Working at Dublin's Irish traditional music archive on my university research (Backin'up traditional irish music), i had the opportunity to study and listen to the backing style of guitarist-multi instrumentalist
Stephen Cooney . I' m still very surprised about his choice of classical guitar instead of the more useful and up-to-volume steel-strings; it probably depends on his very personal way of comping and, by the way, i have a question for you about it : what do you think about introduction of "exothic" (take it only as a general word to describe) instruments like didjeridoo or djembe (but kora as well)in irish traditional music? I have to say i was very surprised to discover how much in Doolin are respected the djembe players!
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Steve Cooney is a great player, whatever strings he chooses to use -- plus, a lot of people don't particularly care for the accompanists being "loud" -- quite the opposite, in fact. Barry Foy points out in his book "Field Guide to the Irish music session" that the music got along just fine without accompanists originally, and can still stand just fine without them. Not that they're going away, or even should (I happen to like accompanists with the music), but it should be kept in mind by all accompanists that they're not there to be heard, necessarily, they're there to accompany.
As to 'exotic' instruments, I'm not a big fan, especially since here in the States they tend to be people who just want to "jam" (Irish players go to sessions, and they don't "jam"), and who don't know anything about Irish music. So you end up with this whole mish-mosh of sound that isn't very good Irish music. I am, of course, speaking extremely generally -- there are many players who would welcome a well-played "exotic" instrument. The key is the "well-played" part -- the musician needs to know Irish music well, or at least be musician enough to follow the lead of the melody instruments.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, don't confuse "being polite" or even "respectful" with "wanting a djembe in the session" -- again, if the musician is good, sensitive, and knows something about Irish music, they can certainly be welcome and be well respected amongst Irish players (and in Doolin, they tend to attract very good musicians). But the Irish, forgive me all ye Irish out there, are extremely good at not wanting someone around and proving it by being nicer than nice to them. It's the water or something. If you know them well, they'll even admit it. I'm often suspicious that someone who's being really really nice to me is trying to tell me something. ( This falls under the session etiquette thing -- you have to be attentive to the group mores and wish to stay within their confines if you want to be truly welcome, just like in any society.)
Not that they can't be quite upfront about it. I heard a rather horrifying story at a house session the other day. A player friend was in Boston at a very good session with some high octane players, but some guy on a fiddle was noodling around not knowing the music, just playing and doing the "harmony" thing. All attempts through the evening to hint around that perhaps he should just stop and listen were to no avail. Finally, one of the extremely famous players in the session (yes, everyone would know his name) reached over with his bow and tapped him on the forehead with it, with a frown. I'd have curled up under my chair and have prayed to die. This guy just kept right on going.
On the other hand, one of the best ways to know that you're well accepted within a group is whether they'll freely slag you or not. If you get all sorts of gratuitous insults that are designed to make you wince but force you to keep smiling through it anyway, you'll know that you're being slagged, or insulted, in a friendly manner -- and you're part of the club. Slagging particularly pertains to the instrument you play. Banjo players, pipers, bodhran, and accordian and concertina players usually get slagging in full.
I'm not saying this is a great way to run things. I'm just saying that this is how it is. The Irish are an interesting people. I love all the ones I know to death. But I can't say, as an American, that I always understand them (speaking again in the general sense). However, it's their music, their tradition, and their society. Who'm I to judge?
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Here's my formula: When I am playing with my band, I feel absolutely free to pull out my djembe, my didgeridoo, my chicken shakers or my kokirriko fart around to see if they sound "neat". We are working together towards a common goal, which is to come up with an innovative and dynamic show that holds the attention of a drunken crowd for several hour long sets - within the loose genre of "celtic roots".
My belief is that when you are playing in a band at a bar, the goal is to entertain and amaze - to make people happy. We will try anything and have no puritanical views about tradition vs. innovation.
At a session, though, a djembe would be overpowering and monotonous, even if played spectacularly well, and most of the players (myself included) would wish it would burst into flame. Djembes and didgeridoos belong at drum jams, not sessions.
If you want to innovate, find a like-minded group of players who also want to innovate and get together once a week to fool around, but you can't impose the innovation on an established traditional session without creating some hostile vibes.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I played with a darabuka (forgive spelling) a couple of times and enjoyed it as the player was listening and knew what he was doing so I agree with the 'well-played' aspect of Zina's reply. I would certainly rather have a well played darabuka etc than a badly played bodhran but take the point that a lot of exoticism is perhaps over-egging your cultural stew if not mixing my metaphors. Re Steve Cooney, I think he's a fine player but what he does is n't my cup of tea which just goes to show how weird and wonderful our varied tastes are. You raise an interesting question,Zina, about music,tradition and society . Is n't anyone who plays,tries to play (or listens) helping to keep these tunes alive? What do you think?
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Good point, FOV, about performance -- I was thinking of the whole session thing, and so was not being clear about that -- I think performances are very different from playing in session and that rules there are quite a bit different. (Hmm...now I'm thinking about a very dry martini with just a little tiny dribble of vermouth...)
Violadave, your post made me laugh - "over-egging the cultural stew" -- hehehe...
Well, I've heard that argument before (the keeping the tunes alive thing, I mean), Violadave, and I'm not sure that I agree with it, although I'm still willing to be convinced. I guess it depends on whether the player understands what it is they're doing, and, when they change things, if they understand how and why they're changing things. Or if they're changing things without being aware of it...I guess what I mean is that you hear a lot of people who've never set foot in Ireland call themselves Irish players, and my own experience is that it's very difficult to understand the music without having been there in the thick of the music there, the society, in the middle of the way the people interact.
Also, it's been my experience that the whole feel of the music can be very difficult for people to get (God knows that I don't have it reliably yet). A friend of mine had that experience after studying Cape Breton very hard for years, and then going to Cape Breton, only to be told that they sure did play it different where he came from.
I had two very interesting conversations on Tuesday with David Greenberg, the American Cape Breton player, and Buddy MacMaster about this sort of thing. I was asking Mr. MacMaster how someone could *learn* to play Cape Breton, what advice he would give, and he said that it would be a very difficult thing indeed, as the best players are literally steeped in the music from inception on, there in Cape Breton. He had serious doubts as to whether anyone could really play Cape Breton well, and I mean the old-style Cape Breton here, without having grown up in it. However, he pointed out David Greenberg as an example of someone who did it anyway, someone who was really exceptional and an exception to that rule. (Mr. MacMaster is deeply concerned that the music, the old-style music, may die. But he feels that it's got at least another 100 years yet. *grin*)
So I trotted up the hill to where Mr. Greenberg was teaching, and bearded him about the question. His answer was that the only way you could manage to really get the feeling and rhthym of the thing was by being totally and completely and irrevocably obsessed with it. You had to immerse yourself in it, listen to it constantly, and only it -- whatever style you were after, with no side jaunts to more modern or outside-influenced stuff in your working. This is of course more than most people can reasonably manage. Things like the mortgage and the kids and eating and even just plain boredom with one thing tend to get in the way of all that.
I guess the whole point of this long, drawn-out story is that keeping the tunes alive but not in their original rhthym and feel may be enough for some people, but for those who care about the music itself, and here I mean the music that is traditional to where ever you're talking about, rather than only caring about your own, personal music, it's going to be almost worse than not playing it at all. Irish traditional music isn't in danger of dying, I think, but I also think that Irish traditional music played in the manner of the various Irish counties and such only (rather than some Pan Irish style) IS in danger of going away, to be replaced by some hybrid or pastiche of the old Irish styles. I personally think that's a shame.
Me, I'm an American fiddler who plays Irish music, although I'm trying very hard to become a good Irish player. I think I've made a good beginning at it, but will need to take a run at it every day. Of course, almost every Irish player of any repute will say the exact same thing, now that I think of it.
Ooh, my boyfriend's away, so forgive me if I have something to say about EVERYTHING - it keeps me from the demon cable tv.
The question of "keeping a tradition alive" fascinates me. As for Zina's comment : "It's their tradition, their music, and their society, so who am I to judge" (or presumeably contribute, distribute, or enhance)...
There's not a lot of "pure" cultural heritage in the world. We're a society that is constantly intermingling, trading, migrating, and growing. Most countries develop regional eccentricities that of the people who live there seem to exhibit (and even carry with them when they leave), but true cultural and racial purity is impossible to achieve without total segregation from the rest of the world.
I have Irish, Russian, British, and Scottish blood (and god knows what else if you go back far enough). I live in Canada. Does that mean all of those cultures are mine to defend from contamination by curious foreigners, or that none of them are?
And what if I were a pygmy who just wandered out of the jungle to discover an insatiable passion and talent for the Uillean pipes. Does the music belong more to an Irish bank manager who has never played a note in his life and prefers to listen to Eminem?
I believe tiptoeing around the idea of "cultural appropriation" is political correctness at its ugliest. All the culture we have, we learned from somewhere, and all of it evolves as we evolve. Culture is impossible to preserve. It doesn't keep. Why not dive in headfirst and play with it? Be curious. Be adventurous. Take whatever you like from the thousands of cultures available to you and weave your own tapestry.
That said, I should qualify that every cultural community ought to be approached humbly. There are musicians in the world who are keen to experiment, but you won't find them at a traditional Irish session. I am not one, when I am at a traditional Irish session. I go to a trad session to play trad music in a trad way with other trad - minded individuals. It's important for one to be respectful of the will of the many. Ie. I would never impose my musical playfulness on a group of musicians who are not feeling playful. If I wanted to start playing something bizarre with the Irish tunes, I'd ask a couple of session players to come over and "jam" with the thing outside the regularly scheduled session. Who knows - if they thought it was cool, they might start asking me to bring it along.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Actually, that comment wasn't really about the music -- it was about the mores that the Irish society brings to the session in Ireland and other strongly Irish enclaves. A session elsewhere might have another set of rules, or even just slightly different rules to that not-so-basic set, don't you think?
I also think we all change the music by what we do, whether it's for good or ill. But I also think that if you want to take a bunch of things from different cultures, and put it all into one defenseless Irish reel, then you're not really playing Irish music anymore, you're just playing the tune and making another kind of music with it. I don't have any problem with that, I just have a problem with it being called Irish traditional music at that point!
I also think that you should try to know and consciously make decisions to change the music or whatever, not just make them because they're there. But that's a personality trait, really, more than anything else!
Zina
P.S. A really COLD martini with just a bit of vermouth...
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree. The labels we use are roadmaps for musicians and audiences to connect with whatever they're looking for. To call Something like Bacchue, Shooglenifty or Afro-Celt Sound System "traditional Celtic music" would just be misdirection. It doesn't help anyone find what they are looking for. It could be roughly categorized as "Celtic music" though, as there is a whole range of music made by Celtic players beyond the traditional style of playing. And, really, is Ashley MacIsaac really doing a disservice to the Celtic tradition by playing with a drummer and an electric giutar? He was one of my earliest influences - I heard his album and thought "Geez, this is cool!" then I listened to it for a while and started thinking "Actually, the tunes are cool, but the rock I could do without" and started seeking more and more traditional recordings.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Thanks, Vermouth! So far we've managed to come up with a group of jigs called "the Black jigs", which I don't know what it means at all. Perhaps written by someone named Black?
D'you know, I actually asked Buddy MacMaster something about that -- what he thought of the whole 'outside influences' thing. He doesn't much care for it personally (unsurprisingly, perhaps), but his take on it was that Ashley MacIsaac and even his niece Natalie MacMaster are partly driven by the commercial needs of the market when they put "sounds that are like rock and roll" into their music. He pointed out that both players come back to the old-style every time.
I prefer your first phrase, Vermouth -- "celtic roots". I love Shooglenifty, for instance, and the more far-out of Lunasa's stuff, and Eileen Iver's Wild Blue is often in my CD player. The thing that interests me, though is that all these artists have really paid their dues, really gotten their traditional skills good and solid -- so I can respect them when they bring different influences to their music. Hmm. Maybe I'm a snob. That's kind of a sobering thought. ;)
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree absolutely that even in Celtic hybrid projects one can't fake the skills. This is why I have completely neglected my harp, guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano, and hammered dulcimer since I started playing fiddle. It's the number one most impossible instrument (in my collection, with the exception of perhaps the pipes) to fake expertise on. This is why I faithfully attend sessions wherever I can find them. I am tradition obsessed these days. It's a "know the rules in order to break them" kind of thing, I guess. No, I guess it's more a "know the rules for the sheer pleasure of knowing" thing with a dash of "the world is my oyster".
I don't think there's anything wrong with being a music snob when you've fought hard to gain the skills you have. It just comes down to recognizing and appreciating the phenomenal investment of time and devotion it takes to be really really good.
I think the thing musicians often forget that makes them "snobby" is that it isn't necessary to associate badly played music with the person playing it. I try not to dislike people personally just because they don't play well. Everyone started out in the same boat, and hopefully we're all going in the same direction - from no skills to some, and god willing, to many.
Bad playing is usually not a permanent state. Not even from one day to the next. I personally have immediate breakthroughs that rocket me to a place I thought I wouldn't find for years followed by plateaus where I'm certain I'll never get any better, peppered with some very bad days where everything I play sounds like a cat in a dishwasher.
At the same time, there's nothing wrong with a little good natured hostility at a session to humble the riff raff that can't tell the difference between a session and a jam.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree with much of the above from FOV and Zina and would especially recommend the Bombay Sapphire in or outside a martini.I'm not sure that any music can be preserved exactly as it was for eternity which may or may not be a shame.If change comes in the spirit of a tradition you could argue that it's a healthy feature.Few players were more steeped in Irish trad. music than Tommy Potts for instance yet his one record may not readily appeal to some fiddle heads.Does this mean he's too exotic! I take the point about some musicians flitting like butterflies from culture to culture in vain attempts to boost their own careers but the insincerity is usually plain to see.Anyway, a cool bottle of Staropramen is in my fridge so catch you later.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Well, that's yet ANOTHER interesting point there, violadave. (the changing in the spirit of the tradition thing, not the Bombay Sapphire, not that I'm not interested in the Bombay Sapphire, not atall! heh)
I'm certainly not meaning to say that the music should be preserved like flies in amber -- I think a living music form should keep living and growing. But I think it would be a shame if it got so hybridized that it was no longer Irish trad.
Tommy Potts -- what a great player, but of course, I don't want to play like him -- who the hell would I find to play with me, for instance? Heh.
Why don't *I* have any of these lovely things in my freezer? I'm going to have to remedy that...
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I don't think there's a danger of total hybridization. What is happening is that there is a growing number of people learning to play this music from recordings of groups from all over the world, then making their own groups and recordings... The distinctive regional styles are born of isolation. The isolated regions where the styles are distinct are still there, and the people within those regions still play that way. Younger players will want to travel and experiment, but they will usually return to their roots eventually, learning from the old timers in the community.
As for the bulk of Irish players in the rest of the world - those of us who weren't "born into" the culture, we have to nab little pieces of information wherever we can - from many, many sources that will become a hybrid when we use them all together, but no two of us will come up with the exactly the same hybrid.
The only path to a totally generic style is through institutionalized teaching, where hundreds of thousands of teachers are enforcing the same playing style on every one of their students (ie. classical music). If we all avoid the attitude that there is a "proper" way to do things, we'll still have diversity, but those of us who prefer our diversity to be regional will be disappointed.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Heh -- Vermouth, stop taking what I say to the total extreme! Or is it me coming across as extreme? Hee.
No, I don't think there'll be total hybridization. But part of what makes Irish trad music Irish trad music is that it is regional. It's part of what keeps the stuff so endlessly fascinating (no, not all of what makes it fascinating!). And there's lots of musicians afoot who want to keep it that way.
Whoops -- I have lots more to say (big surprise there), but I'm late for Sunday afternoon session -- gotta run, will be back later!
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
No, you stop taking what I say to the total extreme!!!! ;-P
I agree with you. I also think the musicians who are touchy about "authenticity" and the endangerment of regional diversity should devote themselves completely to one particular style for the rest of their lives. (ie. I'm going to play nothing but Cape Breton music, Cape Breton style, for the rest of my days, and I'm not going to listen to anything else, and I won't take lessons from anyone who isn't a born and bred Cape Breton old timer.) If they are not prepared to do that, they should remember that they are actually contributing to the stylistic ambiguity that is sweeping over Celtic music and stop complaining about it.
Sounds extreme, but how do you think the music GOT regional in the first place?
It's natural in Western culture to be curious, though. To learn tunes from all over the place along with snippets of technique (Clare players do THIS, Kerry players do THIS, Strathspey players do THIS, Romanian gypsies do THIS, etc.) We have so much information available to us it's difficult to imagine being totally immersed in one style from cradle to grave, so we admire the rare individual who plays in a style truly representative of a particular community, because she can show us what they play like "over there" and then we have more information for our own ambiguous technique.
This doesn't mean I don't wish the diversity could be preserved. I just realize the only way to preserve it is for everybody to stay in one spot and play just like everybody else there does. Maybe that isn't as much fun as being a player who wants to travel all over the place to see what everybody else is up to. I can't reconcile myself to being a musical explorer while at the same time complaining that just about everybody else is, too.
That said, don't take me too, too seriously. I'm a closet philosopher. I love to bounce ideas around, but I don't mean to sound argumentative. Here. Have a gin and tonic.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Eek, why would I do that to that poor defenseless gin? Heh. Next you'll be wanting to water the Scotch.
The music was regional because there wasn't any way to get out but walk for quite some time, of course. Actually, I DO devote myself entirely to Irish music -- I don't play much else, although I occasionally wander over into the Scottish as I explore Donegal (I haven't settled on a style yet, you see). My teacher (a Clare flute player) makes faces at me when I do, though.
Again, I'm not one to complain when people want to laminate different cultures into their own stew (speaking of mixed metaphors) -- what bugs me most is when players who DON'T know what they're playing isn't Irish music announce that they're Irish players. There's so much more than the notes you play, there's all that feel and rhthym and style. I don't even much care when I'm around "Pan-Irish" players. It can be so good. But most of those players know precisely what they're doing and why and chose to do it that way.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here, aren't I? Obviously, Vermouth, you know the difference. But I think it's important to be careful to talk about these things when people who DON'T know might be about. I lucked out by being around very very good players, but I spent a whole two years at the beginning just weeing all over the music from pure ignorance. I learned the hard way that "just play the damn thing" can be taken too far. I embarassed myself in a big way at first. But what the hell. Everybody's got to learn in their own way, I guess.
Does this qualify as a closet? Heh. I think you're just plain a philosopher, Vermouth dear. Closets are usually darker than this.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
tee hee. I can think out loud in here and still be closeted. Keep in mind, you wouldn't recognize me on the street and say, "Hey, there's that opinionated girl from the session!"
Can I hear your humiliating story? I don't really have one. It's not that I don't embarass myself, I'm just too stupid to realize it when I have!
Learning by nature is embarassing. I took a glassblowing class where the in the demonstrations the instructor made all manner of delicate, ornamented, frosted, fluted, gorgeous vessels and at the end of six weeks of classes all I was able to make was a couple of clear, roundish, bubbly orbs that would make terrible paper weights.
Out of curiosity, which style of Irish music do you devote yourself to? I am in a land where it's all a bit of a hodge podge and the categories are Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, French Canadian and Old Time. I know there are a vast number of sub-categories, but I am not a scholar of this intricate tapestry (although I would be if I knew where I could learn this stuff).
I've been playing 3 years and only now am I beginning to wonder how to incorporate rhythm into my playing. I'm sure I was terrible for the last three years, but I only played for people who don't know the difference, so I never got shy about it. (I panic like a caged bat when I start off tunes at a session though...)
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Yipes. That's a huge question. The style issue, I mean, not the Blue Sapphire issue, although, to be honest, my own feeling is that it's not really a martini WITHOUT vermouth on it (but, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, just a tiny dribble), and let's not even talk about the abomination of vodka martinis. *grin*
I can't even begin to think which of the stories in which I made a complete and utter fool of myself to tell. It's all a bit painful. I could tell the one about dancing at a pub in Clare and making the huge gaffe of asking the session musicians to play tunes at a certain speed (at least I didn't ask for a specific set dance). That one's merely embarassing. Or...yeeps, some of these I've been trying to forget!
Ow, hurts to even think about it. Heh.
Style... well, Clare (East OR West) is probably the most likely, as the players I have access to play Clare. Although I like Galway, and Cork. I really like Donegal, but that can be a problematic style to learn outside of Donegal, although Kevin Glackin now teaches through Scoiltrad (http://www.scoiltrad.com), and I've taken a couple of those classes (with more planned for the future). The trouble I see with playing Donegal is that few people here play it, and it's pretty hard to maintain a style on your own in a session. (I think of Donegal as something like Cape Breton -- highly Scottish influenced, requires either complete and utter obsession or having been born there to get it.)
Of course, it's going to be immediately obvious to someone from Clare, for instance, that I'm an American player. My rhthym is a lot better now, though, much more Irish than last year this time. I can hear the rhthym most times, although I still can't always play it immediately, or maintain it in a session if there aren't better musicians than me there to lead it, and I still can't necessarily take the printed music and find the right rhthym without going and finding a recording to listen to first. (Especially if I can't find the links between that tune and any other related tunes.) It took a lot of patient beating about the head from my teacher to instill some of that rhthym into it, though. I had to do a LOT of singing of tunes to find it.
I don't honestly know anything about the sub-categories of anything but the Irish, as that's the only one I have time to obsess about. I'm sure they're there -- maybe someone else knows? David Greenberg was amazing -- he's got a lot of historical knowledge about the music (in his case, not just Cape Breton, but all the forms that make up Cape Breton, which he proved when I was watching his class -- he was talking about strathspeys, and people were asking what constituted a strathspey, and I simply had to ask how it related to Irish hornpipes. He immediately started rattling off the historical backgrounds of strathspeys, reels, hornpipes and much more obscure music forms. This may have something to do with his background in classical music).
Yipes, gotta run -- it would probably be good to actually do some work today...
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I remembered an embarrassing story! It's really really embarassing, so I don't know if I have the courage to laugh about it now... well, two embarassing stories actually. OK, maybe three. Let's just say I didn't used to know the difference between a session and a ceilidh, and the story involves a conversation with Alisdair Fraser.
Also, when I had only been playing a few months I happened to have my fiddle with me one day and went to check out the Calgary Folk Festival - huge festival (they had Billy Bragg this year) - and all the musicians thought I was playing at the festival (although I soon set them straight) and were very very nice to me - they invited me to the Festival wrap party and I thought "hell, why not"... The moral of the story is that if you are going to sit in a circle of top notch musicians sharing songs, you better not bring an instrument unless you're damn sure you can play it, because they will MAKE you play.
Enough said. As far as the proper treatment of gin is concerned I do love a martini, but my favorite thing nowadays is Oban on the rocks.
The "Black" jigs are most likely compostitions by Bill Black of Massachusetts. Bill has written a bizillion tunes, He has published them as well. Unfortunatly I don't know the title or what Publisher put them out, but I can check that out for you.
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I am curious- having played whistle, flute and low whistle for many years, and being self-taught, I have yet to come up with a distinct 'regional' style. I am often accused of having my own 'creative' interpretations of tunes, but it does not seem to hamper my ability to play along in groups. I guess the comment I would really like to make is this: at some level, the music touches our souls in ways that may or may not be immediately recognizable. I am reminded of my earlier days of playing, when on occasion, I would play on the street and in a period of two or three hours, one person might stop dead in their tracks, look over and listen for a moment before continuing on their way. These individuals struck me as being touched by the music on some deeper level, something, if confronted with, they would be incapable of putting into words. In much the same way, I find myself affected by the music and my playing influenced on this intangible level. The result? I may step out of the 'tradition' occasionally, but does this exclude me as a 'traditional' player?
Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Working at Dublin's Irish traditional music archive on my university research (Backin'up traditional irish music), i had the opportunity to study and listen to the backing style of guitarist-multi instrumentalist
Stephen Cooney . I' m still very surprised about his choice of classical guitar instead of the more useful and up-to-volume steel-strings; it probably depends on his very personal way of comping and, by the way, i have a question for you about it : what do you think about introduction of "exothic" (take it only as a general word to describe) instruments like didjeridoo or djembe (but kora as well)in irish traditional music? I have to say i was very surprised to discover how much in Doolin are respected the djembe players!
# Posted on August 23rd 2001 by pancillotto
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Steve Cooney is a great player, whatever strings he chooses to use -- plus, a lot of people don't particularly care for the accompanists being "loud" -- quite the opposite, in fact. Barry Foy points out in his book "Field Guide to the Irish music session" that the music got along just fine without accompanists originally, and can still stand just fine without them. Not that they're going away, or even should (I happen to like accompanists with the music), but it should be kept in mind by all accompanists that they're not there to be heard, necessarily, they're there to accompany.
As to 'exotic' instruments, I'm not a big fan, especially since here in the States they tend to be people who just want to "jam" (Irish players go to sessions, and they don't "jam"), and who don't know anything about Irish music. So you end up with this whole mish-mosh of sound that isn't very good Irish music. I am, of course, speaking extremely generally -- there are many players who would welcome a well-played "exotic" instrument. The key is the "well-played" part -- the musician needs to know Irish music well, or at least be musician enough to follow the lead of the melody instruments.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, don't confuse "being polite" or even "respectful" with "wanting a djembe in the session" -- again, if the musician is good, sensitive, and knows something about Irish music, they can certainly be welcome and be well respected amongst Irish players (and in Doolin, they tend to attract very good musicians). But the Irish, forgive me all ye Irish out there, are extremely good at not wanting someone around and proving it by being nicer than nice to them. It's the water or something. If you know them well, they'll even admit it. I'm often suspicious that someone who's being really really nice to me is trying to tell me something. ( This falls under the session etiquette thing -- you have to be attentive to the group mores and wish to stay within their confines if you want to be truly welcome, just like in any society.)
Not that they can't be quite upfront about it. I heard a rather horrifying story at a house session the other day. A player friend was in Boston at a very good session with some high octane players, but some guy on a fiddle was noodling around not knowing the music, just playing and doing the "harmony" thing. All attempts through the evening to hint around that perhaps he should just stop and listen were to no avail. Finally, one of the extremely famous players in the session (yes, everyone would know his name) reached over with his bow and tapped him on the forehead with it, with a frown. I'd have curled up under my chair and have prayed to die. This guy just kept right on going.
On the other hand, one of the best ways to know that you're well accepted within a group is whether they'll freely slag you or not. If you get all sorts of gratuitous insults that are designed to make you wince but force you to keep smiling through it anyway, you'll know that you're being slagged, or insulted, in a friendly manner -- and you're part of the club. Slagging particularly pertains to the instrument you play. Banjo players, pipers, bodhran, and accordian and concertina players usually get slagging in full.
I'm not saying this is a great way to run things. I'm just saying that this is how it is. The Irish are an interesting people. I love all the ones I know to death. But I can't say, as an American, that I always understand them (speaking again in the general sense). However, it's their music, their tradition, and their society. Who'm I to judge?
Zina
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Here's my formula: When I am playing with my band, I feel absolutely free to pull out my djembe, my didgeridoo, my chicken shakers or my kokirriko fart around to see if they sound "neat". We are working together towards a common goal, which is to come up with an innovative and dynamic show that holds the attention of a drunken crowd for several hour long sets - within the loose genre of "celtic roots".
My belief is that when you are playing in a band at a bar, the goal is to entertain and amaze - to make people happy. We will try anything and have no puritanical views about tradition vs. innovation.
At a session, though, a djembe would be overpowering and monotonous, even if played spectacularly well, and most of the players (myself included) would wish it would burst into flame. Djembes and didgeridoos belong at drum jams, not sessions.
If you want to innovate, find a like-minded group of players who also want to innovate and get together once a week to fool around, but you can't impose the innovation on an established traditional session without creating some hostile vibes.
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I played with a darabuka (forgive spelling) a couple of times and enjoyed it as the player was listening and knew what he was doing so I agree with the 'well-played' aspect of Zina's reply. I would certainly rather have a well played darabuka etc than a badly played bodhran but take the point that a lot of exoticism is perhaps over-egging your cultural stew if not mixing my metaphors. Re Steve Cooney, I think he's a fine player but what he does is n't my cup of tea which just goes to show how weird and wonderful our varied tastes are. You raise an interesting question,Zina, about music,tradition and society . Is n't anyone who plays,tries to play (or listens) helping to keep these tunes alive? What do you think?
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by biggus dave
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Good point, FOV, about performance -- I was thinking of the whole session thing, and so was not being clear about that -- I think performances are very different from playing in session and that rules there are quite a bit different. (Hmm...now I'm thinking about a very dry martini with just a little tiny dribble of vermouth...)
Violadave, your post made me laugh - "over-egging the cultural stew" -- hehehe...
Well, I've heard that argument before (the keeping the tunes alive thing, I mean), Violadave, and I'm not sure that I agree with it, although I'm still willing to be convinced. I guess it depends on whether the player understands what it is they're doing, and, when they change things, if they understand how and why they're changing things. Or if they're changing things without being aware of it...I guess what I mean is that you hear a lot of people who've never set foot in Ireland call themselves Irish players, and my own experience is that it's very difficult to understand the music without having been there in the thick of the music there, the society, in the middle of the way the people interact.
Also, it's been my experience that the whole feel of the music can be very difficult for people to get (God knows that I don't have it reliably yet). A friend of mine had that experience after studying Cape Breton very hard for years, and then going to Cape Breton, only to be told that they sure did play it different where he came from.
I had two very interesting conversations on Tuesday with David Greenberg, the American Cape Breton player, and Buddy MacMaster about this sort of thing. I was asking Mr. MacMaster how someone could *learn* to play Cape Breton, what advice he would give, and he said that it would be a very difficult thing indeed, as the best players are literally steeped in the music from inception on, there in Cape Breton. He had serious doubts as to whether anyone could really play Cape Breton well, and I mean the old-style Cape Breton here, without having grown up in it. However, he pointed out David Greenberg as an example of someone who did it anyway, someone who was really exceptional and an exception to that rule. (Mr. MacMaster is deeply concerned that the music, the old-style music, may die. But he feels that it's got at least another 100 years yet. *grin*)
So I trotted up the hill to where Mr. Greenberg was teaching, and bearded him about the question. His answer was that the only way you could manage to really get the feeling and rhthym of the thing was by being totally and completely and irrevocably obsessed with it. You had to immerse yourself in it, listen to it constantly, and only it -- whatever style you were after, with no side jaunts to more modern or outside-influenced stuff in your working. This is of course more than most people can reasonably manage. Things like the mortgage and the kids and eating and even just plain boredom with one thing tend to get in the way of all that.
I guess the whole point of this long, drawn-out story is that keeping the tunes alive but not in their original rhthym and feel may be enough for some people, but for those who care about the music itself, and here I mean the music that is traditional to where ever you're talking about, rather than only caring about your own, personal music, it's going to be almost worse than not playing it at all. Irish traditional music isn't in danger of dying, I think, but I also think that Irish traditional music played in the manner of the various Irish counties and such only (rather than some Pan Irish style) IS in danger of going away, to be replaced by some hybrid or pastiche of the old Irish styles. I personally think that's a shame.
Me, I'm an American fiddler who plays Irish music, although I'm trying very hard to become a good Irish player. I think I've made a good beginning at it, but will need to take a run at it every day. Of course, almost every Irish player of any repute will say the exact same thing, now that I think of it.
Zina
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Zina Lee
Not about steve cooney any more
Ooh, my boyfriend's away, so forgive me if I have something to say about EVERYTHING - it keeps me from the demon cable tv.
The question of "keeping a tradition alive" fascinates me. As for Zina's comment : "It's their tradition, their music, and their society, so who am I to judge" (or presumeably contribute, distribute, or enhance)...
There's not a lot of "pure" cultural heritage in the world. We're a society that is constantly intermingling, trading, migrating, and growing. Most countries develop regional eccentricities that of the people who live there seem to exhibit (and even carry with them when they leave), but true cultural and racial purity is impossible to achieve without total segregation from the rest of the world.
I have Irish, Russian, British, and Scottish blood (and god knows what else if you go back far enough). I live in Canada. Does that mean all of those cultures are mine to defend from contamination by curious foreigners, or that none of them are?
And what if I were a pygmy who just wandered out of the jungle to discover an insatiable passion and talent for the Uillean pipes. Does the music belong more to an Irish bank manager who has never played a note in his life and prefers to listen to Eminem?
I believe tiptoeing around the idea of "cultural appropriation" is political correctness at its ugliest. All the culture we have, we learned from somewhere, and all of it evolves as we evolve. Culture is impossible to preserve. It doesn't keep. Why not dive in headfirst and play with it? Be curious. Be adventurous. Take whatever you like from the thousands of cultures available to you and weave your own tapestry.
That said, I should qualify that every cultural community ought to be approached humbly. There are musicians in the world who are keen to experiment, but you won't find them at a traditional Irish session. I am not one, when I am at a traditional Irish session. I go to a trad session to play trad music in a trad way with other trad - minded individuals. It's important for one to be respectful of the will of the many. Ie. I would never impose my musical playfulness on a group of musicians who are not feeling playful. If I wanted to start playing something bizarre with the Irish tunes, I'd ask a couple of session players to come over and "jam" with the thing outside the regularly scheduled session. Who knows - if they thought it was cool, they might start asking me to bring it along.
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Actually, that comment wasn't really about the music -- it was about the mores that the Irish society brings to the session in Ireland and other strongly Irish enclaves. A session elsewhere might have another set of rules, or even just slightly different rules to that not-so-basic set, don't you think?
I also think we all change the music by what we do, whether it's for good or ill. But I also think that if you want to take a bunch of things from different cultures, and put it all into one defenseless Irish reel, then you're not really playing Irish music anymore, you're just playing the tune and making another kind of music with it. I don't have any problem with that, I just have a problem with it being called Irish traditional music at that point!
I also think that you should try to know and consciously make decisions to change the music or whatever, not just make them because they're there. But that's a personality trait, really, more than anything else!
Zina
P.S. A really COLD martini with just a bit of vermouth...
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree. The labels we use are roadmaps for musicians and audiences to connect with whatever they're looking for. To call Something like Bacchue, Shooglenifty or Afro-Celt Sound System "traditional Celtic music" would just be misdirection. It doesn't help anyone find what they are looking for. It could be roughly categorized as "Celtic music" though, as there is a whole range of music made by Celtic players beyond the traditional style of playing. And, really, is Ashley MacIsaac really doing a disservice to the Celtic tradition by playing with a drummer and an electric giutar? He was one of my earliest influences - I heard his album and thought "Geez, this is cool!" then I listened to it for a while and started thinking "Actually, the tunes are cool, but the rock I could do without" and started seeking more and more traditional recordings.
(eyeballing my boyfriend's Bombay Sapphire)
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
by the way, zina, I left you a present in "tunes". check out "buddy's mystery tune" I transcribed it from you recording.
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Thanks, Vermouth! So far we've managed to come up with a group of jigs called "the Black jigs", which I don't know what it means at all. Perhaps written by someone named Black?
D'you know, I actually asked Buddy MacMaster something about that -- what he thought of the whole 'outside influences' thing. He doesn't much care for it personally (unsurprisingly, perhaps), but his take on it was that Ashley MacIsaac and even his niece Natalie MacMaster are partly driven by the commercial needs of the market when they put "sounds that are like rock and roll" into their music. He pointed out that both players come back to the old-style every time.
I prefer your first phrase, Vermouth -- "celtic roots". I love Shooglenifty, for instance, and the more far-out of Lunasa's stuff, and Eileen Iver's Wild Blue is often in my CD player. The thing that interests me, though is that all these artists have really paid their dues, really gotten their traditional skills good and solid -- so I can respect them when they bring different influences to their music. Hmm. Maybe I'm a snob. That's kind of a sobering thought. ;)
Ooo, Blue Sapphire martinis....
Zina
# Posted on August 24th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree absolutely that even in Celtic hybrid projects one can't fake the skills. This is why I have completely neglected my harp, guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano, and hammered dulcimer since I started playing fiddle. It's the number one most impossible instrument (in my collection, with the exception of perhaps the pipes) to fake expertise on. This is why I faithfully attend sessions wherever I can find them. I am tradition obsessed these days. It's a "know the rules in order to break them" kind of thing, I guess. No, I guess it's more a "know the rules for the sheer pleasure of knowing" thing with a dash of "the world is my oyster".
I don't think there's anything wrong with being a music snob when you've fought hard to gain the skills you have. It just comes down to recognizing and appreciating the phenomenal investment of time and devotion it takes to be really really good.
I think the thing musicians often forget that makes them "snobby" is that it isn't necessary to associate badly played music with the person playing it. I try not to dislike people personally just because they don't play well. Everyone started out in the same boat, and hopefully we're all going in the same direction - from no skills to some, and god willing, to many.
Bad playing is usually not a permanent state. Not even from one day to the next. I personally have immediate breakthroughs that rocket me to a place I thought I wouldn't find for years followed by plateaus where I'm certain I'll never get any better, peppered with some very bad days where everything I play sounds like a cat in a dishwasher.
At the same time, there's nothing wrong with a little good natured hostility at a session to humble the riff raff that can't tell the difference between a session and a jam.
# Posted on August 25th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I agree with much of the above from FOV and Zina and would especially recommend the Bombay Sapphire in or outside a martini.I'm not sure that any music can be preserved exactly as it was for eternity which may or may not be a shame.If change comes in the spirit of a tradition you could argue that it's a healthy feature.Few players were more steeped in Irish trad. music than Tommy Potts for instance yet his one record may not readily appeal to some fiddle heads.Does this mean he's too exotic! I take the point about some musicians flitting like butterflies from culture to culture in vain attempts to boost their own careers but the insincerity is usually plain to see.Anyway, a cool bottle of Staropramen is in my fridge so catch you later.
# Posted on August 25th 2001 by biggus dave
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Well, that's yet ANOTHER interesting point there, violadave. (the changing in the spirit of the tradition thing, not the Bombay Sapphire, not that I'm not interested in the Bombay Sapphire, not atall! heh)
I'm certainly not meaning to say that the music should be preserved like flies in amber -- I think a living music form should keep living and growing. But I think it would be a shame if it got so hybridized that it was no longer Irish trad.
Tommy Potts -- what a great player, but of course, I don't want to play like him -- who the hell would I find to play with me, for instance? Heh.
Why don't *I* have any of these lovely things in my freezer? I'm going to have to remedy that...
Zina
# Posted on August 25th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I don't think there's a danger of total hybridization. What is happening is that there is a growing number of people learning to play this music from recordings of groups from all over the world, then making their own groups and recordings... The distinctive regional styles are born of isolation. The isolated regions where the styles are distinct are still there, and the people within those regions still play that way. Younger players will want to travel and experiment, but they will usually return to their roots eventually, learning from the old timers in the community.
As for the bulk of Irish players in the rest of the world - those of us who weren't "born into" the culture, we have to nab little pieces of information wherever we can - from many, many sources that will become a hybrid when we use them all together, but no two of us will come up with the exactly the same hybrid.
The only path to a totally generic style is through institutionalized teaching, where hundreds of thousands of teachers are enforcing the same playing style on every one of their students (ie. classical music). If we all avoid the attitude that there is a "proper" way to do things, we'll still have diversity, but those of us who prefer our diversity to be regional will be disappointed.
# Posted on August 25th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Heh -- Vermouth, stop taking what I say to the total extreme! Or is it me coming across as extreme? Hee.
No, I don't think there'll be total hybridization. But part of what makes Irish trad music Irish trad music is that it is regional. It's part of what keeps the stuff so endlessly fascinating (no, not all of what makes it fascinating!). And there's lots of musicians afoot who want to keep it that way.
Whoops -- I have lots more to say (big surprise there), but I'm late for Sunday afternoon session -- gotta run, will be back later!
Zina
# Posted on August 26th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
No, you stop taking what I say to the total extreme!!!! ;-P
I agree with you. I also think the musicians who are touchy about "authenticity" and the endangerment of regional diversity should devote themselves completely to one particular style for the rest of their lives. (ie. I'm going to play nothing but Cape Breton music, Cape Breton style, for the rest of my days, and I'm not going to listen to anything else, and I won't take lessons from anyone who isn't a born and bred Cape Breton old timer.) If they are not prepared to do that, they should remember that they are actually contributing to the stylistic ambiguity that is sweeping over Celtic music and stop complaining about it.
Sounds extreme, but how do you think the music GOT regional in the first place?
It's natural in Western culture to be curious, though. To learn tunes from all over the place along with snippets of technique (Clare players do THIS, Kerry players do THIS, Strathspey players do THIS, Romanian gypsies do THIS, etc.) We have so much information available to us it's difficult to imagine being totally immersed in one style from cradle to grave, so we admire the rare individual who plays in a style truly representative of a particular community, because she can show us what they play like "over there" and then we have more information for our own ambiguous technique.
This doesn't mean I don't wish the diversity could be preserved. I just realize the only way to preserve it is for everybody to stay in one spot and play just like everybody else there does. Maybe that isn't as much fun as being a player who wants to travel all over the place to see what everybody else is up to. I can't reconcile myself to being a musical explorer while at the same time complaining that just about everybody else is, too.
That said, don't take me too, too seriously. I'm a closet philosopher. I love to bounce ideas around, but I don't mean to sound argumentative. Here. Have a gin and tonic.
I too, am off to a Sunday session.
# Posted on August 26th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Eek, why would I do that to that poor defenseless gin? Heh. Next you'll be wanting to water the Scotch.
The music was regional because there wasn't any way to get out but walk for quite some time, of course. Actually, I DO devote myself entirely to Irish music -- I don't play much else, although I occasionally wander over into the Scottish as I explore Donegal (I haven't settled on a style yet, you see). My teacher (a Clare flute player) makes faces at me when I do, though.
Again, I'm not one to complain when people want to laminate different cultures into their own stew (speaking of mixed metaphors) -- what bugs me most is when players who DON'T know what they're playing isn't Irish music announce that they're Irish players. There's so much more than the notes you play, there's all that feel and rhthym and style. I don't even much care when I'm around "Pan-Irish" players. It can be so good. But most of those players know precisely what they're doing and why and chose to do it that way.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here, aren't I? Obviously, Vermouth, you know the difference. But I think it's important to be careful to talk about these things when people who DON'T know might be about. I lucked out by being around very very good players, but I spent a whole two years at the beginning just weeing all over the music from pure ignorance. I learned the hard way that "just play the damn thing" can be taken too far. I embarassed myself in a big way at first. But what the hell. Everybody's got to learn in their own way, I guess.
Does this qualify as a closet? Heh. I think you're just plain a philosopher, Vermouth dear. Closets are usually darker than this.
Zina
# Posted on August 26th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
tee hee. I can think out loud in here and still be closeted. Keep in mind, you wouldn't recognize me on the street and say, "Hey, there's that opinionated girl from the session!"
Can I hear your humiliating story? I don't really have one. It's not that I don't embarass myself, I'm just too stupid to realize it when I have!
Learning by nature is embarassing. I took a glassblowing class where the in the demonstrations the instructor made all manner of delicate, ornamented, frosted, fluted, gorgeous vessels and at the end of six weeks of classes all I was able to make was a couple of clear, roundish, bubbly orbs that would make terrible paper weights.
Out of curiosity, which style of Irish music do you devote yourself to? I am in a land where it's all a bit of a hodge podge and the categories are Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, French Canadian and Old Time. I know there are a vast number of sub-categories, but I am not a scholar of this intricate tapestry (although I would be if I knew where I could learn this stuff).
I've been playing 3 years and only now am I beginning to wonder how to incorporate rhythm into my playing. I'm sure I was terrible for the last three years, but I only played for people who don't know the difference, so I never got shy about it. (I panic like a caged bat when I start off tunes at a session though...)
you want your Sapphire straight up?
# Posted on August 26th 2001 by Kerri Brown
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Yipes. That's a huge question. The style issue, I mean, not the Blue Sapphire issue, although, to be honest, my own feeling is that it's not really a martini WITHOUT vermouth on it (but, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, just a tiny dribble), and let's not even talk about the abomination of vodka martinis. *grin*
I can't even begin to think which of the stories in which I made a complete and utter fool of myself to tell. It's all a bit painful. I could tell the one about dancing at a pub in Clare and making the huge gaffe of asking the session musicians to play tunes at a certain speed (at least I didn't ask for a specific set dance). That one's merely embarassing. Or...yeeps, some of these I've been trying to forget!
Ow, hurts to even think about it. Heh.
Style... well, Clare (East OR West) is probably the most likely, as the players I have access to play Clare. Although I like Galway, and Cork. I really like Donegal, but that can be a problematic style to learn outside of Donegal, although Kevin Glackin now teaches through Scoiltrad (http://www.scoiltrad.com), and I've taken a couple of those classes (with more planned for the future). The trouble I see with playing Donegal is that few people here play it, and it's pretty hard to maintain a style on your own in a session. (I think of Donegal as something like Cape Breton -- highly Scottish influenced, requires either complete and utter obsession or having been born there to get it.)
Of course, it's going to be immediately obvious to someone from Clare, for instance, that I'm an American player. My rhthym is a lot better now, though, much more Irish than last year this time. I can hear the rhthym most times, although I still can't always play it immediately, or maintain it in a session if there aren't better musicians than me there to lead it, and I still can't necessarily take the printed music and find the right rhthym without going and finding a recording to listen to first. (Especially if I can't find the links between that tune and any other related tunes.) It took a lot of patient beating about the head from my teacher to instill some of that rhthym into it, though. I had to do a LOT of singing of tunes to find it.
I don't honestly know anything about the sub-categories of anything but the Irish, as that's the only one I have time to obsess about. I'm sure they're there -- maybe someone else knows? David Greenberg was amazing -- he's got a lot of historical knowledge about the music (in his case, not just Cape Breton, but all the forms that make up Cape Breton, which he proved when I was watching his class -- he was talking about strathspeys, and people were asking what constituted a strathspey, and I simply had to ask how it related to Irish hornpipes. He immediately started rattling off the historical backgrounds of strathspeys, reels, hornpipes and much more obscure music forms. This may have something to do with his background in classical music).
Yipes, gotta run -- it would probably be good to actually do some work today...
Zina
# Posted on August 27th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I remembered an embarrassing story! It's really really embarassing, so I don't know if I have the courage to laugh about it now... well, two embarassing stories actually. OK, maybe three. Let's just say I didn't used to know the difference between a session and a ceilidh, and the story involves a conversation with Alisdair Fraser.
Also, when I had only been playing a few months I happened to have my fiddle with me one day and went to check out the Calgary Folk Festival - huge festival (they had Billy Bragg this year) - and all the musicians thought I was playing at the festival (although I soon set them straight) and were very very nice to me - they invited me to the Festival wrap party and I thought "hell, why not"... The moral of the story is that if you are going to sit in a circle of top notch musicians sharing songs, you better not bring an instrument unless you're damn sure you can play it, because they will MAKE you play.
Enough said. As far as the proper treatment of gin is concerned I do love a martini, but my favorite thing nowadays is Oban on the rocks.
# Posted on August 27th 2001 by Kerri Brown
"The Black Jigs"
The "Black" jigs are most likely compostitions by Bill Black of Massachusetts. Bill has written a bizillion tunes, He has published them as well. Unfortunatly I don't know the title or what Publisher put them out, but I can check that out for you.
# Posted on August 27th 2001 by B Rad
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
That'd be great, Brad! Thanks! I don't know of Bill Black -- I'll have to go do a search or two.
So you like the Islay scotches, Vermouth? My own favorite is Balvenie Portwood -- ooooo, errr!
zls
# Posted on August 27th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
I am curious- having played whistle, flute and low whistle for many years, and being self-taught, I have yet to come up with a distinct 'regional' style. I am often accused of having my own 'creative' interpretations of tunes, but it does not seem to hamper my ability to play along in groups. I guess the comment I would really like to make is this: at some level, the music touches our souls in ways that may or may not be immediately recognizable. I am reminded of my earlier days of playing, when on occasion, I would play on the street and in a period of two or three hours, one person might stop dead in their tracks, look over and listen for a moment before continuing on their way. These individuals struck me as being touched by the music on some deeper level, something, if confronted with, they would be incapable of putting into words. In much the same way, I find myself affected by the music and my playing influenced on this intangible level. The result? I may step out of the 'tradition' occasionally, but does this exclude me as a 'traditional' player?
Arbo
# Posted on August 28th 2001 by Imnotirish
Re: Steve Cooney ' style and "instrumental exotism"
Zina,
I just dropped an E-Mail to Bill to try & find the details on the tunes. I'll let you know what he lets me know.
Islay, please
# Posted on August 28th 2001 by B Rad
Coolness, ta very much.
I don't DO Islay -- for some reason, it just tastes like iodine to me. Heh.
# Posted on August 28th 2001 by Zina Lee