Here is the thing, I have this hankering for the airs, and while it seems the majority of pipers are striving to master the dance tunes, the jigs and reels, I am striving to master the airs.
Now I’ve been told that one cannot really get the hang of the airs, unless a mastery of the jigs/reels is first undertaken. But this seems wrong, since these are very different kinds of music… and am I mistaken to think that in the history of piping, the airs came first, while jigs and reels came later? Although, I’m sure it’s not that cut and dried…
I do admire the faster stuff, and I know it’s the thing for sessions… but I am going to be 60 this year, and may even be dead before I get my first 7 years in.
I don’t really plan on being a major sessioner, nor joining a band, and my main reason for taking up the pipes was so I could sit up on the roof at night and play sweet melodies.
This is a very personal decision. Whatever you decide is right is what is right for you.
Something I have been told again and again about playing airs is the need to learn the song. All of your playing should reflect someone singing the tune (maybe even you). Get lots of CDs of Irish people singing in Irish (not wannabes from other countries - there’s some real dreck out there). This seems to me to be the best place to start from. Its hard to find recordings of people singing the airs that are often played on UPs. I suspect some of these tunes are regarded as being a bit hackneyed. Have fun, in any case.
Regarding airs being older than jigs and reels, yes many of them are older from what I have read. We know that double jigs came out of Italy (gigga) and reels from Scotland (original source unknown), but slip/hop jigs are reported as being unique to Ireland. There are quotes of the names of airs showing up in Shakespeare, and of course Cambrensis noted the Irish proclivity for music and dance, but since no-one recorded any of it, we can’t know what it sounded like. There are many different sets of lyrics for the same airs, and likely the lyrics will modify the tune somewhat in each case.
And of course there are hop jigs in the Northumbrian pipes repertoire, and many hop jig songs too. Compare Elizabeth Cronin’s Cucanandy (a dandling song) with the press gang song There’s a Tender Comin’.
If you look at O’Farrell’s collections there are tons of slip and hop jigs, and many of them were shared repertoire with the northern pipers.
Depends on where you read. Irish were reported to be dancing slip jigs in the roads when some English royalty visited (can’t remember which one - I lose track) but it was long before any of the written collections. My understanding of Welsh trad music is that almost none of it was ever collected, and what is being produced now is more of a reconstruction/interpretation. Surely there must have been lots of cross pollination between all these people living so close, and depending so much on the sea and trade.
Yes I think you are probably correct in saying there was a lot of x pollination. There are some very ancient welsh manuscripts which survive
The Ap Huw Collection,but these pre date any of the welsh dance music which was obliterated by Wesley.(or someone of that ilk)
There is a real art to playing slow airs.Willie Clancy playing “The Bright Lady” does it for me.
Philistine that I am, I don’t care for WC’s airs at all. They are far too rough when compared to someone actually singing the song. Then again, I have observerd some Irish belting out songs like Mo Ghile Mear as though these were football anthems. Who knows?
In the end, we can only go by our own tastes, and our tastes are shaped by what we understand in the music. I am too far from the source, and not even remotely connected to the culture that generated all this music, so all I can do is stumble along to the best of my understanding.
Dance tunes aside, IMHO there is nothing that can beat a really well played air on the UPs. The pipes have a soul and spirit of their own, and when they cry or sing or laugh, it sends chills up and down the spine.
Elbogo, play the slow airs and bring them to life. What others may feel about it shouldn’t be a worry to you.
Well, airs are the hardest tunes I have tried to play. The dots are useless, and to learn them well, you need to hear a great Sean Nos (translates to old style) singer, then learn to sing it on the pipes.
I cheated and learned from pipe recordings the ones I can do.
I have some tapes made in one of my piping classes of a lady (first name slips my memory, Fitzgerald in Elkins, WV) doing some Sean Nos songs and I found out what “Women of Ireland” is really about. I gotta find and learn that one, it is great!
Fancy, Women of Ireland (Mná na hÉireann) was written by Sean O’Riada. His prime promoters are his own backup band, the Chieftains. If you can’t find a sung version, you can at least hear the tune on Chieftains 4.
I have Fitzgerald singing it in Irish on tape, I just need to find it. She sang about a dozen songs and I need to transfer them to computer so I can find them.
Now I’ve been told that one cannot really get the hang of the airs,
unless a mastery of the jigs/reels is first undertaken.
Never heard that before, and that doesn’t reflect my experience at all. I think mastering airs is different than mastering jigs, and I’d suggest that until one has a good grasp of both can you use elements of one appropriately into the other. But personally, I think that having a good grasp of sean nos singing allows better understanding of how to create more detailed phrasing in dance music more than the other way around.
Learn airs by learning airs. As others have said, learn the songs if possible; learn some Irish if possible. Pay detailed attention to how singers phrase the music and time the pulse. Listen to their slides, and their rests.
I’m certainly glad to see someone highly interested in airs and songs. It’s a whole other half of the tradition that I hope doesn’t become too neglected due to the difficulty for us non-Irish speakers in unlocking the emotional content of the words.
Thanks for all the input. I am finding Irish music to be a strange and quite lovely form (as fancy might say: lovely as a woman) and somehow, fortunately continued to survive and flourish inspite of all those years of nothing but american folk, rock, pop and crap-rap and what-have-you. I “discovered” it merely a year and a half ago, and said to myself: where have I been all my life, how could I have missed all this…
I’m finding there is so much, so many tunes and songs I’ve never heard before, and hardly understand as an idiom, or structure… yet feel excited when I somehow catch how they work.
Therein lies the problem, I think, for me anyway, as Peter Laban mentioned in a past thread… to the extent that I did not grow up hearing it on an continuous basis. It is a whole different experience… and I would like very much to hear more of the “melodies of the singers”, and immerse myself in it. It is on my agenda.
Although, my father used to sing me Irish lullabys as a child, to get me to go to sleep… I remember his voice. The “tru la lu, la lu la…” something or 'nother sticks in my mind… and perhaps this is where my love of airs comes from.
I suspect though, that there is as much (if not more?) ornamentation in the airs, as there is in the jigs, reels and such…
The Gaelic Tent area at Milwaukee’s IrishFest has had the most incredible singing for the past several years and maybe the most concentrated set of singing in Irish at a US event.
Hearing good piping is a challenge but hearing ‘singing in Irish’ can even be tougher.
Hmmm…I dunno. Printed collections go back quite a ways.
Slip jigs, contrary to popular belief, were never strictly Irish. In fact, they may well have been English in origin. A few very early tunes that are rather slip-jig-ish in nature can apparently be found in John Playford’s “The Division Violin,” published in 1684 (this was also apparently one of the first books to include variation sets, a mainstay of Northumbrian/Border musical tradition). There’s also “The Master Piper,” the oldest known manuscript of bagpipe music. It was compiled by a fellow named William Dixon from the northern tip of Northumberland in 1733 and it is thought that the tunes in his manuscript were meant specifically to be played on the Border pipes. Dixon’s book contains a number of 9/8 tunes (although he wrote them out in 9/4), including several that were to later become very famous tunes in the Northumbrian pipe repertoire.
A handful of 9/8 tunes also show up in early Highland pipe collections, replete with Gaelic titles.
The big thing here is the dances. Slip jig steps didn’t survive in Scotland and England.
As an interesting aside, “The Master Piper” book also contains several 3/2 “hornpipes,” which were apparently popular tunes/dances at that time period. Don’t hear tunes like those much anymore.
As for Welsh music, try seeking out the work of Ceri Rhys Matthews (of the brilliant Welsh band Fernhill) and Jonathan Shorland, two crazy Welsh guys who are trying to bring about a rebirth in Welsh piping. They’ve managed to make some sets of pipes based on old illustrations and have apparently found manusrcipts of tunes that were quite possibly meant to be played on pipes. Problem is, since Welsh piping died out in the early 19th century, there aren’t any examples of playing technique to go by. Their solution has been to base things heavily on Breton piping techniques.
And finally, getting back on topic, if slow airs are what you want to play, then play them. Maybe if you play too many, you’ll get sick of them and learn to play some more jigs and reels for variety. Lay your hands on some sean-nos CDs (Clo Iar-Chonnachta is a good source for them…what’s their web address again?), listen, listen, listen, try your best to play what you feel, and you can do no wrong…maybe.
