OT (sort of): Why IRTrad?

[jim stone]

While I claim no Irish blood in my veins (I married an Irishman...does that count?), I have always been drawn to the toe-tapping rhythm in the faster dances and the sweetness and simple melodies of the airs.
I do fear, however, that my lack of exposure to this traditional music will always be a handicap....I at first purchased Mel Bay's Complete Irish Tin Whistle Book and love pretty much every song on it. Then I got LE McCullough's the Complete Irish Tin Whistle Tutor and I hate it. The phrasing is not marked as in my first book... notes just go round and round and round , Doesn't make any musical sense to me and the ornamentation is pretty tough. I get halfway thru a piece and quit. Sigh. I do love to play though so I'll keep pluggin!

yes, stay with it. Also listen to CDs.
Above all, don't flog yourself; enjoy
what you do, day by day, which is
what matters most. Also that's
how to improve. Also if there are workshops
you can get to or teachers,
do it, I say.

[Bretton]

I've posted this in the far distant past...

About 6 or 7 years ago I went into a music store thinking I was going to buy a recorder. I'd played sax for 8 years in middle and high school and then not played a thing for about 10 years. The lack of creating music was starting to get me down and so I'd decided that recorder would be a good instrument that I could carry around, play solo or with others, learn on my own (I already knew the basic fingerings), etc...

Well, I went into the store, and being a rather poor student at the time, just couldn't get myself to spend $50 for a wooden Hohner recorder. However, I did walk out with a $6.50 Generation C (brass w/red top). It was one of the old kind that sounded great and had a ridge along the bottom of the mouth piece.

At that point I had no idea that whistles were mainly a trad. Irish thing. I just played american folk tunes and invented some jazzy stuff to play. It was a couple of years before I even realized what trad. Irish music was, and then I discovered Chiff & Fipple (about 1999 I guess).

-Brett

[cowtime]

IMHO, if it weren't for Span, we would have a lot fewer Celtic artists like Silly Wizard, Capercaillie, the Fureys, Gaelic Storm, Arcady, Karan Casey, the Bothy Band, Solas, etc. etc. etc. today.

So roughly 1/3 of the respondents to this thread were hooked by Steeleye, which I find amazing, though no more amazing than the group itself. They're kind of like a microcosm of what makes traditional music great. They've gone through so many incarnations with so many different sounds, and almost every one of their albums was great, even the few without Maddy. It's definitely a credit to the musicians, but it also says volumes about the music.

PS -- anybody heard the album by Maddy and Rick's daughter whose name I can't remember? I've got several albums by Eliza Carthy, Martin and Norma's daughter, and she's a truly remarkable singer (not a half bad fiddler and box player, too). If Ms. Kemp is anywhere near as good, we're all in for a treat.

You can count me among the ranks of Steeleye Span followers. I'd always loved GHBagpipes though, before I heard Gaudete on the radio. It amazed me. I had a record store in Bristol order Below the Salt and I was HOOKED!! I ended up having them order everything they'd recorded to that point(probably around 72 or 73). Then I promptly bought everything they recorded afterward. I think that some of their music is TRAD, because, although the instruments may not all be trad , certainly some of the acapella songs, would fall in that catagory, as would some of the others- Twa Corbies, The Drunkard, My Johnny Was a Shoemaker....I said some remember, not all. I've got to admit, I hated some of the tunes- All Around My Hat jumps to mind here. But I loved so many more of them. Maddy Prior is unsurpassed.

From Span, I went to the early Chieftans, Boys of the Lough, Battlefield Band, etc. Somewhere during this time I ended up with a practice chanter and whistle. I was done for.

[BrassBlower]

I just got "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" last night. Both the jig set and the reel set on this album are great! In both cases, if I didn't already know, I would have sworn it was either Lúnasa or Altan playing.

[Cayden]

I just got "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" last night. Both the jig set and the reel set on this album are great! In both cases, if I didn't already know, I would have sworn it was either Lúnasa or Altan playing.

I suppose the spoons were the give away it was just a bunch of English folkies playing

[BrassBlower]

I just got "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" last night. Both the jig set and the reel set on this album are great! In both cases, if I didn't already know, I would have sworn it was either Lúnasa or Altan playing.

I suppose the spoons were the give away it was just a bunch of English folkies playing

Of course, this was before Gay Woods showed up with her Irish heritage and her bodhrán.

[cowtime]

I just got "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" last night. Both the jig set and the reel set on this album are great! In both cases, if I didn't already know, I would have sworn it was either Lúnasa or Altan playing.

That is one of my very very favorites of theirs. Particularly - Skewball(known in these Appalachian mts. as Stewball- I guess it's one that made it over with the early settlers), When I Was On Horseback (any country&western fans might recognize the roots of Streets of Larado in this tune), Four Nights Drunk-another one known here in the mountains in various "old time" incarnations usually called The Drunkard.

I also truly love The Wee Weaver. Long ago, in days of old, I use to sing this one to my girls when they were very little.

This year at our Christmas festival at church, I got them to do Gower Wassail as the wassail tune. I even sung the third verse solo- that was a first for me. Everyone was in medival garb. It worked well, although after years of doing the Glouchester Wassail it took a while for this one to grow on them.

One of my favorite albums/cd of theirs is Below the Salt. I feel it is much more trad in sound than some of the others. And you gotta love King Henry, Spotted Cow, and Gaudete on that one. Parcel of Rogues with the title tune and Cam Ye O're Frae France is another personal favorite.

this link will tell you more than you want to know about Steeleye Span

http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~z ... leye.span/

[Cayden]

Of course, this was before Gay Woods showed up with her Irish heritage and her bodhrán.

I would not think so, the Woods were founder members, Hark the village wait is from 1970, the first and by far the nicest of all their albums as far as i am concerned. I always had Please to see the King down as their second but I am not sure. I bought the Ten man mob when it was new in 1971 and by the time I was fifteen/sixteen I was picking out the tunes on whistle and mandolin, learned Paddy Clancy's and Ard an Bothar from that though they would have had different names for them, and the Morning Dew if I remember well and the Primrose Lass. But there was nothing 'celtic' or irish about Steeleye Span, ever [though Peter Knight had a fair go at it on the fiddle on Ten man Mob], they were VERY English and very folkie. Which is fine ofcourse but a very very different thing altogether. Once they went Below the Salt I lost interest really Maddy Prior's voice started to become so irritating it nearly spoiled the older albums for me in retrospect and musically they became very heavy handed too. By that time I had found my way to the Well below the Valley and I was on to bigger things.

[brewerpaul]

[quote="chas"]Damn, another person who makes fermented beverages and hot sauce. Plus likes tradiational music and whistles. Not too many of us around.

Count me in too! except for the making hot sauce part. Actually haven't fermented anything in a long time, since starting whistlemaking.

[Montana]

Simple answer - it's in the blood. I know barbarians who hate IRTrad. I know others who hape bagpipes, which I also love despite having been raised with neither. I really think there's some sort of hereditary predisposition involved.

I'm with Chuck. If you have some Irish heredity, your genes just vibrate with IRTrad music; the ear is genetically programmed to appreciate it. This may actually just be wishful thinking however. It's just a theory.
I think it may go back to the Celts who formed a bond with the Irish land and who had a strong musical tradition. If this is so, many peoples besides those from Ireland could be of Celtic descent (since they ranged from the Slavic lands to Spain then up to the British Isles) and thus feel the pull of IRTrad music. But obviously the Irish Celtic connection would be the strongest.
I knew my grandmother was Irish but was not exposed to any traditions. But when I heard the music, I immediately was drawn to it. I think possibly there are some predispositions that go along with musical preference.

[DCrom]

Simple answer - it's in the blood. I know barbarians who hate IRTrad. I know others who hape bagpipes, which I also love despite having been raised with neither. I really think there's some sort of hereditary predisposition involved.

I'm with Chuck. If you have some Irish heredity, your genes just vibrate with IRTrad music; the ear is genetically programmed to appreciate it.
I think it may go back to the Celts who formed a bond with the Irish land and who had a strong musical tradition. If this is so, many peoples besides those from Ireland could be of Celtic descent (since they ranged from the Slavic lands to Spain then up to the British Isles) and thus feel the pull of IRTrad music. But obviously the Irish Celtic connection would be the strongest.
I knew my grandmother was Irish but was not exposed to any traditions. But when I heard the music, I immediately was drawn to it. I think possibly there are some predispositions that go along with musical preference.

I don't know if I agree with you or not, really. I don't know much about one side of the family tree (grandmother on other side thought it was part/mostly Irish, but didn't really know). The side I *do* know about the only Celtic branches were Welsh, the rest German, Dutch and English.

Certainly no tradition of Celtic music growing up (my aunt had a college boyfriend who was part Scottish - family legend has it that he brought his GHB by one time when I was a baby and played one tune before my wails were louder than his.) Growing up, I heard mostly my grandparent's music - big band, Sinatra, some country.

So my first exposure to anything even remotely related to IrTrad was Steeleye (from a friend in the SCA). I was immediately hooked, but it wasn't until I started trying to play tinwhistle that I really moved to listening to IrTrad instead of folk/rock like Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, or Martin Carthy's solo work (despite the name, mostly English murder & incest ballads - about the only *happy* things I've heard him do were during his stint with Steeleye).

Now I *have* always (except as a baby) liked bagpipes - but considering I have a co-worker who plays the Hungarian pipes this isn't exclusively a Celtic instrument.

[Pat Cannady]

Actually, the concept of sticking a reeded pipe into an air bladder with or without one or more drones originated in the Middle East about the time of Christ or perhaps before then - some histories suggest the instrument was known to Roman culture by the time of Nero. The idea was spread westward, throughout the Mediterranean, and northward, wherever people had the raw materials, tunes to play, and time on their hands. The people of western europe did not invent bagpipes, they merely borrowed the idea and modified it to suit their musical tastes and traditions.

The popularity of this family of instruments peaked in Europe during the late middle ages, when nearly every ethnic group in Europe, north Africa, and West Asia had some kind of a piping tradition.

See http://www.hotpipes.com/main.html - most of the surviving members of this family of instruments are depicted here, including the Hugarian Duda.

[Forrest Aguirre]

I suppose I initially came to IRtrad through an early interest in early music - Renaissance madrigals, medieval hymns, early baroque classical. But I lost interest in that for a few years (my, er, New Age phase). When I move here to Madison in 1996, some new friends of ours introduced my wife and I to "simply folk" a folk music show on public radio. Simply Folk is followed immediately by Thistle & Shamrock every Sunday night. And I lay the ultimate blame for my taking up the whistle on Thistle & Shamrock.

Fiona Ritchie made me do it.

Forrest