South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Does anyone have any theories as to why Scottish sessions don’t appear to happen south of the border in England? There are many Irish sessions in the south of England, are there just not enough Scottish fiddlers around or do most just try to fit into the Irish scene?
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Some theories (writing as a foreign resident in Scotland who visits sessions worldwide):
1. There are not too many Scottish musicians who don't include a fair percentage of Irish tunes in their repertoire anyway.
2. There are not very many non-Scottish musicians living outside of Scotland & Nova Scotia who play predominantly Scottish tunes. There are a few, but see (1) in that case.
3. There is not the cultish insistence by Scottish tune players on "pure drop" etc and all the waffle that goes with those outside of Ireland who have adopted the "Irish musician" mantle. Most are pretty flexible - perhaps of necessity. You do meet the odd Scottish musician who gets peeved at the notion that sessions are only for Irish music and turns against the session scene. But most are happy to fit in and add a bit of Scottish snap when they get the chance.
4. Scottish theme pubs everywhere wanting sessions and musicians ... ? Yeah, right.
So I guess my general answer would be that they just try to fit into the Irish scene. I know a few very good Scottish fiddlers in Australia - both Scottish emigres and locals steeped in Scottish playing, and they just go along to the local session at the Plastic Paddy pubs wherever is convenient. Even if it's called "Irish music session". Works well enough and I for one wouldn't like to see a separate scene.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I'd really like to see a variation from just Irish. I think that there is room enough. Theres lots of great music out there from Cape Breton to Shetland.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
There are loads of Scottish sessions in England! You just have to look in the right places! Sheffield and Newcastle are very good places to start . . .
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Sounds like Bren has a lot of it right. I always thought the Irish successfully took the house session to the pub many dedcades ago. The scottish tradition I was brought up in always seemed to have house sessions of great variety. Maybe the pub session is not so linked to our DNA as the ITM scene - what do I know.
There is a monthly scottish session that happens in Clerkenwell in London on the first Sunday of every month. It is quite new so still developing. Email me for details if you want.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Nope.
To all of you.
1) Irish music attained great popularity in England (and Scotland, Wales, USA, etc.)--- almost as an alternative to "Alternative" rock in the 1970's and early 80's. Planxty, Bothy Band Chieftains and even Boys Of The Lough. So a lot of people who had no Irish roots got hooked that way.
2) The Irish Diaspora in England has always been much larger than the Scottish. Of the so called 25 million people worldwide who claim to have Irish roots (1st, 2nd and 3rd gen.), there are 8 million in UK and over 1 million in London. This compares to 100,000 Scots in London and another 100,000 2nd and 3rd generation Scots in London. Although there are loads of us down here, we just don't figure compared to the Irish.
3) Irish often emigrated as groups from their village, parish, whatever. My experience working with these guys a couple of decades ago was they all came from the same townships and hung around together once in London. Not only that they stuck to the same trades, Building Work, Demolition, Shuttering Carps and so on. But also, they had the network of the Irish centres. That structured approach to mass-emigration to London has simply never existed, certainly in recent times, with Scots emigrés to the Smoke. They have always arrived here on a relatively individual basis.
So there are fewer Scottish pubs in London, no such thing as a Scottish area, as compared to Kilburn, Cricklewood and Camden Town would have been universally viewed as Irish (in the same way Golders Green Jewish) areas of London.
The Scots just didn't kick ass in London as the Irish did. Because they didn't start off as poor and desperate. Hence no tangible Scottish community, and so no Scots sessions as a regular feature of life down here.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Any session I go to turns into a Scottish/ Northumbrian/ English/ ITM (delete where not applicable) session - if I can do anything about it.
Some people turn to ITM when they have got fed up of playing Scottish music for too long.
I will certainly admit to carrying on playing Scottish because it pays better than ITM.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I think you all missed an important point. Scottish folk music is still mainly for dancing rather than pub sessions, so that's why you can't find many Scottish music sessions except beginners' sessions organised by music learning groups in major cities of Scotland.
I heard there's no traditional music session in Cape Breton. Why? There are a bunch of fiddlers in the island, but they play music strictly for ceilidh. How about Irish music? It's more divorced from ceili cultures now. Sad, isn't it? I'm wondering if Irish traditional music could preserve its original form without dancers.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Slainte, you have a bit of a point. However, there's always been a separate folk scene from that of either Scottish Country Dancing or Ceilidhs which are actually different from each other. There's also the Fiddle and accordian club scene and Fiddlers Rallies playing Scottish tunes. Different, yet again.
You have many bands playing Scottish tunes these day ranging from the likes of Battlefield Band, Tannahill Weavers, Capercaillie, Blazing Fiddles, Fiddlers Bid, Wolfstone etc to new younger outfits like The Anna Massie Band etc. I could go on and on. Yes, you can dance to this music but it's not music played fror dancing.
There is a lot of Scottish music played in pub sessions, although not exclusively. Most of these good musicians don't differentiate between genres when they get together. I agree that Edinburgh and Glasgow, especially, always seemed to have more Irish sessions but we always had Scottish sessions too--long before the ALP was ever thought of--in pubs such as The Fiddlers Arms, West End Hotel, St Vincent etc, even in Sandy Bells.. You would get members of bands such as Jock Tamson's Bairns, Ossian, Silly Wizard, Hom Bru, Easy Club and so on who would regularly play in these venues.
Yes, organisations such as the ALP have led to increase in Scottish sessions too, especially for beginners but this is really an artificial thing. They have always been there.
One thing that pleases me in the huge increase in popularity of the music "up north" in The Highlands. We have lots of "real sessions" up there now. In the old days, it would be some drunken piper or a piano accordian player(usually also p-ss-d), if you were lucky.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
You can find descriptions of Scottish players in a "session" as far back as the novels of RL Stevenson (the pipers' duel in Catriona) and Burns biographies suggest that it was not unknown for patrons to play (and sing) in pubs/inns at the time.
It may have resembled the "drunken piper" scenario that John describes more than nice middle-class folk rendering note-perfect versions of a complete set off a Solas CD track - or it may not have.
What do we really know about situations that went mostly unrecorded? ( I don't mean sound recorded!). There's plenty of instances recorded of musicians playing at parties (at the big hoose) in the 18th and 19th C where plenty of drink was taken. Don't see why this wouldn't have happened in pubs from time to time.
I like John's comment "Most of these good musicians don't differentiate between genres when they get together"
That's what I like about sessions up here or anywhere.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Sorry, I did actually oversimplify the situations. I attended some quality Scottish music sessions, but they are completely outnumbered by Irish sessions. I believe there're more ceilidhs than pub sessions in Scotland in general. This is true at least in Skye and Outer Hebrides.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Yes, the Scottish inspired Fiddle and Accordion Club scene has venues in Northumberland and as far south as Castleside in County Dyrham - I don't know if there are any further south.
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I think Michael is right in saying Irish music's easier than Scottish in that it's more flexible.
If you delay a tad in an Irish reel, you can catch up, and it will have been, well, just a long note. Lose your rhythm in a dotted pipe march and you've lost it.
Many Lowland reels are user-friendly - plenty of crotchets, whatever. The Highland music's another matter. Much of it was designed by Pipe-Majors to terrify warlike tribesmen into departing over the nearest skyline - the 'white noise' of the Victorian / Edwardian era - or else to rally one's own, and falls flat if played without full command. This can be done on fiddle, Highland Bagpipes, flute or whistle - but the common keys of A Major, B Minor and F# Minor are not that easy on the latter two, except for people a lot better than I am. I once heard two Battlefield Band pipers, Duncan McGillivray and Dougie Pincock, playing the Highland bagpipe stuff brilliantly on whistles in a session, but they'd obviously done their time in the modern-day equivalent of the huts (caves?) on Skye where the McCrimmons sent their trainee pipers to live for years on end: their playing was quite unlike ITM - lots of very quick staccato tonguing, etc. - it sounded very difficult to do.
Scottish music on the box seems to need a full range of basses in play on the left-hand side - on a large button box or piano-accordion - preferably mastered at a tender age. The average Irish two-row melodeon doesn't have these, and ITM players can get away without using the basses very much.
All this is apart from the business of knowing how the notes are dotted in strathspeys, how to play these in particular in a whole range of keys, and how to remember the names of tunes called after lots of different Pipe Majors.
South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Does anyone have any theories as to why Scottish sessions don’t appear to happen south of the border in England? There are many Irish sessions in the south of England, are there just not enough Scottish fiddlers around or do most just try to fit into the Irish scene?
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by craigwebster
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Some theories (writing as a foreign resident in Scotland who visits sessions worldwide):
1. There are not too many Scottish musicians who don't include a fair percentage of Irish tunes in their repertoire anyway.
2. There are not very many non-Scottish musicians living outside of Scotland & Nova Scotia who play predominantly Scottish tunes. There are a few, but see (1) in that case.
3. There is not the cultish insistence by Scottish tune players on "pure drop" etc and all the waffle that goes with those outside of Ireland who have adopted the "Irish musician" mantle. Most are pretty flexible - perhaps of necessity. You do meet the odd Scottish musician who gets peeved at the notion that sessions are only for Irish music and turns against the session scene. But most are happy to fit in and add a bit of Scottish snap when they get the chance.
4. Scottish theme pubs everywhere wanting sessions and musicians ... ? Yeah, right.
So I guess my general answer would be that they just try to fit into the Irish scene. I know a few very good Scottish fiddlers in Australia - both Scottish emigres and locals steeped in Scottish playing, and they just go along to the local session at the Plastic Paddy pubs wherever is convenient. Even if it's called "Irish music session". Works well enough and I for one wouldn't like to see a separate scene.
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by Bren
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Irish music is easier to play, in that it's more flexible.
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by llig leahcim
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Michael, you beat me to it.
Jim
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by Worldfiddler
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I'd really like to see a variation from just Irish. I think that there is room enough. Theres lots of great music out there from Cape Breton to Shetland.
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by craigwebster
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
There are loads of Scottish sessions in England! You just have to look in the right places! Sheffield and Newcastle are very good places to start . . .
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by thomarse
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Do you know of any furhter south?
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by craigwebster
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Isn't there one in Sunderland?
KFG
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by KFG
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Sounds like Bren has a lot of it right. I always thought the Irish successfully took the house session to the pub many dedcades ago. The scottish tradition I was brought up in always seemed to have house sessions of great variety. Maybe the pub session is not so linked to our DNA as the ITM scene - what do I know.
There is a monthly scottish session that happens in Clerkenwell in London on the first Sunday of every month. It is quite new so still developing. Email me for details if you want.
Alasdair
# Posted on May 30th 2005 by Alasdair
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Nope.
To all of you.
1) Irish music attained great popularity in England (and Scotland, Wales, USA, etc.)--- almost as an alternative to "Alternative" rock in the 1970's and early 80's. Planxty, Bothy Band Chieftains and even Boys Of The Lough. So a lot of people who had no Irish roots got hooked that way.
2) The Irish Diaspora in England has always been much larger than the Scottish. Of the so called 25 million people worldwide who claim to have Irish roots (1st, 2nd and 3rd gen.), there are 8 million in UK and over 1 million in London. This compares to 100,000 Scots in London and another 100,000 2nd and 3rd generation Scots in London. Although there are loads of us down here, we just don't figure compared to the Irish.
3) Irish often emigrated as groups from their village, parish, whatever. My experience working with these guys a couple of decades ago was they all came from the same townships and hung around together once in London. Not only that they stuck to the same trades, Building Work, Demolition, Shuttering Carps and so on. But also, they had the network of the Irish centres. That structured approach to mass-emigration to London has simply never existed, certainly in recent times, with Scots emigrés to the Smoke. They have always arrived here on a relatively individual basis.
So there are fewer Scottish pubs in London, no such thing as a Scottish area, as compared to Kilburn, Cricklewood and Camden Town would have been universally viewed as Irish (in the same way Golders Green Jewish) areas of London.
The Scots just didn't kick ass in London as the Irish did. Because they didn't start off as poor and desperate. Hence no tangible Scottish community, and so no Scots sessions as a regular feature of life down here.
Simple as that.
# Posted on May 31st 2005 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
We don't have a Scottish session but there is a Scottish fiddle group in Reading - is that far south enough for you?
# Posted on May 31st 2005 by Tarrantella
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Any session I go to turns into a Scottish/ Northumbrian/ English/ ITM (delete where not applicable) session - if I can do anything about it.
Some people turn to ITM when they have got fed up of playing Scottish music for too long.
I will certainly admit to carrying on playing Scottish because it pays better than ITM.
# Posted on May 31st 2005 by geoffwright
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I think you all missed an important point. Scottish folk music is still mainly for dancing rather than pub sessions, so that's why you can't find many Scottish music sessions except beginners' sessions organised by music learning groups in major cities of Scotland.
I heard there's no traditional music session in Cape Breton. Why? There are a bunch of fiddlers in the island, but they play music strictly for ceilidh. How about Irish music? It's more divorced from ceili cultures now. Sad, isn't it? I'm wondering if Irish traditional music could preserve its original form without dancers.
# Posted on June 1st 2005 by slainte
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Slainte, you have a bit of a point. However, there's always been a separate folk scene from that of either Scottish Country Dancing or Ceilidhs which are actually different from each other. There's also the Fiddle and accordian club scene and Fiddlers Rallies playing Scottish tunes. Different, yet again.
You have many bands playing Scottish tunes these day ranging from the likes of Battlefield Band, Tannahill Weavers, Capercaillie, Blazing Fiddles, Fiddlers Bid, Wolfstone etc to new younger outfits like The Anna Massie Band etc. I could go on and on. Yes, you can dance to this music but it's not music played fror dancing.
There is a lot of Scottish music played in pub sessions, although not exclusively. Most of these good musicians don't differentiate between genres when they get together. I agree that Edinburgh and Glasgow, especially, always seemed to have more Irish sessions but we always had Scottish sessions too--long before the ALP was ever thought of--in pubs such as The Fiddlers Arms, West End Hotel, St Vincent etc, even in Sandy Bells.. You would get members of bands such as Jock Tamson's Bairns, Ossian, Silly Wizard, Hom Bru, Easy Club and so on who would regularly play in these venues.
Yes, organisations such as the ALP have led to increase in Scottish sessions too, especially for beginners but this is really an artificial thing. They have always been there.
One thing that pleases me in the huge increase in popularity of the music "up north" in The Highlands. We have lots of "real sessions" up there now. In the old days, it would be some drunken piper or a piano accordian player(usually also p-ss-d), if you were lucky.
# Posted on June 1st 2005 by Johannes J
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
You can find descriptions of Scottish players in a "session" as far back as the novels of RL Stevenson (the pipers' duel in Catriona) and Burns biographies suggest that it was not unknown for patrons to play (and sing) in pubs/inns at the time.
It may have resembled the "drunken piper" scenario that John describes more than nice middle-class folk rendering note-perfect versions of a complete set off a Solas CD track - or it may not have.
What do we really know about situations that went mostly unrecorded? ( I don't mean sound recorded!). There's plenty of instances recorded of musicians playing at parties (at the big hoose) in the 18th and 19th C where plenty of drink was taken. Don't see why this wouldn't have happened in pubs from time to time.
I like John's comment "Most of these good musicians don't differentiate between genres when they get together"
That's what I like about sessions up here or anywhere.
# Posted on June 1st 2005 by Bren
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Sorry, I did actually oversimplify the situations. I attended some quality Scottish music sessions, but they are completely outnumbered by Irish sessions. I believe there're more ceilidhs than pub sessions in Scotland in general. This is true at least in Skye and Outer Hebrides.
# Posted on June 2nd 2005 by slainte
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Well if you go by Skye and Lewis, you probably think more people go to church than the pub in Scotland, and everyone supports Rangers.
# Posted on June 2nd 2005 by Bren
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
Yes, the Scottish inspired Fiddle and Accordion Club scene has venues in Northumberland and as far south as Castleside in County Dyrham - I don't know if there are any further south.
# Posted on July 29th 2006 by nicholas
Re: South of the border (Scottish sessions in England?)
I think Michael is right in saying Irish music's easier than Scottish in that it's more flexible.
If you delay a tad in an Irish reel, you can catch up, and it will have been, well, just a long note. Lose your rhythm in a dotted pipe march and you've lost it.
Many Lowland reels are user-friendly - plenty of crotchets, whatever. The Highland music's another matter. Much of it was designed by Pipe-Majors to terrify warlike tribesmen into departing over the nearest skyline - the 'white noise' of the Victorian / Edwardian era - or else to rally one's own, and falls flat if played without full command. This can be done on fiddle, Highland Bagpipes, flute or whistle - but the common keys of A Major, B Minor and F# Minor are not that easy on the latter two, except for people a lot better than I am. I once heard two Battlefield Band pipers, Duncan McGillivray and Dougie Pincock, playing the Highland bagpipe stuff brilliantly on whistles in a session, but they'd obviously done their time in the modern-day equivalent of the huts (caves?) on Skye where the McCrimmons sent their trainee pipers to live for years on end: their playing was quite unlike ITM - lots of very quick staccato tonguing, etc. - it sounded very difficult to do.
Scottish music on the box seems to need a full range of basses in play on the left-hand side - on a large button box or piano-accordion - preferably mastered at a tender age. The average Irish two-row melodeon doesn't have these, and ITM players can get away without using the basses very much.
All this is apart from the business of knowing how the notes are dotted in strathspeys, how to play these in particular in a whole range of keys, and how to remember the names of tunes called after lots of different Pipe Majors.
Scottish music is, frankly, pretty difficult.
# Posted on November 10th 2006 by nicholas