Is there a role for the amateur session enthusiast?

[Wanderer]

In Texas, minors are allowed in bars, provided they don't drink. However, they can't enter a liquor store without a parent/guardian. Bars, in an effort to protect themselves, may disallow those under 21 if they so choose.

If they have a parent or guardian under immediate supervision, and the parent/guardian allows it, someone under 21 can even have alcohol. That kind of sucks if you're 18, and your mom allows you to drink, but then you turn 19, and move out...and you still gotta take your mom to the bars

As for the rest, I'm going to keep doing the best I can, playing music I like, and if some crusty old f*rt in Ireland with a burr in his saddle looks down his nose at me, I could give a flying f*rt.

[talasiga]

.......
Although I honor Peter Laban as a highly talented and knowledgable person on the topic of ITM, I have been around the mulberry bush with ballbats with him on this particular issue numerous times. We are likely never to come to full agreement. I have bought (at full price) his Cd and highly recommend it. That doesn't mean that I now only accept his opinion, or that of his closest followers, about what is of value to me and my own musical pursuits... nor does it mean that he is a money grubbing advantage taker. It just means that I like his music and value his input.
........

I cannot see the relevance of your nomination of Peter Laban in your point to "keepers of the faith" being native to Ireland as per eskin's initiating post

Is there any common ground between the worldwide non-native Irish amateur enthusiast player community and the "keepers of the faith"?

........
I really don't think the "keepers" really care if the music lives or dies outside of Ireland.

Is he a native Irish keeper of the faith?

[anniemcu]

.......
Although I honor Peter Laban as a highly talented and knowledgable person on the topic of ITM, I have been around the mulberry bush with ballbats with him on this particular issue numerous times. We are likely never to come to full agreement. I have bought (at full price) his Cd and highly recommend it. That doesn't mean that I now only accept his opinion, or that of his closest followers, about what is of value to me and my own musical pursuits... nor does it mean that he is a money grubbing advantage taker. It just means that I like his music and value his input.
........

I cannot see the relevance of your nomination of Peter Laban in your point to "keepers of the faith" being native to Ireland as per eskin's initiating post

Is there any common ground between the worldwide non-native Irish amateur enthusiast player community and the "keepers of the faith"?

........
I really don't think the "keepers" really care if the music lives or dies outside of Ireland.

Is he a native Irish keeper of the faith?

Nope. He just happened to be in on a rather heated digression from another thread that lead to the beginning of this one. A "Keeper of the Faith", I would say, yes, at least the sept he subscribes to ... native to Ireland, no. And, I might add, that doesn't negate his value as a player or fount of knowledge therein.

[anniemcu]

In Texas, minors are allowed in bars, provided they don't drink. However, they can't enter a liquor store without a parent/guardian. Bars, in an effort to protect themselves, may disallow those under 21 if they so choose.

If they have a parent or guardian under immediate supervision, and the parent/guardian allows it, someone under 21 can even have alcohol. That kind of sucks if you're 18, and your mom allows you to drink, but then you turn 19, and move out...and you still gotta take your mom to the bars

As for the rest, I'm going to keep doing the best I can, playing music I like, and if some crusty old f*rt in Ireland with a burr in his saddle looks down his nose at me, I could give a flying f*rt.

Hmmm... my soon to be 19yo would like that... I wouldn't mind him paying for the occaisional stout, mind you... and he's getting quite good on the guitar... hmmm... Texas... a bit too far, I'm afraid.

[talasiga]

.......He just happened to be in on a rather heated digression from another thread that lead to the beginning of this one. A "Keeper of the Faith", I would say, yes, at least the sept he subscribes to ... native to Ireland, no. And, I might add, that doesn't negate his value as a player or fount of knowledge therein.

And (forgive me for having my head so much buried in East Coast sand) which topic might that be?

[dwinterfield]

Michael:

I suspect I'm representative of the sort of player that frustrates your development of your session. I have been taking whistle lessons for three and a half years, along with 6 other folks. I probably play well enough to get by in a slow session, but have not made it to one yet. Of the 7 of us in the whistle class, only 2 have any interest in playing sessions.

The biggest barrier for me (aside from anxiety) is simply time and travel. We don't live in small villages. There are 2 slow sessions available to me - either would come after a 3 1/2 hr commute and 9 hr work day, and add 100 miles.

I am learning concertina with Boston CCE. It's a great experience (although it takes 3-4 hrs and another 100 miles on a Saturday morning) They have a bi-weekly session in a fraternal club on Sunday afternoon. probably perfect for me, but would be another 3-4 hrs and 100 miles. You may be seeing a trend here....

BTW minors can be in bars in MA if they (the bar) serves food.

So has anyone ever relocated to be closer to a session.

[Jayhawk]

In Missouri and Kansas, we tend to have more bar and grills than just plain bars, so minors are allowed in (the bar and grills that is). Our session has moved around a lot (bookstore, coffee shop, bar and grill - more bar than grill and now at a bar and grill that is more grill than bar). Attendance was at an all time low over the holiday weekend - just 5 of us, we probably average 10-12 players a session, and sometimes it's up to 15 or 16.

Michael - I do think there is a place for session players outside of Ireland to keep sessions and the music alive. I'm not going to stop playing, and I'm constantly referring interested musicians to our sessions and to other local players. If I were in a town without any strong trad players, I'd try to start a session.

However, there is a true advantage to having musicians steeped in the tradition and music around. We're lucky to have a very good core of Irish musicians, but only one of them, Turloch Boylan, is actually Irish. Another, Dave Agee is a good enough player Turloch has him teaching ITM fiddle at Turloch's music school, and the third, Mike Dugger, has played professionally for years and plays with Turloch in several bands. This trio of talented musicians are the ones I listen to extensively to really understand how to play tunes. I'm not good yet, but I'm working on it and probably will be for years.

Eric

[Martin Milner]

Michael:

I suspect I'm representative of the sort of player that frustrates your development of your session. I have been taking whistle lessons for three and a half years, along with 6 other folks. I probably play well enough to get by in a slow session, but have not made it to one yet. Of the 7 of us in the whistle class, only 2 have any interest in playing sessions.

The biggest barrier for me (aside from anxiety) is simply time and travel. We don't live in small villages. There are 2 slow sessions available to me - either would come after a 3 1/2 hr commute and 9 hr work day, and add 100 miles.

I am learning concertina with Boston CCE. It's a great experience (although it takes 3-4 hrs and another 100 miles on a Saturday morning) They have a bi-weekly session in a fraternal club on Sunday afternoon. probably perfect for me, but would be another 3-4 hrs and 100 miles. You may be seeing a trend here....

BTW minors can be in bars in MA if they (the bar) serves food.

So has anyone ever relocated to be closer to a session.

I'm flabbergated that in Boston, surely the most proud-to-be-Irish of all cities in the USA, there isn't more access to traditional Irish music.

[anniemcu]

.......He just happened to be in on a rather heated digression from another thread that lead to the beginning of this one. A "Keeper of the Faith", I would say, yes, at least the sept he subscribes to ... native to Ireland, no. And, I might add, that doesn't negate his value as a player or fount of knowledge therein.

And (forgive me for having my head so much buried in East Coast sand) which topic might that be?

I've PM'd you the link... (I don't want to 'feed the madness' by directing traffic for that discussion to that thread, where it doesn't belong, and away from this more appropriate location.)

[straycat82]

I'm flabbergated that in Boston, surely the most proud-to-be-Irish of all cities in the USA, there isn't more access to traditional Irish music.

Boston is rich in Irish-American tradition. I'd be willing to bet that there are many more highland players than uilleann players there and that most folks would associate highland pipes and kilts with Ireland rather than Scotland.

[Nanohedron]

Is there any common ground between the worldwide non-native Irish amateur enthusiast player community and the "keepers of the faith"?

Okay, I've been pondering this for a bit. Not quite fully getting how you are demarcating this divide in the above quote, I'm sort of getting "those born to the tradition" to mean "keepers of the faith", but this seems like a mistake on my part. After all, there are plenty among the amateur enthusiasts who are among the "keepers", and plenty of nonnative players who are demonstrably excellent and are sought out by good native players for collaboration in performance and recording projects. Some are legitimately born to the tradition outside of Ireland, and some have come to be exponents from a starting-point outside of the tradition. I'll try to work around this, though.

Not to be glib, but I think the common ground is the music itself (and I mean this in the broadest sense, not just the plunking out of notes to get a tune's bones out). There's nothing else to start from, as I see it.

From there it remains to be seen how it pans out in the playing to affect the lay of the land, and, too, the fact of personality differences factors in. Some social possibilities just don't "click" no matter how excellent the abilities and understanding, and common the roots, of all parties concerned. What I'm getting at is that the music being inevitably at some point a social venture (and, so, a comparative one musically and behaviorally and chemistry-wise; after all, that's what we humans do), that's where common ground works, or becomes irrelevant.

Just going by the example of some of our local sessions, all I can say is that some born to the tradition have said, unsolicited, that they like them, and others haven't said much, so it's hard to say. I haven't heard anyone slagging on the basis of poor musicianship but in one case, and that was from a known sour-grapes-when-at-his-worst sort. So, it may well be that everyone else is just being polite. But: they keep coming back when they're around, so what's the answer, here? I think it's the music, and the honest efforts of the locals to do their best at keeping the tradition a living, close-to-the-bone thing. Kind of hard not to when so many are able to travel to the source often enough for study's sake, and that the Irish themselves offer their time up to instruct others. Then, too, one shows up in hopes of meeting up with those one has good rapport with. But the music is the glue.

In a nutshell, IMO any non-common ground lies outside the music itself. I'll have to think more on this, though.

(Edit) Re: the title of the thread, which to my mind is a somewhat different tack from the opening line quoted above: I suppose it depends on who's talking. Considering that the Irish Diaspora has arguably fulfilled one of its hoped-for roles of preserving at least some aspect cultural identity, and that the traditional music is now very much alive and well again on its native soil, I suppose our role is now marginal at best. So what. I'm enjoying myself.

[eskin]

Nanohedron, I agree. Once the focus shifts from the music to the individual, everything falls apart. I've often played lovely music with people I couldn't stand to have a conversation with, my tagline really should be "Just shut up and play."

I wish lovely music alone were enough to sustain a session scene, hasn't been enough in my experience. If people don't have a good time or have to deal with inflated egos or insensitive people in the conversation between the tunes, they stop showing up. I recently had to ask a fiddler to stop coming to our session because he would say things to others in a way that left them feeling insulted rather than supported. Example, asking other players "how long have you been playing" is a reasonable question, but "you haven't been playing very long, have you?" isn't.

Maybe I should add role playing videos to the site... Something like the videos they show in airplanes before takeoff, but for basic session etiquette and how to be nice to each other.

[Nanohedron]

...or you could counter bad behavior with things like, "You were dropped on your head as an infant, weren't you."

Well, one has the comfort of one's fantasies.

Too bad you had to bar the fiddler you mentioned, but sometimes there's no other good choice.

Once the focus shifts from the music to the individual, everything falls apart.

I don't think it has to. My crowd, like any human group, are always going to deal sooner or later with petty clashes (rare in the extreme, I'm grateful to report, so we haven't had to out-and-out ban anyone yet), and we generally know who's likely to be at the heart of them. I'm no shining example, myself, but I try. But damage control isn't too difficult - around here, anyway - so long as people know they have social support despite a bad momentary experience. So, people still show up despite the presence of some, and just seat themselves accordingly.

[dwinterfield]

Michael:

I suspect I'm representative of the sort of player that frustrates your development of your session. I have been taking whistle lessons for three and a half years, along with 6 other folks. I probably play well enough to get by in a slow session, but have not made it to one yet. Of the 7 of us in the whistle class, only 2 have any interest in playing sessions.

The biggest barrier for me (aside from anxiety) is simply time and travel. We don't live in small villages. There are 2 slow sessions available to me - either would come after a 3 1/2 hr commute and 9 hr work day, and add 100 miles.

I am learning concertina with Boston CCE. It's a great experience (although it takes 3-4 hrs and another 100 miles on a Saturday morning) They have a bi-weekly session in a fraternal club on Sunday afternoon. probably perfect for me, but would be another 3-4 hrs and 100 miles. You may be seeing a trend here....

BTW minors can be in bars in MA if they (the bar) serves food.

So has anyone ever relocated to be closer to a session.

I'm flabbergated that in Boston, surely the most proud-to-be-Irish of all cities in the USA, there isn't more access to traditional Irish music.

There's lots of wonderful Irish music and one or more sessions every night of the week within a couple of hours driving time. And many, many talented players. In fact that's the problem for beginners - too many good musicians result in high quality playing at the local seessions. There's a 2 hr slow session in Boston on Monday nights and a 1 hour slow session on Cape Cod on Wednesday nights. Also the CCE session described above.

A couple of years ago, my whistle teacher and her husband (guitar/singer from Dublin) organized a session at a small pub/restaurant in a suburban town. It was on Monday nights and started in mid-January. She expected it to be a perfect place for her students to come and learn to play with a few others. The problem was that from the first day there were 20 or more players from all over greater Boston. Great playing, good food, busiest night of the week for the restaurant etc, but not the best place for beginners.

[djm]

Maybe I should add role playing videos to the site... Something like the videos they show in airplanes before takeoff, but for basic session etiquette and how to be nice to each other.

That is an excellent idea, especially since you are already trying to attract people to your web site for different instruments anyways. A special section on session etiquette and social mores would be a welcome addition, I think.

Its surprising how few people are prepared to deal constructively with each other in a social setting. They have to be taught, e.g. instead of banning your fiddler friend, educate them. If they choose to continue to insult and denigrate after education, then ban them. You could cover the whole social interaction scene as well as special situations that apply only to sessions.

djm