Are there any shaker-type instruments used in ITM? Bodhran, bones, and spoons I’ve heard all the time, and even castinets once, but never any of the shaker kind. Any reason for this other than ‘just tradition’?
No.
They are neither required nor desired.
I kind of thought that would be the answer, Martin, but I just wondered why the Irish didn’t bother with them, considering that Irish music has adopted so many other instruments. They seem to show up almost everywhere else from time to time. Just a curious thing to me.
Traditionallly, the answer is no like Martin said.
However, there is the rare occasion nowadays that one finds shakers in track or two in the more recent recordings. I remember at least that artists like Mike McGoldrick, John McSherry, Flook etc. have used some sort of shaker in their albums. (I’m at work now and can’t confirm which tracks).
I have a recording --which one?-- with some very good music and the occasional “shakey shake shake” noise which is disconcerting for me. I think it was a fad… even when well metered and expertly executed, it seems to fit less well the more I listen.
My non- ITM trained family doesn’t notice. I do.
Jennie
Thanks for those replies. I’m certainly not advocating shakers in ITM. The sound is, well…disconcerting is a good term. One wouldn’t play timbales in a Beethoven Sonata, and there shouldn’t be shakers in ITM.
I just find it curious that given such a long history there isn’t some particular shaking instrument traditional to Irish music. Perhaps something made from certain pebbles from a special spot or the shells of some rare indigenous Irish mollusk.
That sounds pretty pagan to me and you have to remember that for aeons any, but the most restrained, percussion was considered of the devil.
The anti-percussive acculturation is so pervasive that even sworn atheists who also believe themselves to be custodians of the true tradition beat bodhrans with insults.
It is, I believe, a legacy of being the most distal mediaeval Christian outpost and then, later on, almost a millenium of chordal English rule which disdained everything indigenous in Ireland including her pebbles, her drums, and the modality of her village songs.
And so it goes …
I like alternative percussion instruments in ITM myself – shakers, djembes, timbales, saucepans, squeaky dog toys, whatever – as long as they’re in the hands of a player who knows what s/he’s doing. They’re not traditional, but then neither am I. And there’s only so much you can do with a bodhran.
That seems a very reasonable theory, thanks. The question I’m raising of course is not “how might the tradition evolve” but rather, “where did it come from?” The idea of percusion being considered ‘pagan’ by the early Church is quite reasonable, I think.
From the Ceol Up North website:
Shakey eggs and other non-traditional percussive instruments may only be played in the bar area on production of a nuisance licence which can be purchased at a cost of £100 per night from musicians.
Says it all really
This one fellow, a professional violinist who plays a smidgin of ITM tunes, shows up at sessions twice a year at most. During a set (out of many) of tunes he didn’t know, apparently he got bored, as he pulled out a flippin’ shaker egg and started in on that. There was no rhythm to it, and I almost killed the knob.
NO SHAKER EGGS. 
I can see using shakers in a recording; there are a number of ways of arranging I can think of where it could fit even though it’s not “traditional”. Sessions, though? Only if they’re eclectic from the start, or in my nightmares.
One of its selling points, in my estimation. 
Our band’s bodhran player used to haul around a few odd percussion items, including shakey eggs, AND GIVE THEM TO PEOPLE IN THE CROWD.
And yea verily, FOR I DO SPEAK THE TRUTH HERE, for a while he had a toy plastic cowbell clamped to the edge of his bodhran and yep, he used it.
FWIW, we don’t fluster too easily anymore. And I doubt we can be accused of taking ourselves too seriously as long as he’s with us !
I love the man.
I played at a ceili a few years ago with the legendary percussioniste Myron Bretholtz. He of course brought a whole load of assorted noise-making objects, among them some shakers made out of plastic fruit. At one point I looked over and Myron had an apple shaker in each hand and a banana shaker between them in a particularly suggestive position, and was just shaking blithely away. How we managed to make it to the end of the figure, I have no idea.
Well, to be honest, I still dream of bringing a few kazoos to a session and handing them out for a set. I think the hornpipe “Galway Bay” would be served nicely indeed. 
I’ve heard that there’s a tradition of using a few coins shaken in the hand as a percussion device in ITM. Joannie Madden uses this somewhere in her Song of the Irish Whistle CD (I recall it’s that very interesting track starting with The Otter’s Holt, which uses the percussion device of bare hands scuffing on blue jeans, too). Apparently the shaken-coins-thing isn’t a pillar of the tradition; you don’t hear much of it if at all.
Ah, why not go all the way to … The Trumpet Hornpipe?
You know, we can’t forget a segment of this music is indeed home to the proud tradition of the snare drum and woodblock (or as Dan C. calls it “the feckin woodblock” … )
What’s a shakey egg salad or fruit cocktail among friends?
Hmm. And here I thought Joanie was just trying to keep her dog from chewing on the mic cord.
Never, EVER accuse ME of being evil agin. 
Yes, and the lesson of speciation and extinction comes to mind. 
That’s a different thing altogether. THAT’S craic. But when a usual nonparticipant that people hardly know deigns to show up the rare now-and-again and pull a stunt like that, and it’s not even for the humor value…well. Call me Session Nazi, but I don’t like it. But I promise to get over myself.