I bought a James Keane LP recently - his brother Sean is a Chieftain, of course. James plays the box. He spoke of how difficult it was when he was growing up, how unaccepted playing traditional music was, to the extent that at school he would get beaten up just for playing the stuff.
Now, this is drastically different from what obtains now. How many of you have gotten the crap kicked out of you for playing music? And going even further, you could reflect on what it was like for the Irish in the 18th and 19th centuries, how downtrodden they were, and tied to the soil. These were people who by and large didn't know any other music to begin with, who had no radios or gramaphones, no contact with any musicians outside of a ten mile radius (the distance a person could walk in a night and return home to work in the morning). The great joy in their lives was music, song, and story, passed on from generation to generation. The players who came out of that background really have this quality in their music, I think. An innocence, and heartiness, grittiness. They never sound contrived, and many of them were fantastic musicians, too.
The contrast between that and the world people, meaning us, who play Irish music live in now, is about as great a gulf as can be imagined. This world of computers, cell phones, credit cards, paved roads, electricity, TV, jumbo jets, etc. Bright colored clothing with lots of writing on it, tennis shoes from Adidas and Reebok. All of that stuff. Much of the music played now has this suburban/middle class sheen to it, too.
Does this bother any of you? Any thoughts on this situation?
Cultural divide
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Kevin L. Rietmann
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The Weekenders
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As for growing up in different context, that applies to most music. The things that stick out to me that are most importantly different are:
The act of music-making as an active and social pursuit as opposed to isolated passive leisure time spent. Just the introduction of radios devastated home family music making. Many of the pianos got dusty.
THe very preciousness of sound. For most of human history, sound and music has been much more notable. We are drowned in sound now and the uniqueness of musical sound is lost. When pondering music in Bach's day for example, folk might only hear music once a week at church, perhaps at the market or their lip-whistling or singing while working. Think how much more of an impact music must have made on somebody! We tease about sheet music here, but I sincerely believe it was easier to remember a tune on the first hearing when your total exposure to tunes was much less.
I sometimes think there is something wrong with me that I don't spin CDs all day, especially of the beloved trad. But other times, I just enjoy quiet.
The act of music-making as an active and social pursuit as opposed to isolated passive leisure time spent. Just the introduction of radios devastated home family music making. Many of the pianos got dusty.
THe very preciousness of sound. For most of human history, sound and music has been much more notable. We are drowned in sound now and the uniqueness of musical sound is lost. When pondering music in Bach's day for example, folk might only hear music once a week at church, perhaps at the market or their lip-whistling or singing while working. Think how much more of an impact music must have made on somebody! We tease about sheet music here, but I sincerely believe it was easier to remember a tune on the first hearing when your total exposure to tunes was much less.
I sometimes think there is something wrong with me that I don't spin CDs all day, especially of the beloved trad. But other times, I just enjoy quiet.
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Byll
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Don't know that it 'bothers me', per se, but I feel a real dichotomy between two of the many worlds I live in. Spending hours per day in our recording studio, surrounded by computers and amazingly complex gear is satisfying and interesting because of the wonderful product that comes out of that studio.
But...
I tire, easily, of the necessary complexity connected with the endeavor.
I truly love to work with metal tubes and wooden boxes, strung with silver wire. A friend who died in the '80's said it best...Harry always said that it was when you get to microphones and electronics, that things start going wrong.
My band plays in all size of venues, and we need amplification, often...How I wish we could always play, acoustic...Those jobs are the best...Keep it simple. Let the music speak...
Best.
Byll
But...
I tire, easily, of the necessary complexity connected with the endeavor.
I truly love to work with metal tubes and wooden boxes, strung with silver wire. A friend who died in the '80's said it best...Harry always said that it was when you get to microphones and electronics, that things start going wrong.
My band plays in all size of venues, and we need amplification, often...How I wish we could always play, acoustic...Those jobs are the best...Keep it simple. Let the music speak...
Best.
Byll
'Everything Matters...'
Lisa Diane Cope 1963-1979
Lisa Diane Cope 1963-1979
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antstastegood
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fancypiper
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Amen on the amplification.
We get good results with our own PA with my son running it, but we always sound terrible when a venue furnishes the PA/soundman.
I have been trying to get our leader to charge an extra $120 to play with a different PA/soundman
Our harper had to play the harp bagpipe once since the soundman didn't cut the resonant D down. I don't know how she managed to do it, myself.
We get good results with our own PA with my son running it, but we always sound terrible when a venue furnishes the PA/soundman.
I have been trying to get our leader to charge an extra $120 to play with a different PA/soundman
Our harper had to play the harp bagpipe once since the soundman didn't cut the resonant D down. I don't know how she managed to do it, myself.
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Byll
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- Tell us something.: Long ago, I was told that I faked iTrad whistle work very well. I took that comment to heart. 20 years of private lessons - and many, many hours of rehearsal later - I certainly hope I have improved...
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The Weekenders
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Yeah, I always wonder if the truck outside says "Deaf Guy Sound Company." Just remember, there is no necessary correlation between being willing to haul and set up gear with aesthetic tastes. Most of em seem to be rock guys anyway.
As for bringing yer own guy: One of the worst sound renderings I heard was when Battlefield Band brought their own guy to the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. FS has a wonderful system, designed by Meyer Labs and they have a couple of great operators. But BB brought their own guy, who turned everything up to Coliseum levels. Didn't get it then, still don't. I guess we were supposed to get lost in the sound of Alan Reids synth or something. I crumpled up some napkins for the ears.
As for bringing yer own guy: One of the worst sound renderings I heard was when Battlefield Band brought their own guy to the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. FS has a wonderful system, designed by Meyer Labs and they have a couple of great operators. But BB brought their own guy, who turned everything up to Coliseum levels. Didn't get it then, still don't. I guess we were supposed to get lost in the sound of Alan Reids synth or something. I crumpled up some napkins for the ears.
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OutOfBreath
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<rant mode="on">
I think the destruction of music as folk art was a direct result of the invention of the means to record music and broadcast music -- that is, music as a medium of personal expression has been steadily rushing downhill since the invention of wax cylinders and early broadcast radio.
Why do I say this? Because before this era music was something people participated in. Almost every family of any ethnicity or income had at least one instrument of some sort in the home and music was often a family, or even community, affair.
Before recorded and broadcast music, if you wanted music (and everyone does, in every culture I know of) you had to make it yourself or personally know someone who did. Now, 95% of the population can get better music than they could ever make, and do so instantly without all the hard work of learning to play.
Likewise, the advent of recorded and broadcast music began a period when the humble beginning musician was shunned, sometimes even by family, because they couldn't play as well as the stars on the records. A century or so ago a budding young musician only had to play as well as his dad, or the guy down the block, to be considered pretty good -- and, more importantly, to believe himself that he was pretty good. Now, a would-be young musician has to have supreme self-confidence and perserverence just to get through the initial few years of struggling to be as good as the professionals that he or she hears on the radio or CD.
This is compounded in a vicious circle because as youngsters (and their parents) saw music education in public schools as a good place to cut budgets. Which, of course, means that even fewer youngsters get exposed to making music at an early age. Etc. and so on.
In short, nowadays music isn't "good" unless it sounds just like the record. I've even had people tell me, after hearing me sing one of my own original songs, that "that's not how it goes."
</rant>
John
I think the destruction of music as folk art was a direct result of the invention of the means to record music and broadcast music -- that is, music as a medium of personal expression has been steadily rushing downhill since the invention of wax cylinders and early broadcast radio.
Why do I say this? Because before this era music was something people participated in. Almost every family of any ethnicity or income had at least one instrument of some sort in the home and music was often a family, or even community, affair.
Before recorded and broadcast music, if you wanted music (and everyone does, in every culture I know of) you had to make it yourself or personally know someone who did. Now, 95% of the population can get better music than they could ever make, and do so instantly without all the hard work of learning to play.
Likewise, the advent of recorded and broadcast music began a period when the humble beginning musician was shunned, sometimes even by family, because they couldn't play as well as the stars on the records. A century or so ago a budding young musician only had to play as well as his dad, or the guy down the block, to be considered pretty good -- and, more importantly, to believe himself that he was pretty good. Now, a would-be young musician has to have supreme self-confidence and perserverence just to get through the initial few years of struggling to be as good as the professionals that he or she hears on the radio or CD.
This is compounded in a vicious circle because as youngsters (and their parents) saw music education in public schools as a good place to cut budgets. Which, of course, means that even fewer youngsters get exposed to making music at an early age. Etc. and so on.
In short, nowadays music isn't "good" unless it sounds just like the record. I've even had people tell me, after hearing me sing one of my own original songs, that "that's not how it goes."
</rant>
John
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Nanohedron
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Oh, yeah: also a mod here, not a spammer. A matter of opinion, perhaps. - Location: Lefse country
Well, I had this achingly brilliant screed to torment everybody with when my server disconnected. I'd say that's the hand of fate right there. 
Suffice it to say that my interest in trad was definitely uncool at the time of my long-past youth. I have very mixed feelings about the mainstreaming of it now, especially as applied to the advertising industry which does nothing to further ITM in a real way (not that it's needed), but galvanizes it into a parody, I think. But that's all the sound and fury of the vulgar, and I generally ignore it. As Byll said, let the music speak.
What I do like about the present technology is that we tradsters can be in nearer and more ready virtual proximity for it. I think that's a good thing.
Suffice it to say that my interest in trad was definitely uncool at the time of my long-past youth. I have very mixed feelings about the mainstreaming of it now, especially as applied to the advertising industry which does nothing to further ITM in a real way (not that it's needed), but galvanizes it into a parody, I think. But that's all the sound and fury of the vulgar, and I generally ignore it. As Byll said, let the music speak.
What I do like about the present technology is that we tradsters can be in nearer and more ready virtual proximity for it. I think that's a good thing.
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Chuck_Clark
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I'm not exactly sure why it should "bother" us, any more than the French oppression of Huguenots in the eighteenth century or the Japanese massacre of Chinese civilians in 1937. We're observers of history, not participants.
Am I happy I wasn't born in such times? Certainly. And I'm grateful to the musicians who endured the oppression and preserved the music to come down to us. But I seriously doubt that they had any such goal, any more than slaves on nineteenth century Southern plantations were consciously preserving spirituals for eventual use by Mahalia Jackson or Jerome Kern.
Am I happy I wasn't born in such times? Certainly. And I'm grateful to the musicians who endured the oppression and preserved the music to come down to us. But I seriously doubt that they had any such goal, any more than slaves on nineteenth century Southern plantations were consciously preserving spirituals for eventual use by Mahalia Jackson or Jerome Kern.
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OutOfBreath
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More thoughts on the subject...
Consider, in America the community orchestra was not uncommon even in very small towns as late as the 1940's. This was because the elder generation at that time had been raised with little access to recorded and broadcast music, and because music was still strongly supported in the public schools.
Now, it is actually fairly rare to meet an adult under forty who took band through four years of high-school and rarer still to find one who continued to play after graduation.
I dare say that even most of us on this board play infrequently with others or for anything other than our own enjoyment (with perhaps tolerance from the immediate family).
John
Consider, in America the community orchestra was not uncommon even in very small towns as late as the 1940's. This was because the elder generation at that time had been raised with little access to recorded and broadcast music, and because music was still strongly supported in the public schools.
Now, it is actually fairly rare to meet an adult under forty who took band through four years of high-school and rarer still to find one who continued to play after graduation.
I dare say that even most of us on this board play infrequently with others or for anything other than our own enjoyment (with perhaps tolerance from the immediate family).
John
Guilty as charged. I haven't played with others regularly since high school. The upcoming SF Bay Area get-together will be the first time I've been face-to-face with other whistlers in a session. (I don't count the occasional duets with my 10-year-old). I played sax in the school band for a few years, with forays into oboe and clarinet. And for a year or so I played in a recorder consort with friends - but that was over 20 years ago.OutOfBreath wrote:I dare say that even most of us on this board play infrequently with others or for anything other than our own enjoyment (with perhaps tolerance from the immediate family).
John
We *do* have a lot of music in the house, since both daughters take piano - their practice time cuts into my practice or CD-listening time, but it's worth it. One of the college expenses we're budgeting for daughter #1 is a decent keyboard . . .
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Zubivka
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Nice post, and food for thought.The Weekenders wrote:(...) I sometimes think there is something wrong with me that I don't spin CDs all day, especially of the beloved trad. But other times, I just enjoy quiet.
An elder friend of mine, violin and sax (!) player, used to say:
You discover music,
then you discover Bach,
then you discover silence...
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RonKiley
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Another thing that changed music was the commercialization of ethnic music. I think especially of the "Irish" music produced by tin pan alley by writers that probably didn't even know where Ireland was. Many of these tunes and songs are still thought by many to be the epitome of Irish music. The same thing happened to "folk" music and many other forms. When I was young there was still, in small towns, family based and local music groups that got together to play for the sheer enjoyment of playing. We had to save money to buy a single 78 RPM record. The radio was our main source of new material. Now you can download more music than you can ever listen to in a lifetime. For many young people today making music means burning a CD.
Keep whistling,
Ron
Keep whistling,
Ron