Sydney must be the worst place in the world for polkas and slides. I started a set of slides the other week and someone said "what you think you're from Kerry do you?" not in a friendly way but in a sort of really condescending way, and I wanted to say feck off you snobby tw@ but ended up just smiling instead. I'd like to play some polkas for my own pleasure at home even if nobody wants to play them with me, so I'd like to hear from people who do have polkas played in their sessions. Which are the most common ones? Which are the really nice ones that you like to play?
Yep -- the polka and slide thing. I remember many years ago there were a few people that would start polkas around here, but they would tend to play ten in a row and everyone else would take it as a cue to add the one they knew. It would become a spontaneous polkathon, and I would dread every time it started up. I always wished they would just play a few at a time instead. Then those polkathon folks stopped coming around and polkas more or less dropped off the session’s radar screen.
It wasn't until we started playing for set dancers that the need for them surfaced. Having the opportunity to play them for set dancers pumped a new life into them... for me anyway… seeing people dancing around the floor to them really does it. It’s also a great lesson in how to get the energy right. Now we love to play polkas and have quite a few in the pocket. When we're asked to play on a stage it's great to have slides and polkas to spice up the program. We also throw them into the mix at sessions.
Slides and single jigs would often show up at sessions, but they weren't played like slides and just ended up sounding like simple and easy jigs. When the dancers kept telling us to play them faster I decided to investigate. I spent a good amount of time listening to slides on recordings I had as well as some set dance CDs. Eventually we started playing them in a way that made the dancers happy, but at sessions I'd look around and some players were rubbing their elbows and wrists when we finished. It's something you definitely have to get used to. But at this point -- I love playing slides too.
Slides are way more common than polkas at the sessions I've been to but that ain't common at all. "Scully Casey's" with "Behind the Bush in the Garden" played sllideways along with it will get joined in on.
There aren't many polkas, except for "Ryan's," played in sessions I've been to either but I'll toss some out there anyway just to see if there are any takers and, sometimes by golly, people will come out of the closet and get with the program, especially if they're .08 or higher on the tester. Contradances are really where you'd find them.
Josephine Marsh's "Paddys" are my favorites but I play them a lot quicker than she does and with some swing. "The Four Shoves," "Tom Sullivan's," and "Bill Sullivan's" are right up there too.I first heard the "Blue Ribbon" played on a couple of frailing banjos at an Appalachian clogging session and that kind of tune I just plain like. I play "The New Market," and sometimes "The Glem Cottage" and the "Blue Ribbon" will get some takers. I'm partial to Johnny O'Leary's recordings because of his enthusiasm and because he inspired dancing.
I play a pile of them fast and swung on the box, and often with quick chords in the rhythm. I've tried to embrace "The Bluebell" but I would need to take Dramamine to get through it and can't because my body's a temple.
When i was in aussie two years ago, i brought my banjo. In sydney - bar paddys day - trad seemed non-existant. In brisbane, id be sitting in the bunk hostel beer garden just essing about, and id nearly always be asked did i know the tunes from the titanic movie, which happen to be ryan's polka set. It went down rather well and was a bit of a favourite among the backpackers.
U wont play in a session, but if u want a good buzz from playing polkas (particularly ryans) go and find some backpackers who've seen titanic. U'l get a better response than from the stuffy f@ck in sydney
hey Dow, have you met a B/C box player from the Central Coast named Dennis? He's a Kerryman and will play polkas for hours if you'll let him! I'll drop you a line next time I hear he's heading in to the Harp, if you like.
Tomorrow night (Sunday) there'll be a load of slides and polkas played at Finnegan's pub in Newcastle. Shayne & Roz have sent me a tune list for the various sets being danced there.
If you can get to the Wyong session on the 17th I guarantee you'll play slides and polkas & without the Sydney attitude...
The Kilkenny session, in S. Wimbledon, London, has a few regular attendees who are good slide and polka players. When I'm there, I sometimes play along for the craic (because that's what everyone else does) - many them are melodically very simple, compared to jigs, reels and hornpipes, and so, not difficult to pick up. But I can't really *play* them. I might try sometimes at home, but I would never think of starting a set of slides or polkas in a session. The only people I have heard do justice to them (in my very humble opinion) are those either with a Cork/Kerry/Limerick background or who are well versed in the musical traditions of those counties. I once heard a duo of well-respected Clare musicians playing a set of Sliabh Luachra polkas and, whatever it is that Jacky Daly and Seamus Begley have, and Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford, Padraig O'Keefe and Johnny O'Leary had before them, they just didn't have it.
Of course, there are polkas in the Clare tradition as well, but there doesn't seem to be a deeply ingrained 'feel' for them as there is in the SW counties, and as Clare players have for jigs and reels. I won't say that I haven't heard them *played well* but, for me, they stand out as quaint little oddities, rather than the life-blood of the tradition.
I like to play slides and polkas, but I don't feel very competent at "interpreting" them. What are some good representative recordings? Is Jackie Daly a good model for the Kerry style?
Also, consider reading "Johnny O'Leary of Sliabh Luachra," edited and published by Liliput---348 tunes that have been given reference numbers along with text about the tunes and description of O'Leary's style. Some of these numbered tunes are in the O'Leary CD cited above, with their ref. numbers in the sleeve notes. It's a companion to the book.
"The Denis Brooks set"? So Denis has his own sets now?
An old friend of Denis's once said he'd switched over to a "Kerry style" of piping, meaning lots of these sliding polkers I guess.
I like the "sillier" polkas - anything silly sounding at a session. They get under people's skin, this is serious business! The foreword of Perron/Miller's book Traditional Irish Fiddle Music was written by Danny Hathaway, the bio for Danny says he is working (1994) on a book called Anything but Reels. Over 400 polkas collected so far!
Piccoloist Murty Rabbet recorded a really goofy one in the early 50s, it's on the I'm Leaving Tipperary CD.
Aye Button, the dreaded 'polkathon'! Yeah, we had a guy, a banjo player, like that - whom we also dreaded - a lovely bloke but he just didn't know when to stop, once the polka set started.
In most sessions, the Polka & Slide seem to be treated like the Slow Air, or the Planxty, or the Song. Time for only one of each in any one session & then it's back to the, so called real tunes!
Ever since Jackie Daly's solo album came out I've been in love with Polkas & slides. In fact that was the dominant & deciding factor which convinced me that I had to take up the Concertina! (for any youngsters reading this - albums were enormous black CD shaped objects, with a hole in the middle! )
"When i was in aussie two years ago" - correct me if I'm wrong copo24 but isn't Oz - the country & an aussie - a person? If so, perhaps you would like to rephrase your statement?
I'm fortunate because the Box player I'm fortunate to play with also loves these babies & we usually tear through a few crackers of each, during the course of the night!
One of the worst, saddest, most depressing sounds in the world though is a set of Polkas or Slides played s l o w l y, with no lift - wrist slashing material for sure!
Hey, another great reason for playing Polkas & Slides is that they usually annoy the heck out of most Bodhran players - UP KERRY!
Copo24: thanks I'm ok for sessions. I don't have any trouble finding tunes in Sydney! My backpacker bar days are over. They think Irish music is U2. Just had a session tonight and am about to go to bed. It's 5.30am.
Yes Bridie before you start on yes I am a drunkard. Just coz you're jealous coz you're supposed to be all boring and sensible .
We do craic and tunes like everyone else, only wall-2-wall reels & jigs without the polkas, the attitude being: why play a daggy polka when you can play a Sean Ryan/Vincent Broderick/something-off-my-new-Flook-album set instead? Having said that there was a set played tonight, albeit by visiting musos, but they were more like reely 2/4 march-ey things rather than polkas. Nice for a change though. And I hadn't heard a single one of the set of 3. What a great night. Some people played some of their own compositions, including a session.org person, and they were brilliant. Very talented indeed! Eeeaaugh bed...
Yeah, your absolutely right Button. This poor Bodhran player, for example, has just dropped his Brown Bodhran & collapsed in pain after a particularly long Polka Set: http://www.sportsfrog.com/archives/elbow.jpg
We play a couple of sets of polkas (you heard us play one of them at Camden last October) but I don't have a clue what any of them are called. Our piper, Tim Dowd, is a Kerry man so polkas and slides are compulsory
Dick... this could become a new bodhran WMD for Michael Gill. I can just see it now... Michael receives an email when it switches on his computer the day of the session. It says:
"Good Morning Mr. Gill, tonight there will be a bodhran player showing up at your session. The mission is, if you choose to accept it, to play a long string of polkas to disable him and remove the threat. Start with the Bally Desmond set and continue with the Glen Cottage ones. Don't stop there, add that set that ends with the Finnish Polka from Kevin Burk's recording, "Up Close." By that time the damage to his elbow should be irreversible. If he has managed to hold on, start Cathleen Hehir's slide and play it 6 times through. This will no doubt make his arm fall off and thereby remove him as any threat to sessions anywhere.
As usual, if you or any member of the session is caught we will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
This email will delete when you click the "delete" button.
Hey Button, that being the case, MG is bound to receive such an e-Mail on the 23rd of March, cause that is now recognised as W M D Day! Isn't it interesting to see how the World has moved on. http://www.wmo.ch/wmd/
Funny you should mention the Kilkenny, spoon - I got to drop in there for a week or two last year, after nearly all my session sitting-and-listening experience being at Durty Nellies. My first thought was "gee, the jig-to-reel ratio is a bit higher here" and my second thought was "polkas in a session, that's radical".
Umm, Dow, don't tell anyone but the one time I year I get to play fiddle in public, like up on a stage and all, I have to play, umm ... a polka ...
Having just returned from CorofinFest - the sessions were wall to wall reels with the occasional jig.
We had a couple of evenings where we started an alternative session where jigs, hornpipes and polkas alternated (and the occasional reel was played at the "old" speed). The younger element didn't join in but the older players came by and joined us, bemoaning they hadn't played that tune for years and they wished the sessions would go back to the old repertoire instead of all these "new" tunes i.e. zippy reels.
Jsut the sort of ease of grace so many lack, with fun and not taking anything too seriously, I love both pairs:
Bernard O'Sullivan & Tommy McMahon ~
"I Have a Bonnet Trimmed With Blue" / "The Rakes of Mallow"
There's tina for you too Dow ~ for more free reed buzz I played these and others with the Crehan clan, one of who played a damned fine, wait for it ~ English System Concertina... Cissie also played tina. Two other clans from Clare, amongst many, the Russells and the Droney's also loved polkas, to add some more squeeze to all this. What a kick, what joy, what madness... If we want to travel elsewhere, well, I could easily build a list from Ulster too. They were not just Sliabh Luachra. I'll scratch up a few of many favourites for you to give a go, keeping in mind your 'tina'... There are a load of other dances besides the South Sets, including that some of the Clare and Galway sets were danced to polkas, and back to Ulster, as well as a slew of couple type dances and some 'country dances', akin to those the ceili dances were squeezed from... Alright, Ulster too then, but just one clan ~ the McCuskers, damned nice folk. I won't go further as the potential list would be massive...
It's no skin off my nose that some folks hate polkas, considering the general 'musicianship' at a lot of sessions, uncontrolled mayhem and steam rolled mush, it's just as well they don't also slaughter everything else along with reels...
A lot were played in Limerick and Tipperary, John Joe Harnett, a fine flute player that emphysema did in, had tons ~ but alas he didn't record and there are few recordings of their lively and playful way with the forms. It also seems that often when the recording lads show up from the city, with their mikes and their patter, the push is for speed and the usual fare ~ fast and furious...
What's that old carny saying, "Give 'em what they want!" ~ don't spoil the expectations, and in the meantime, when the 'tourists' have gone home, we'll do what we like in their absence...
Any set of well played polkas . . .or marches; barndances; schottisches; flings or waltzes beats any number of indifferently played (concrete-mixer) sets of reels any time.
Bands at set dances love to introduce the Corofin or Cashel into the programme to make a break from non-stop reels.
for a really nice time get 'Polkatharsis' by Brave Combo
PPS . . . and try to get to Scully's in Newmarket (Co Cork) on Monday nights.
If you can't make it the Abbey Ceili Band or Monks of the Screw are a substitute
Polkas ~ a couple of accessible and available collections:
"110 Ireland's Best Polkas & Slides'
~ with guitar chords
Walton's Publishing, 1999
ISBN: 1-85720-086-1
* "Mally Presents 100 Irish Polkas"
~ with chords suitable for all melody instruments
edited by Dave Mallinson
Dave Mallinson Publications, 1997
ISBN" 1-899512-21-7
You can use the ISBN numbers to do searches in any of the price comparison sites, such as 'AddAll.Com'. I think this is a better choise, listening and playing rather than me making suggestions of specific tunes. Find your own bent as to favoratism with regards to polkas, always ears first of course, or from the feet up, dancing to them. There are also a load recorded on the various set dance (quadrille) recordings, such as Matt Cunningham's recordings and from others. There is quite a bit of duplication between the two books cited. The Mallinson book tips the scales with a discography, bibliography and an index to alternative titles. So while we wait with anticipation for this Hathaway bloke to get off his ass and produce this promised collection, and prove he really does have that many polkas (taping the bottomless well of polka bands around the Great Lakes?) ~ 100 should do you for starters eh?
The 'old way' with polkas wasn't to do them in sets at all, besides, many of the set dance figures that they were also used for were short, for example, four and a half times through a 32 bar, two part polka... The pile up that occurs sometimes at sessions is a result of their dearth and the attitude that they are beginner's fodder. So suddenly someone gets one in and all the beginners and polka starved jump in for the foray, polka piranhas. The thing is decimated and pulverized and that's that for the next six months of polka free playing...until the next feeding frenzy...
The next step up was just two in a set, the change signifying and supporting a change in the dance. In the quadrilles/sets there just aren't great length figures that require four or more polkas in a single figure. If it's a polka set you might get as many as five figures, and if you're doing two tune sets that's ten polkas. You don't need to stack them high and fire them off one after the other without repetition as some hammer-head players do to tune sets, something blamed on certain Scottish extremes with the music. In some cases, as with polka songs, there wasn't even a B-part to the music and it could be the same basic melody over and over again, 8 or 16 bars of the 2/4... It's then that appreciation for subtle changes and playfulness become particularly valued, the 'craic'...
Polkas
Polkas
Sydney must be the worst place in the world for polkas and slides. I started a set of slides the other week and someone said "what you think you're from Kerry do you?" not in a friendly way but in a sort of really condescending way, and I wanted to say feck off you snobby tw@ but ended up just smiling instead. I'd like to play some polkas for my own pleasure at home even if nobody wants to play them with me, so I'd like to hear from people who do have polkas played in their sessions. Which are the most common ones? Which are the really nice ones that you like to play?
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Dow
Re: Polkas
Yep -- the polka and slide thing. I remember many years ago there were a few people that would start polkas around here, but they would tend to play ten in a row and everyone else would take it as a cue to add the one they knew. It would become a spontaneous polkathon, and I would dread every time it started up. I always wished they would just play a few at a time instead. Then those polkathon folks stopped coming around and polkas more or less dropped off the session’s radar screen.
It wasn't until we started playing for set dancers that the need for them surfaced. Having the opportunity to play them for set dancers pumped a new life into them... for me anyway… seeing people dancing around the floor to them really does it. It’s also a great lesson in how to get the energy right. Now we love to play polkas and have quite a few in the pocket. When we're asked to play on a stage it's great to have slides and polkas to spice up the program. We also throw them into the mix at sessions.
Slides and single jigs would often show up at sessions, but they weren't played like slides and just ended up sounding like simple and easy jigs. When the dancers kept telling us to play them faster I decided to investigate. I spent a good amount of time listening to slides on recordings I had as well as some set dance CDs. Eventually we started playing them in a way that made the dancers happy, but at sessions I'd look around and some players were rubbing their elbows and wrists when we finished. It's something you definitely have to get used to. But at this point -- I love playing slides too.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Polkas
Slides are way more common than polkas at the sessions I've been to but that ain't common at all. "Scully Casey's" with "Behind the Bush in the Garden" played sllideways along with it will get joined in on.
There aren't many polkas, except for "Ryan's," played in sessions I've been to either but I'll toss some out there anyway just to see if there are any takers and, sometimes by golly, people will come out of the closet and get with the program, especially if they're .08 or higher on the tester.
Contradances are really where you'd find them.
Josephine Marsh's "Paddys" are my favorites but I play them a lot quicker than she does and with some swing. "The Four Shoves," "Tom Sullivan's," and "Bill Sullivan's" are right up there too.I first heard the "Blue Ribbon" played on a couple of frailing banjos at an Appalachian clogging session and that kind of tune I just plain like
. I play "The New Market," and sometimes "The Glem Cottage" and the "Blue Ribbon" will get some takers. I'm partial to Johnny O'Leary's recordings because of his enthusiasm and because he inspired dancing.
I play a pile of them fast and swung on the box, and often with quick chords in the rhythm. I've tried to embrace "The Bluebell" but I would need to take Dramamine to get through it and can't because my body's a temple.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by joesmith
Re: Polkas
When i was in aussie two years ago, i brought my banjo. In sydney - bar paddys day - trad seemed non-existant. In brisbane, id be sitting in the bunk hostel beer garden just essing about, and id nearly always be asked did i know the tunes from the titanic movie, which happen to be ryan's polka set. It went down rather well and was a bit of a favourite among the backpackers.
U wont play in a session, but if u want a good buzz from playing polkas (particularly ryans) go and find some backpackers who've seen titanic. U'l get a better response than from the stuffy f@ck in sydney
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by copo24
Re: Polkas
hey Dow, have you met a B/C box player from the Central Coast named Dennis? He's a Kerryman and will play polkas for hours if you'll let him! I'll drop you a line next time I hear he's heading in to the Harp, if you like.
Tomorrow night (Sunday) there'll be a load of slides and polkas played at Finnegan's pub in Newcastle. Shayne & Roz have sent me a tune list for the various sets being danced there.
If you can get to the Wyong session on the 17th I guarantee you'll play slides and polkas & without the Sydney attitude...
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by dogbox
Re: Polkas
The Kilkenny session, in S. Wimbledon, London, has a few regular attendees who are good slide and polka players. When I'm there, I sometimes play along for the craic (because that's what everyone else does) - many them are melodically very simple, compared to jigs, reels and hornpipes, and so, not difficult to pick up. But I can't really *play* them. I might try sometimes at home, but I would never think of starting a set of slides or polkas in a session. The only people I have heard do justice to them (in my very humble opinion) are those either with a Cork/Kerry/Limerick background or who are well versed in the musical traditions of those counties. I once heard a duo of well-respected Clare musicians playing a set of Sliabh Luachra polkas and, whatever it is that Jacky Daly and Seamus Begley have, and Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford, Padraig O'Keefe and Johnny O'Leary had before them, they just didn't have it.
Of course, there are polkas in the Clare tradition as well, but there doesn't seem to be a deeply ingrained 'feel' for them as there is in the SW counties, and as Clare players have for jigs and reels. I won't say that I haven't heard them *played well* but, for me, they stand out as quaint little oddities, rather than the life-blood of the tradition.
End of ramble. Time for tea and scones.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by ragaman
Re: Polkas
Hi Dow
try the Denis Brooks set
Johnny Mickies Slide
2 Gan Ainms, one in D teh 2nd in G (I wish they had names) and Mrs Crowleys
I'm afraid I think I would have called yer man a twot etc
Cheers
Blue skies
Ged
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by gedpipes
Re: Polkas
I like to play slides and polkas, but I don't feel very competent at "interpreting" them. What are some good representative recordings? Is Jackie Daly a good model for the Kerry style?
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Polkas
Sure he is, Bob.
Any recording by Johnny O'Leary and most with Jackie Daly will have slides and polkas.
A few sources:
Denis Murphy: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/164
Murphy and Julia Clifford: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1073
Johnny O'Leary: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1284
Jackie Daly: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/212
Seamus Begley: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/201
Also, consider reading "Johnny O'Leary of Sliabh Luachra," edited and published by Liliput---348 tunes that have been given reference numbers along with text about the tunes and description of O'Leary's style. Some of these numbered tunes are in the O'Leary CD cited above, with their ref. numbers in the sleeve notes. It's a companion to the book.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by joesmith
Re: Polkas
The editor of the book I cited was Terry Moylan.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by joesmith
Re: Polkas
"The Denis Brooks set"? So Denis has his own sets now?
An old friend of Denis's once said he'd switched over to a "Kerry style" of piping, meaning lots of these sliding polkers I guess.
I like the "sillier" polkas - anything silly sounding at a session. They get under people's skin, this is serious business! The foreword of Perron/Miller's book Traditional Irish Fiddle Music was written by Danny Hathaway, the bio for Danny says he is working (1994) on a book called Anything but Reels. Over 400 polkas collected so far!
Piccoloist Murty Rabbet recorded a really goofy one in the early 50s, it's on the I'm Leaving Tipperary CD.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Kevin Rietmann
Re: Polkas
Aye Button, the dreaded 'polkathon'! Yeah, we had a guy, a banjo player, like that - whom we also dreaded - a lovely bloke but he just didn't know when to stop, once the polka set started.
In most sessions, the Polka & Slide seem to be treated like the Slow Air, or the Planxty, or the Song. Time for only one of each in any one session & then it's back to the, so called real tunes!
Ever since Jackie Daly's solo album came out I've been in love with Polkas & slides. In fact that was the dominant & deciding factor which convinced me that I had to take up the Concertina! (for any youngsters reading this - albums were enormous black CD shaped objects, with a hole in the middle!
)
"When i was in aussie two years ago" - correct me if I'm wrong copo24 but isn't Oz - the country & an aussie - a person? If so, perhaps you would like to rephrase your statement?
I'm fortunate because the Box player I'm fortunate to play with also loves these babies & we usually tear through a few crackers of each, during the course of the night!
One of the worst, saddest, most depressing sounds in the world though is a set of Polkas or Slides played s l o w l y, with no lift - wrist slashing material for sure!
Hey, another great reason for playing Polkas & Slides is that they usually annoy the heck out of most Bodhran players - UP KERRY!
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Polkas
Thanks for the replies.
Copo24: thanks I'm ok for sessions. I don't have any trouble finding tunes in Sydney! My backpacker bar days are over. They think Irish music is U2. Just had a session tonight and am about to go to bed. It's 5.30am.
Yes Bridie before you start on yes I am a drunkard. Just coz you're jealous coz you're supposed to be all boring and sensible
.
We do craic and tunes like everyone else, only wall-2-wall reels & jigs without the polkas, the attitude being: why play a daggy polka when you can play a Sean Ryan/Vincent Broderick/something-off-my-new-Flook-album set instead? Having said that there was a set played tonight, albeit by visiting musos, but they were more like reely 2/4 march-ey things rather than polkas. Nice for a change though. And I hadn't heard a single one of the set of 3. What a great night. Some people played some of their own compositions, including a session.org person, and they were brilliant. Very talented indeed! Eeeaaugh bed...
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Dow
Re: Polkas
Hmm, maybe I should get this book by this "Danny Hathaway" person. Sounds like we're of a like mind........................
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Dow
Re: Polkas
Hahaha... that's true, Dick, they do indeed test the bodhran player's mettle; it dislocates their elbow.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Polkas
Yeah, your absolutely right Button. This poor Bodhran player, for example, has just dropped his Brown Bodhran & collapsed in pain after a particularly long Polka Set:
http://www.sportsfrog.com/archives/elbow.jpg
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Polkas
Hi Dow!
We play a couple of sets of polkas (you heard us play one of them at Camden last October) but I don't have a clue what any of them are called. Our piper, Tim Dowd, is a Kerry man so polkas and slides are compulsory
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Geoff Pollitt
Re: Polkas
Dick... this could become a new bodhran WMD for Michael Gill. I can just see it now... Michael receives an email when it switches on his computer the day of the session. It says:
"Good Morning Mr. Gill, tonight there will be a bodhran player showing up at your session. The mission is, if you choose to accept it, to play a long string of polkas to disable him and remove the threat. Start with the Bally Desmond set and continue with the Glen Cottage ones. Don't stop there, add that set that ends with the Finnish Polka from Kevin Burk's recording, "Up Close." By that time the damage to his elbow should be irreversible. If he has managed to hold on, start Cathleen Hehir's slide and play it 6 times through. This will no doubt make his arm fall off and thereby remove him as any threat to sessions anywhere.
As usual, if you or any member of the session is caught we will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
This email will delete when you click the "delete" button.
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Polkas
Hey Button, that being the case, MG is bound to receive such an e-Mail on the 23rd of March, cause that is now recognised as W M D Day! Isn't it interesting to see how the World has moved on.
http://www.wmo.ch/wmd/
# Posted on March 11th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Polkas
Dennis Murphy's and "Dum Dum" (john ryan's)
# Posted on March 12th 2006 by grego
Re: Polkas
Dum Dum didle iddle aye-do aye-do
Dum Dum didle iddle aye-do do-dah
Dum Dum didle iddle aye-do aye
Skiddle aye-do do-dye day glo
Oh sorry, wrong thread .......now where is that lilting thread................................
# Posted on March 12th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Polkas
Funny you should mention the Kilkenny, spoon - I got to drop in there for a week or two last year, after nearly all my session sitting-and-listening experience being at Durty Nellies. My first thought was "gee, the jig-to-reel ratio is a bit higher here" and my second thought was "polkas in a session, that's radical".
Umm, Dow, don't tell anyone but the one time I year I get to play fiddle in public, like up on a stage and all, I have to play, umm ... a polka ...
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by Tish
Re: Polkas
Having just returned from CorofinFest - the sessions were wall to wall reels with the occasional jig.
We had a couple of evenings where we started an alternative session where jigs, hornpipes and polkas alternated (and the occasional reel was played at the "old" speed). The younger element didn't join in but the older players came by and joined us, bemoaning they hadn't played that tune for years and they wished the sessions would go back to the old repertoire instead of all these "new" tunes i.e. zippy reels.
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by geoffwright
Re: Polkas
Slap it up them Geoff! Yeee Haaa ..
Tham thar young-uns/ upstarts, yin an' a', ha' tae be learnt fit tae dae, fur sure!
Three cheers for the old fogies! Hip Hip ..................
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Polkas a la Clare ~
Jsut the sort of ease of grace so many lack, with fun and not taking anything too seriously, I love both pairs:
Bernard O'Sullivan & Tommy McMahon ~
"I Have a Bonnet Trimmed With Blue" / "The Rakes of Mallow"
There's tina for you too Dow ~ for more free reed buzz I played these and others with the Crehan clan, one of who played a damned fine, wait for it ~ English System Concertina... Cissie also played tina. Two other clans from Clare, amongst many, the Russells and the Droney's also loved polkas, to add some more squeeze to all this. What a kick, what joy, what madness... If we want to travel elsewhere, well, I could easily build a list from Ulster too. They were not just Sliabh Luachra. I'll scratch up a few of many favourites for you to give a go, keeping in mind your 'tina'... There are a load of other dances besides the South Sets, including that some of the Clare and Galway sets were danced to polkas, and back to Ulster, as well as a slew of couple type dances and some 'country dances', akin to those the ceili dances were squeezed from... Alright, Ulster too then, but just one clan ~ the McCuskers, damned nice folk. I won't go further as the potential list would be massive...
It's no skin off my nose that some folks hate polkas, considering the general 'musicianship' at a lot of sessions, uncontrolled mayhem and steam rolled mush, it's just as well they don't also slaughter everything else along with reels...
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by ceolachan
Polkas ~ Just scratchin' the surface ~
Polkas and slides and a few recordings to listen to ~
Johnny O'Leary & Jackie Daly ~ as previously mentioned, but here's a few more:
Denis Doody
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1309
Jimmy Doyle & Dan O'Leary
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1247
Various Artists
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1274
Terry Teahan
A prized LP in some of our collections...
John Brosnan
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1279
Dessie Wilkinson & gang
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1040
Josie McDermott
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/130
Tom Doherty
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1210
A lot were played in Limerick and Tipperary, John Joe Harnett, a fine flute player that emphysema did in, had tons ~ but alas he didn't record and there are few recordings of their lively and playful way with the forms. It also seems that often when the recording lads show up from the city, with their mikes and their patter, the push is for speed and the usual fare ~ fast and furious...
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by ceolachan
What's that old carny saying, "Give 'em what they want!" ~ don't spoil the expectations, and in the meantime, when the 'tourists' have gone home, we'll do what we like in their absence...
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by ceolachan
Re: Polkas
Any set of well played polkas . . .or marches; barndances; schottisches; flings or waltzes beats any number of indifferently played (concrete-mixer) sets of reels any time.
Bands at set dances love to introduce the Corofin or Cashel into the programme to make a break from non-stop reels.
for a really nice time get 'Polkatharsis' by Brave Combo
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by Alancorsini
Re: Polkas
PS . . . and Mazurkas!
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by Alancorsini
Re: Polkas
PPS . . . and try to get to Scully's in Newmarket (Co Cork) on Monday nights.
If you can't make it the Abbey Ceili Band or Monks of the Screw are a substitute
# Posted on March 13th 2006 by Alancorsini
Polkas ~ a couple of accessible and available collections:
"110 Ireland's Best Polkas & Slides'
~ with guitar chords
Walton's Publishing, 1999
ISBN: 1-85720-086-1
* "Mally Presents 100 Irish Polkas"
~ with chords suitable for all melody instruments
edited by Dave Mallinson
Dave Mallinson Publications, 1997
ISBN" 1-899512-21-7
You can use the ISBN numbers to do searches in any of the price comparison sites, such as 'AddAll.Com'. I think this is a better choise, listening and playing rather than me making suggestions of specific tunes. Find your own bent as to favoratism with regards to polkas, always ears first of course, or from the feet up, dancing to them. There are also a load recorded on the various set dance (quadrille) recordings, such as Matt Cunningham's recordings and from others. There is quite a bit of duplication between the two books cited. The Mallinson book tips the scales with a discography, bibliography and an index to alternative titles. So while we wait with anticipation for this Hathaway bloke to get off his ass and produce this promised collection, and prove he really does have that many polkas (taping the bottomless well of polka bands around the Great Lakes?) ~ 100 should do you for starters eh?
# Posted on March 16th 2006 by ceolachan
Polka Piranhas ~ old ways and highway pile ups ~
The 'old way' with polkas wasn't to do them in sets at all, besides, many of the set dance figures that they were also used for were short, for example, four and a half times through a 32 bar, two part polka... The pile up that occurs sometimes at sessions is a result of their dearth and the attitude that they are beginner's fodder. So suddenly someone gets one in and all the beginners and polka starved jump in for the foray, polka piranhas. The thing is decimated and pulverized and that's that for the next six months of polka free playing...until the next feeding frenzy...
The next step up was just two in a set, the change signifying and supporting a change in the dance. In the quadrilles/sets there just aren't great length figures that require four or more polkas in a single figure. If it's a polka set you might get as many as five figures, and if you're doing two tune sets that's ten polkas. You don't need to stack them high and fire them off one after the other without repetition as some hammer-head players do to tune sets, something blamed on certain Scottish extremes with the music. In some cases, as with polka songs, there wasn't even a B-part to the music and it could be the same basic melody over and over again, 8 or 16 bars of the 2/4... It's then that appreciation for subtle changes and playfulness become particularly valued, the 'craic'...
# Posted on March 16th 2006 by ceolachan