Young players

Poststructural Pub
21

I agree entirely. I think it’s terrible when people like Kitty and Micho come to doubt themselves but it’s great that they appreciate what’s good about the younger players. It’s great when the older styles and the newer styles can coexist. It’s great when younger people want to preserve the older styles. People shouldn’t regard this attitude as reactionary or snobbish; nobody is saying that the smoother styles aren’t fun or don’t have a right to exist. It just seems important, and only fair, to admit that what they gain in fluency and flash, they lose in depth. Oh, and I think that people who like the smoother modern styles should have a better understanding of where that music comes from and how it got to where it is. A third or seventh played a bit flat means something, it isn’t a bum note.

I wonder if this has happened in the past in ITM. Were the Ceilidh bands thought to be a threat to the tradition? One hears many people say that the Irish tradition was in very poor shape in the 50s and 60s. A friend of mine who grew up in Drogheda in the 60s and 70s and who knew Seamus Ennis who visited his father regularly told me that, when he was growing up, he heard almost no ITM in Drogheda but plenty when on holidays in Kerry every summer.

22

I have read that when recordings of Coleman and Morrison made their way back to Ireland that it caused a sweeping change to the way ITM was played. Players who had performed in isolation, knowing only one local style, or the style that one itinerant music teacher introduced into an area, was transformed by hearing a style that they thought was superior to their own. I guess it would be the first effect of mass media. And what about the effect of uilleann pipes or fiddles? Surely these were the electric guitars and synthesizers of their day?

So I don’t think the current evolution is anything new or strange. It has probably been happening throughout the life of ITM, and the stuff we may cling to as the “golden days” may itself have been considered new and flashy in its day. Change is the only constant.

djm

23

Exactly what you are describing here as the effect of recordings on ITM happened in blues and regional styles gave way to people following their favourites, wherever they were from.

But the blues is dead now as a living, evolving, music. Or, at the very least it is deeply comotose. I suppose that is the kind of change we wouldn’t want to see in ITM.

24

I don’t know that the blues are dead, but the socio-economic situation that created the blues has evolved. What really has changed, though, is that there are now “experts” on the blues, so that anyone who calls their music the blues are immediately tested for “authenticity”, something that never existed while the blues were first evolving. I can’t think of anything that would strangle the growth of any type of music more than that.

People in Ireland are no longer living in desparate isolation, any more than people in the US SE are, so one would expect that the music will evolve, perhaps into something else entirely. I am grateful that so much was recorded before it was lost. It is something to value, this snap-shot of what was, and I think we should treasure it. But recreating ITM of an earlier time is no different than, say, groups who are reconstructing baroque music. I don’t bemoan change, but I know what I like, and if that means that the ITM we try to reproduce today is a reconstruction of music past, then I try to keep it in that perspective.

djm

25

Great discussion and some good points have been made. I’d like to comment on a couple.

“Occasionally young people seem to have a talent for it”… I think this is something that needs to be nurtured. If you grow up in an accepting environment, where that expression is felt to be valid, it grows quickly in depth and range. Children don’t know which emotional expressions are not ‘polite’. They quickly learn which things make adults uncomfortable, it is usually something they steer away from in childhood as they learn boundries, and steer towards in adolescence as they test the validity of those boundries. I think Peter’s example of the learning process with Brid’s daughter is an example of that nurturing. She played differently and found acceptance and support. On an emotional level, it means its okay to feel differently and find expression for those feelings.

It is this type of encouragement that leads to the risk taking necessary to pursue your music. If music is expressing our essence from within, then seeing that essence accepted or at least respected is vital. I may not agree with my daughter emphasis on anger in her music; but, if I respect it; then, her music is free to grow with her inner emotional life. It is really scarry to put yourself out in the open, playing with spirit or heart or feeling does this. I believe it is in our nature to do this, to seek connection with others; so, children do it often without thinking of the consequences.

For example, a child plays a particularly spritely jig, hesitantly, with a since loss. The teacher in discussing the tune afterwards finds it the favorite tune of Uncle John, who always played for the child, but past away last year. This puts the playing of the jig in a different light, marginal play seems transformed into exceptional. When Peter campaigns for the importance of growing up in the music, these are things that occur naturally. Learning the tune from Dad, or Mum, or neighbor, around a kitchen table, means everyone knows it was Uncle John’s Jig, and sees how much the child misses the bit of joy lost. They share the unique connection the child has with that tune and in so doing reward the child for the risk taken in playing such an emotion laden tune. Also, a teacher who fails to recognize the social context is likely to find themselves corrected; perhaps by a gentle nudge or reminder that it was Uncle Johns Jig; perhaps by quick smack to the back of the head by a mum seeing her child hurt by an insensitive lout.

Wombat, I don’t think it’s dead. I think you might find it very much alive. However, you’d have to be looking in the right places. Blues seems to me a mix of regret, hopelessness, and resignation as well as sadness. Many of the hotbeds of blues in the past may still have the sadness and a bit of regret, but are no longer resigned that these must be inevitable. It seems that it is the success of the blues in communicating to the wider world, that has spawned social changes of the past decades. The civil rights movement and the war on poverty, while they may not have been perfect; they still have produced change and the hope of change.

The blues has changed because the social context that spawned them has changed. Perhaps the next “Blues” will be coming out of third world countries that are still overwhelmed by poverty, injustice, and loss. Instead of lyrics in english with a delta dialect, we might find them in a Huto, Ethiopian, or Slavic dialects.

This is not to say there are not blues in the US, good people still go bad, lovers are still lost, good friends are still betrayed. The blues out of the Delta this year will be about flood and wind, about families displaced, homes lost, a spitefull lady named Katrina and an impotent man in FEMA.

I guess these both fall under themes mentioned above.

26

Another point not to be neglected is the shift from playing music to express something within a context or for the amusement of yourself and your friends to playing music to perform on a stage. Things inevitably get lost in that transition.

27

Thanks for joining the discussion, Lee. I’ll just comment on one of your interesting points.

What I meant was that a style of music, with a specific form and special social place within the African American community, stopped evolving around the 70s and got replaced by other forms. (Arguably, it stopped evolving earlier.) I think that is true.

There are several things I didn’t mean by this. I didn’t mean we no longer have music from that community that expresses similar emotions and serves a very similar function. And I don’t mean that the blues, as a sensiblity, not a form, appears in folk musics all over the world. Early rembetica is Greek blues, fado is Portuguese blues. It’s interesting that you mention Ethiopia. In the 70s, Addis Ababa produced a staggering amount of wonderful music that fused American soul with black African and Arabic styles. Listen to vintage Mahmoud Ahmed for a truly amazing experience, he’s one of the great singers of our time, and, for a slightly watered down but still affecting CD, the first album by American expatriate Aster Aweke.

Another thing I didn’t mean is that nobody makes good blues records any more. What I mean is that people, both black and white, play pretty much in older styles. I don’t mean that the best performers don’t play well nor do I mean that they haven’t forged personal styles. I just mean that the music has largely moved from the local theatre and juke joint to the museum. I realise that it can still be heard in its natural habitat but I think taht, in that form, it is very much a minority music for mainly older African Americans.

28

I also wouldn’t say blues as a living music is dead, but it is certainly on the endangered list. On the South side of Chicago, you can still hear a lot of younger musicians who play blues, it is still around as an art form though definitely not a majority. The other place that springs immediately to mind is New Orleans, with generations growing up in the music, Mardi Gras tribes, funerals, etc. But Katrina might have dealt a death blow to that, only time will tell.

29

I agree. I’d point to the social context, from small group play to playing for larger and larger communities. Here I would also add the technology factor that makes playing for millions a possiblity. Those audiences aren’t going to know Uncle John’s Jig. The best the musician can do is to introduce the tune with comments on the social context from which it is drawn; but, even these fall short of creating the connections you find in smaller groups.

Part of why I hold more hope for Irish traditional music and Irish-American traditional music is that it has a small audience venue available: the pub session. Other genre’s have ‘jam’ sessions but they are often simply small performances that visiting musicians can sit in on. Irish sessions are more often musicians playing with and for each other. Its the group of 4-10 folks connecting to one another through the music. Even when they are sitting out some tunes, they are still attentive and connected to the music. The main thing to gaining entrance to the group is your connection to the music and the need to let it find expression through your limbs and lungs. Other traditional forms, such as blues with its juke joints, have lost many of their small intimate venues.

Some of IR(A)Trad sessions survival is thanks to pub owners that see the market for letting their patrons be voyeurs of the intimacy the session creates. They support the intimacy be resisting the urge to mike the session through out the establishment. They appreciate the irish flavor of the session culture and it affect on the establishment.

One of the things that worked against traditional music is the wider stage that technology presents. The vast array of musical expression available to the musician has an impact. First in drawing away musicians to the other forms that may seem more relevant to the sense of now. Second in diluting the tradition with influences from other forms.

This influence from outside has always been part of the tradition. The introduction of flutes, banjo, and other instruments could be seen as examples of diluting the tradition, though now they are fairly well accepted. A music historian could probably come up with more accurated details; but, the point is that through these the tradition has grown and matured. The threat today, is that there are so many influences so widely available, that the essence of the traditions could be lost.

And here is one of the challenges to teachers and folks handing down the tradition. How to keep it relevant and vibrant with out diluting its form and substance into the celtic-rock-hip-hop-blues fusion that would homogenize it out of all recognition.

Perhaps the secret for drawing the young is the session. That intimate grouping appeals well to the psyche of youth with it need to belong. The session, not being a performance, gives it an independence from the expection of the community and focuses on the expectation of peers. These are the milestones that adolescence and young adults seek to master. The small group, click, gang, fraternity/sorority, posse, team is the domain of youthfull interest. The session facilitate the small group interaction skills on which kids thrive. I wonder if even the lack of popularity doesn’t also feed the need to find individual expression, of establishing the sense of identity, finding the path less traveled.

So, to get back to Peter quote above. I agree, it is the small group playing together and not the performance venue, that is the vitality and roots of traditional music. Blues, IRTrad, Old-Time, Blue Grass, Cajon, or any of the other traditional genre are dependent on providing the opportunities for folks to intimately share the tradition. I’d go further to propose that the more these small group cross generations the more stable the essence of the tradition will remain while continuing to grow and mature.

For me, I think there is something cool about handing down tools that lets young folks express stuff inside that is uniquely them. Cool that that expression is accepted and validated in the community of elders as well as peers. Each generation finds sources for its dominant emotions, dread, regret, joy, and sorrow, some different and some the same. To share a common expression across all the sources binds us together in ways that no cross generational dialogs can accomplish. In talking to the young it is easy to find differences; but, music can be vehicle to bind us together in things common.

Young and old, across social context sharing how you …

30

Wombat,
Cool examples of blues (small b) genres in other ethnic traditions. I’m not a ethno-musicologist; and wish I had more education in that area. My background is in sociology and technology. (BS Social Work in the 70’s, BS in Computer Science in the 80’s, Yep, I know, lotsa BS). So to find examples in recent history of things that my socioligical background said should be there is a pleasant affirmation.

I think it fitting that blues as you define it “a style of music, with a specific form and special social place within the African American community,” died at the same time segregation died. My point is integration had an impact on the genre as well as the economic, social, and politcal opportunities of it’s originators. The Blues influences became more fully accepted into other genres, in the rise of R&B, Hip-hop, Rock, Pop. It also absorbed influences from the influx of musicians bringing their own social context to the genre. It seems lately, I’ve heard a lot about preservation efforts to save artifacts and venues. I’ve seen a number of documentaries on older Blues greats Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters to name a few. Also some specials on efforts to preserve some of the venues like the Subway Lounge. I think those preservation efforts will help consolidate the genre and focus on some of the essential traditions.

The Blues may be dying, but I think it is more likely that it has and is going through a growth cycle of divergence and consolidation. The 80’s and 90’s seemed like a period of divergence and dillusion. Perhaps, with the new century, we’re seeing a distillation and consolidation. The Blues is just peripheral interest for me, I’ve been more interested in Irish-American and Old Time over the past decade. Still, the sociological cycle of cultural development is a tempting rational for hoping the blues genre is revitalized.

If the Blues was an Afro-American response to oppression, perhaps, the new integrated society is waiting for the next source of oppression. Maybe technology or religious intolerance will emerge as the oppression of the new century; or maybe, it will something completely different.

Hmm… Technology as the evil oppressor, I could see some of that …

My Underwood 'cepted me true,
she never did put me down,
for spellin I couldn’t do,
Nor Capitals I’d through around.

You know its goin’ to happen to you,
Them Microsoft Word typin’ blues,
them Microsoft Word typin’ blues,
Evil Microsoft causin’ them blues.

31

One exception, Lee: the “session” you quote is not a part of the Irish tradition. It is a recent innovation, started in England during the 40s and 50s by Irish migrant workers. The tradition is that the music is learned in the home, and at house parties of family and friends. Referring to sessions as you do would be the equivalent of saying you can only learn the blues in bars. That is not where either tradition came from, though that is the most common public display nowadays.

One big difference I can think of between the ITM and blues traditions is that for the Irish, the tradition is still in living memory, whereas for the blues it is one or two generations past. I believe ITM will fall into this position in the next few years, though.

djm

32

How do you get to that notion? From where I am standing Irish music is more alive than it has ever been with more (young) people playing than at any time in history. How is that going to disappear any time soon?

Granted, music is changing, the social make up of the country has changed vastly within the past ten years but that has hardly suppressed the way music is being played.

Last night I took Kitty Hayes to Brid O Donohue’s house for a few tunes (we’ll be shooting a tv documentary this week and we were practicing on the sly). We sat in the kitchen for a few hours, playing pipes, flute and concertina. The range was blazing hot, there was tea, there were sandwiches and scones. And loads of tunes, talk and all that. Some of Brid’s children dropped in, listened a bit, played tune and dropped out again. If that’s not living music shared by three generations then what is?

33

djm,

First a question, how long does an innovation have to be practiced before it becomes part of the tradition? 60 years seems like at least a couple of generations.

Second, I was talking about immigrants in the US maintaining their heritage and traditions as well as those in Ireland. Perhaps, hear it is more vital, with the population spread out all over the place. It’s a place to meet an play.

Third, you’re right about house sessions. They’re older and more a part of many of the traditional music genre’s including irish, old time, cajon, etc. I mentioned the pub session, but kitchens, parlors, back porches, and such, are surely places where the same social contexts hold and the same social dynamics operate. Musicians getting together to play with and for musicians. The difference is perhaps the pub owner being replaced by the home owner.

A final question. I undrestant that the origin of the term “Pub” was the public house. A place for the members of a small community to gather for interaction across familial boundries. Eating, drinking, story telling, and music were all parts of that interaction. Are you saying Irish traditional music was not played in pubs (public houses, inns, commons areas) in the 1800’s and early 1900’s? That playing was not part of the tradition?

I wonder if the social operative factor was the location of the session, or rather its purpose and dynamic. One could argue that all entertainment has become more public since the 1800’s, as populations have become more urban, more clustered, more migratory. Also with the rise of recorded media and broadcast for home entertain, the social imparative to support muscians in the family and community has lost some of it’s impact.

DJM, There is a point you seem to be making that I total agree with.
Regardless of any of the answers to the questions above; learning the music by playing in familial settings is superior. The social reinforcement and opportunities for nurturing the developing musician are much much greater. I’d include with the extended family, those close friends and neighbors who share in the commitment to helping raise and provide for the young; folks who share common social bonds.

I guess I’d see your ‘exception’ as a variation upon the theme. Same tune, different setting.

Another vital source to learn how to …

34

I’m acutely aware that sessions are not especially traditional, but if you happen to reside outside the Emerald Isle (especially in a remote place such as Cornwall), then the pub session is going to be your only outlet for ITM. I would never argue for one minute that this is a good thing (and I know that a good few of the IRTRAD elite will be turning up their noses), but it’s a damn sight better than nothing, and you wouldn’t believe the love and affection (and respect) for the music you can find among the players. We may not have a lot of things right (regional styles - what are they? :wink: ) but we’re not pompous about what we do. And we are at least keeping the flag flying. From what Peter and others say, and from my experience, the “tradition” is alive and kicking, and pub sessions probably are not doing it any harm.

Steve

35

although it’s not ITM, I guess I’m somewhat a “product” of what you are talking about…

My dad played guitar and mandolin, and we had a neighbor that played guitar, and another that played banjo. Many a summer’s evening was spent with Dad, Jim and Bill jamming away in a backyard, playing old time, blue grass, blues and jazz. I don’t know about Jim or Bill, but my dad never read a lick of music, and played everything “by ear”.

As I began going to festivals, etc. with the dulcimer, I began to realize I “knew” a lot of the music I was hearing - it was songs Dad, Jim and Bill had played and they were all there, back in the recesses of my brain. So a lot of what I play may not be the “accepted” way I’ve heard the songs now, they are what I heard growing up (or what was on Chet Atkins records because those were usually playing in our house - Dad’s hero!).

Tom and I have been working on “Steel Guitar Rag” (he’s doing the lead on his resonator dulcimer, me doing bass dulcimer backup). I’m hearing Chet’s (Dad’s) version in my head, I don’t know what version Tom is “hearing” - so I dug out a recording of Chet’s so Tom could know why I was kept saying “that’s not how I know it”.

Going on that theme - lord know’s what songs Noah has in HIS head - poor kid’s been dragged to folk festivals his entire life!!!

36

Once again I have failed to explain myself well. I did not say the tradition was going to disappear. What I am saying is that there are still people alive in Ireland who remember what it was like living without electricity, or paved roads, with cars few and far between, where a rural life was still very much isolated to the local community, and the music played a much more significant role as a major part of one’s lifestyle, with few other distractions. This, I believe, was a major shaping force on ITM. The blues that Lee had mentioned developed and grew out of the same sort of environment, but it is longer since that environment changed. That’s all. Nothing to do with younger players.

When the newness of the uilleann pipes wears off I’ll let you know. :wink:

You should be aware that at one time nearly every second house in most villages in Ireland was a “pub” (no joke). The social setting may have been convivial, but it was not where you learned the music as a youngster. As the most public place to find the music in places outside of Ireland nowadays, I agree that a bar is quite likely to be the place many people come into contact with ITM, but not likely their children.

Quite right. I in no way intended to impune the good intentions or skill of modern pub players. Have one for me. :smiley:

djm

37

My guess is that ITM will prove to be more like klezmer than like blues. By that I mean that it might go through hard times occasionally but will make a comeback whenever Irish kids or people in the diaspora want to reaffirm their identity.

I don’t think blues will go away. I think that it will get (is getting) more like baroque and simply be frozen in time as a form that used to be the music of a people. I can see lots of good reasons why African Americans are not very sentimental about their past. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see young African Americans embrace music like blues and vintage soul as a way of affirming their identity but I can’t see it happening.

Growing up in Melbourne in the late 50s and 60s in a family very aware of our Gaelic background and with lots of Jewish relatives, friends and neighbours, I was very aware of ITM and STM and klezmer from a very young age. But at that time, none of my friends talked about any of these styles; we all talked about and played blues, jazz and rock. But secretly I loved these traditional musics and I’ll bet most of my friends did too. These days, it’s cool again for young kids to express that love openly.

That said, we shouldn’t forget that some styles of klezmer are probably lost forever. A few years ago, Musicas, the great Hungarian band/ethnomusicological operation, made a recording of Jewish music from Transylvania. They learnt the tunes and the style mainly from local Gypsies in the area and its relative authenticity was attested to by the few Jews who remain. Not a single musician from the area survived the Holocaust.

38

But the point I was making was that in fact the music seems to have done well through the changes in society in recent years. For the first time music is thriving in urban communities, Dublin is bristling with musical talent and for the first time it’s not just those with roots in rural areas playing.

Playing in pubs by the way brings a change in function, I think you can hear in modern playing styles the need to keep the music together against a noisy crowd of drinkers. Sessions as they exist have developed a new style of playing, things are inevitably lost in the process. Group playing has maybe not quite become the norm yet but certainly there’s a tendency towards it and I for one regret the loss of individuality that comes with that.

39

I don’t think we are saying anything much different. My point was that the last of the older generation that is passing down the music can also pass down their reminiscenses of the last vestiges of the old way of life. This helps make the music more personal. When those people are gone, the memories will only be second hand.

Although modern recording capabilities are often blamed for somewhat homogenizing styles, it is these same recording abilities that record not only the music, but the memories of the last to live the old style of life. It is these recordings that will help ensure younger players (plus those of us not directly within the tradition) have a link to what the music was supposed to sound like at one time, and what it meant to the people who preserved it.

Céilí bands have long known this. That is why they pack together so closely on stage - to create a strong sonic centre to punch through the noise of the crowd. Another product of the 20th century, céilí bands, with their static, synchronised playing style, are not accepted as “traditional” by many people (sorry Lee :wink:).

djm

40

But there will be another generation passing on music to the next, one with their own memories and associations, that process doesn’t stop, memories won’t be of the twenties or forties but of the fifties and sixties and hwill have a connection to players of that era and through them with the ones before. The process doesn’t change.

I don’t know about your theories of ceilibands, I don’t know of anyone not thinking them traditional. A lot of ceilibands were made up of the best traditional players after all. They’re a different side of the same thing.

Sorry if I digress a bit, I spent all morning with a house full of people and a television crew (and Breandan Begley tearing the strap off my antique melodeon) reminiscing about old times, different styles and connections to the present. I see continuity above all. Kitty Hayes was filmed in my house playing with different people of different ages , it was the very thing we’re talking about exemplified. I am off to the Crosses of Annagh in an hour for another shoot. Hard work this. :wink: