem and also lots of the old songs. Then along came The Chieftains, The Bothy Band and Planxty etc and he never looked back. When I was about 10 he made a bodhran and learnt to play really well. I have him to thank for my obsession with this music.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by flossie
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My dad is a wonderful fiddler, tenor/five-string banjo player, mandolin player, bouzouki player, singer, and guitarist. He plays mostly old-time and bluegrass, though, or did until I started listening to Irish and got really into it. He had friends who played it, so we started learning ITM together. While I wasn't exposed to Irish growing up, I'd say that I probably wouldn't have learned without Dad.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by Zazzaliss
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My old man plays the concertina. Growing up I heard Irish music being played in the house for pleasure and he'd go out at nights to play Scottish music in a ceilidh band for money. Make of that what you will!
He's still going strong and we enjoyed an all too infrequent play last night on board a puffer on the Clyde.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by Jams_O'Donnell
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Mom sings, Pop plays whistle and box. They live near me now and we all session together. His Grandmother played concertina. I'll second the wish for a Tardis. There are such great stories of his Grandparents Mitchell from Tyrone holding Friday night kitchen hoolies in their W Philly home in the 40s an 50s.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Did your parents play trad?
My father didn't play any instruments but he did encourage me to listen to and enjoy a wide variety of music. He came with me to an Irish music session once. He enjoyed listening to the music.
My mother was a music teacher who taught me how to play the piano. She knows a few imitation Irish songs but is unfamiliar with Irish instrumental music. Her musical gods were composers such as Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, etc. I suspect she got too thorough a brainwashing and indoctrination while she was in college working on her music education degree. I haven't been able to persuade my mother to come to an Irish music session yet.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: Did your parents play trad?
I'm the "black" sheep in my family. Nobody has ever shown any interest in music or was even an avid listener. My mom listened to the radio all day long, but it was for the talkie bits, which was embedded in really horrible, cheezy music (the German Schlagermusik is unrivaled in the Western world in this regard). My dad only listened to his favorite music (Dixie) on very rare occasions because it would drive my mom crazy (can't say I care to much for it, either).
I had to fight for several years (starting when I was 7 or 8) before I finally got a piano, after several attempts from my parent to side-track me to some cheaper instruments such as recorder, harmonica or melodica. They finally gave in and I played classical piano, and later Boehm flute for many years - before I was enlightened and found my way to Irish traditional music.
I have no idea from where (or from whom) my musical gene comes... Must have skipped a good many generations...
Or maybe I'm a spontaneous mutation... :D
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by heike
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Neither parent plays or has ever played a musical instrument. Aside from my niece, I'm the only one in my family to be musically inclined. My father was a redneck who didn't know anything except farming and welding, and couldn't have cared less about music. My mother, however, was very supportive.
fauxcelt -
Sorry to hear about that. No big surprise, though. The academic-music world seems to have a conditioned disdain for anything that is not what they call "real music." I took a music history class at college once and the instructor could not have been a bigger snob. She required us to attend a music event and write a review of it as an assignment. Of course, only certain types of music events were allowed. About the only thing that was not strict orchestral music that was allowed was if we happened to find a baroque music event. I approached her on the side about a music event I saw that concentrated on old celtic music, like a "roots of celtic music kind of thing, and if that would be okay for the assignment and she shot it down pretty quick, and had a very indignant attitude about it. Yeah, I dropped that class.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Dad played trad – but American trad – on guitar and harmonica, mostly. Old time folk songs like John Hardy, Boll Weevil, Careless Love. I imagine this was as influenced as much by the big 50s-60s Folk Scare coming over the radio as from his relatives up the holler in Kentucky. Mom played cello but gave it up after marrying Dad and raising five kids. Lots of singing in the home as I was growing up. I’m the only one of my siblings to play music, though.
# Posted on May 10th 2010 by fidkid
Re: Did your parents play trad?
yes
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by mcknowall
Re: Did your parents play trad?
I believe me and my brother were the only ones blessed with the gift of music. My father and mother both listened to music 24/7 growing up which helped out with my musical journey. Also playing music from the time I was 4 years old and being introduced to fiddle music helped... But really, my family is very good at story-telling, which I am horrible at!
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by fiddlinblaine
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Well thank you all so much for sharing a glimpse of your lives. And please feel free to continue adding stories about music and family. I guess, naturally then, my next question is..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(see next discussion)
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by shanty
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Jimmy B - although not about music, that reminds me of my daughters' encounter with one academic on her Uni course - if this lady had had any sense of humour, and cottoned on to what my daughter was trying to do, she'd have had an altogether different mark for that part of her course, and maybe a 1st instead of a 2:1.
Never mind. My daughter not only has an impressive CV of ever-upward career progression, she's an outstanding open-mike performer of her humorous writings - so there !
But yes, music academics are a strange lot. If it's not 'art' they don't seem to want to know. Apart from the odd person like Cecil Sharpe, of course.
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Did your parents play trad?
I think academics and art are like oil and water. I know I'm stereotyping but...in my experience the people who study it and disect it make poor artists. On the other hand the matter of art is just personal opinion no matter what the academics say. A picture of a horse drawn by my daughter is more meaningful to me than anything hanging in a museum. I think sometimes 'art' is over rated by self important blow hards.
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by shanty
Re: Did your parents play trad?
"music academics are a strange lot. If it's not 'art' they don't seem to want to know. Apart from the odd person like Cecil Sharpe, of course."
Ethnomusicologists, comparitive musiciologists, or whatever they call themselves these days, are another kettle. If it *is* art, they don't want to know.
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Jimmy B, when I was taking music classes at the University of Absolutely Last Resort (UALR), most of my music professors and instructors were tolerant of my interest in ragtime music even if they couldn't allow me to do any research papers on that particular genre of popular music. The youngest of these professors grew up listening to the Beatles and other popular bands of the 1960's.
My father's parents liked to listen to people such as Jimmie Rodgers (the Singing Brakeman) as well as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. My father didn't learn to appreciate, listen to, and enjoy so-called "classical" music until he grew up and moved away from home. My father's favorite composer is Beethoven.
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Polish Trad sort of. Americanized.
I grew up calling their polkas the 'Polish Stomp"
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by zippydw
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Apparently my Dad used to be a handy tin whistle player but won;t even play it these days. Family are all very musical, none particularly interested in trad. Interesting stories all
# Posted on May 11th 2010 by Paudy
Re: Did your parents play trad?
ma is a singer and self taught piano key accordian and whistle player, both of which she never plays now. im a whistler but learned it in primary school and early secondary school, now teach myself.
# Posted on May 15th 2010 by James Morgan
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Nope. No one in my family plays, and no one is as hooked on Irish traditional music as I am. Our grandparents were born in Limerick, and I do find it a little odd sometimes that it is SO important to me and only me.
# Posted on May 16th 2010 by drinharp
Re: Did your parents play trad?
Our mum always loved playing the old Scottish rebel songs on her guitar whenever she got bored, and teaching us all about the words to the songs when we were tiny, and at all our big family get togethers her 2 brothers my uncles would always get their guitars out too and start singing all the good old Scottish and some Irish songs too, so we have good memories of all that. Don't know where that came from though because their parents my gran/grandad aren't really musical, apart from all the usual old film songs people their age normally like... My mum always encouraged us to learn instruments, especially the traditional music, because she loved to be surrounded by it and wanted us to be able to play to her! So most of us had started to play something by our mid teens. Saying that, we all kind of gave up by our late teens (too interested in other things) but we've all taken our instruments back up, and other new ones too, since we hit about our mid 20's. And when us sisters get together when mum's not around (we all live really spread out) we love nothing better than playing all the old songs we grew up with, once we've got a drink in us, more so since we started getting older.
I'd definitely say my parents (dad was into Cajun music and although we weren't into it at the time as kids and he never played an instrument, it introduced us to different styles of traditional music at an early age) got us into the whole thing from an early age, and we ALWAYS reminisce about those family gettogethers and try to play all that stuff especially the older we get.
# Posted on May 30th 2010 by eenymo
Re: Did your parents play trad?
just found this
dad, now 81, still plays the box (as did his mum) and we did a family band thing from 1979-86 on the london club cicuirt, so i acknowledge my musical heritage there
while my mums side of the family are music-loving party heads, between them i've been fortuneatly blessed with an inexplicable love of music, and a particular drive in irish trad with no escape . . .
and it suits me just fine
# Posted on August 9th 2010 by lisaniska