What is your favorate bodhran song?

[bepoq]

I think that while the bodhran in some form and for other cultural use has certainly been around a lot longer than uillean pipes or the modern version of what we now often call the Irish flute, I don't think that you can argue that it has been around longer than them with respect to what we currently call trad. Irish music. In its most current form and place of use, I think you could make a sound argument that it arrived not so very long before the stringed instruments, and in its current manner of playing I think you could suggest that it arrived not really before the '70s and Johnny McDonough. It has undergone a remarkably fast evolution in construction and playing technique since Sean O'Riada and Peadar Mercier popularly reintroduced it, and what now exists, played by good musicians, is different in construction, cultural purpose, technique and almost certainly sound from the very old drum. I think it mainly shares the name.

I totally agree that there are difficulties with post colonial ideas of the inferiority of indigenous music, generally speaking, and I'd also go along with the idea that there is a prechristian, postchristian dichotomy that Ireland struggles with, although I'm not sure that these both amount to a cultural malaise. But I would be interested (really - this is not rhetorical) to hear more about why you think that these are the cause of the disrespect given to the bodhran when there seem to be a whole batch of more immediate reasons to do with the high rate of technical inability, lack of musicality and misunderstanding of the nature of the session among (particularly beginning) bodhran players, and particularly the ratio of those sorts to quality players. There is also a notion that even a good player (and this is like the guitars etc.) has his own rhythmic agenda that makes it difficult for the melody player to focus on his own rhytmic ideas.

I am a bodhran player by the way.

Cheers,

Ben

[talasiga]

Bepoq, thank you for your thoughtful challenge and your balanced post.
You have raised some discerning points.

I, myself own a bodhran and play it but I do not pronounce myself a bodhran player in the IT. I also own indic tablas and have some training and played them also for over 20 years but I do not pronounce myself a tabla player in the indic art music sense. The latter tradition is robust enough to make its expectations of proficiency easily patent to even the most casual listener.

[BigDavy]

Hi Kenny

Gino rocks.

For you and the 4 men and a dog fans out there.

Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHXlqJAaV6U

Some slow polkas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHOGVqZaOK8

They played an absolute blinder at Fiddler's Green this year.

David

[djm]

in its current manner of playing I think you could suggest that it arrived not really before the '70s and Johnny McDonough.

Sorry, bepoq, I have recordings of bodhrán with fiddle and piano back to the late 1920s in Ireland playing ITM, though the recorded sound is closer to the rattling garbage can lids sound achieved on early Chieftains' recordings.

Although drums have certainly been around in ITM for at least a thousand years, they were more of the tabor drum and flute style. They were also looked down on as the very lowest sort of entertainment of the commonest people, so it is hard to get much information about them.

djm

[bepoq]

Please don't apologize for disagreeing. I don't think you are right though. Of course there are golden age recordings including both bodhran and tambourine. There are also recordings from the fifties. I've got them too. I don't think they are rare. I've also field recordings of Sligo handstrikers from well before the seventies. However that is not what the my line that you quoted was referring to. What I said was that the drum in it's current manner of playing arrived with Johnny McDonough and co. in the seventies. The important point is the bit about its current manner of playing. Not my original notion. I nicked it off Micheál Ó'Súilleabhain and Mel Mercier who have been arguing it for some years. But it is clear that until then the use of the drum was for monotone basic rhythm, by and large. After Ringo you get many more different stick styles and much wider use of the back hand to change tone, timbre and dynamics.

Also, if you mean by ITM the type of Irish dance music and airs that we play today, it is clear that the drum can not have been around in it for a thousand years as this sort of ITM has itself only been around for a few hundred years. If by ITM you mean something else such as whatever indigenous music was/is in Ireland at any time, it is a bit of a vague statement don't you think?

[anniemcu]

Anyone else notice how Nano's and Jumper's avitars are like a photograph and its negative? Well, like back in the day, when photographs HAD negatives, I mean.

Just so's Jumper's isn't the 'before' and Nano's the 'after'...

[anniemcu]

I really like the way the bodhran is used in the CTL version of Legacy Jig. It really puts the ooomph into it, and I can't sit still listening to it... rolling thunder in the best sense.

[Nanohedron]

Anyone else notice how Nano's and Jumper's avitars are like a photograph and its negative? Well, like back in the day, when photographs HAD negatives, I mean.

Just so's Jumper's isn't the 'before' and Nano's the 'after'...

Never thought of it before. Hmm. Jumper's looks all athletic and healthy. Mine just looks sort of...well...another kind of recreational.

[djm]

If by ITM you mean something else such as whatever indigenous music was/is in Ireland at any time, it is a bit of a vague statement don't you think?

Yes, you are correct. I should have said "folk music", i.e. music of the people, current at whatever time.

djm