A question for the “non nationals”

Having lived in a few different parts of the world I have seen first hand how many people have quite divergent views on what constitutes Irish traditional music. In some places the session has been set up, the lingo is down pat, the right mix of tunes gets played but nobody has actually experienced music first hand as played in Ireland (diverse enough in and of itself). In other places the cloth caps and tweed jackets perpetuate the cliche. Has anyone here got one of those Road To Damascus moments where a visit to Ireland has changed they way they view session culture, especially after being involved in it in their country of origin prior to the trip ?

You mean the guy in the Guinness shirt and paddy hat with the last name of Fitzsomethingorother who talks about how much he can binge in one sitting at Dublin Square isn’t authentically Irish?

You do bring up a good point Pat, living in the States has opened up my eyes to the odd way they view Ireland.

The thing is, patkiwi, regarding the various sessions you describe in your introduction:

Is the music any good?

I think that would be my first consideration.

(Of course, the nuances of “any good” could be a discussion subject forever…)

I’ve been to Ireland a few times, and played in sessions there and in England, but it wasn’t until I went to New York that I felt I’d really lived it.

Sessions just don’t fall into categories by national boundary lines. All sessions a different. I’ve been to sessions in the west of Ireland where the standard was dreadful and the people were really horrid (though vice versa as well of course). The sessions I’ve been to in Dublin have more usually been pretty frenetic, but by no means all. And even the same session from week to week can vary enormously.

And the idea that you have to go to Ireland to experience the music “first hand” is insulting to the many many great players all round the world. Be them Irish or not.

That’s not what I’m asking llig and that’s made very clear in my post so get off the high horse there and keep your powder dry. All I’m asking is if people have had an “aha” moment when experiencing sessions in Ireland for the first time compared to what they’ve experienced prior to that.

Yeah, interesting. I’m expecting it now after being to Ireland a number of times, but there are two things which really stand out for me about this - and it isn’t a uniform ‘rule’ or anything, just something that seems to happen more often in Ireland. Two things:
the extent to which the music is related to the culture, the ‘geography’ for want of a better term, the folklore and history, even the weather!
the rhythmic qualities of the music seem to me to be emphasised by the players there (not all, like I said, but something I notice more there than elsewhere);
thirdly, I guess, the music seems to be more just an ordinary part of everyday life, rather than something ‘overlayed’ or ‘adopted’, don’t know what the best term is - ‘borrowed’?
The general community is much more comfortable with the music, because they seem to understand where it is coming from and it is meaningful to them (again, variable from place to place I suppose.) Just my general impressions.

“nobody has actually experienced music first hand as played in Ireland”

Your premise here is wrong. It suggests that there is something fundamentally different about music played in a particular geographic locality.

there is.

It’s not a loaded question leoj. The traditional singing and dance music of Conamara is totally fundamentally different to that of Dublin so yes, there is a case for the argument.

That speaks volumes about Toronto Joe CSS !!

Patkiwi, you question is, as leoj says, fundamentally wrong.

If someone has had one of your “Road To Damascus” moments during a visit to Ireland, It’s only a coincidence. You can have one of those moments in a good many places in the world. As Joe CSS says,, he had his in New York … and that was after going to Irelend.

Duijera Dubh, you are merely romanticising. If you heard two recording of music, a good session in Clare and a good session in Leeds say, I guarantee you wouldn’t be able to say which was which.

Most of the sessions I play in (in the States) are chock full of people who’ve experienced sessions in Ireland. And it’s not at all uncommon for visitors from Ireland to comment on how natural and “just like home” our sessions feel to them.

That said, the differences noted by Dubh above are obvious. There are few places outside of Ireland where the music is as inseparable from the community and physical geography around it (though parts of NYC, Boston, Chicago, and London would qualify in my book).

Michael, Patkiwi isn’t on just about the music here. His OP is more about “session culture”--the social aspects of a session. Sessions where Irish traditions and culture remain viable do function differently than sessions that are mired in pop culture (or cowboy culture or outback culture, etc.).

A question cannot be fundamantally wrong gill. An opinion can. I’m not casting aspersions or stating a point. I’m only asking a bloody question.

I’ve not spent much time in Ireland. On brief visits many years ago it didn’t strike me that most players I saw played notably better or differently than good players I’d heard in England - though in Galway City I noticed a lilt to the playing that I haven’t heard much if at all in England. But I did hear two individuals play music that left me gobsmacked, getting things out of their instruments that I didn’t know could be done. One was an old 3-row box player called Tom Sullivan in a pub in County Louth, somewhere in the middle of nowhere inland of Drogheda (1984); the other was Mickey Finn, fiddler, in Galway (1978). The contrast between the beauty of the latter’s music and the state he was in (he was alcoholic) was eerie and shocking. I hope this last comment is not upsetting to those here who knew him.

The differences might be obvious to some people, Will, I suppose mostly those who’ve been lucky enough to get to Ireland, and already had fairly significant exposure to the music. I don’t know whether they’re obvious to everyone though.

An interesting juxtaposition for me is this: at present there is a brilliant documentary on national television here called “Spirit Stones” http://www.spiritstones.tv/homepage.html

It is beautifully photographed and filmed, I think it is one of, if not the best doco on indigenous Australia I have seen. As someone born here, I found it totally absorbing and very moving. So many things were apparent in there, things that should be obvious but aren’t unless you start looking closely. The music - Australian indigenous music and song in this case - is utterly suited to the land and the mood of it, it belongs there, it is created in conjunction with whatever, visible or invisible is here. That wouldn’t be very obvious though if you didn’t have some pretty good prior knowledge of what that feeling is like, importantly in addition to what the country *looks* like (a lot of people already know that).
When I hear dij music for example, outside Australia, and even in Irish music recordings, I know what is trying to be said and hear how it fits (or doesn’t) as the case may be, but to me, it is truncated from its source. I noticed how the indigenous people, when they walk through their environments, do so almost in a meditative fashion, always very slowly. It is inappropriate to rush through these ancient places, you miss most of it if you do that. The music reflects that too, I think.
By contrast, playing Irish music in the same landscapes really brings out, to me, that it is born of another place. It is still great, but it is out of its element. Maybe if you keep playing it in that new element though, some of that new element will rub off on it and you as the player, and the music will take on some other feeling and characteristic, even though the notes are the same.
I know this probably sounds obvious to you and many, but I don’t think it is obvious to everyone, or whether it even needs to be that is.
These things are hard to replicate outside their sources, is what I am trying to say, so when you go back to the source, you may “hear where they come from” sort of thing.
Cheers.

Very Nice Point, Duij.

I guess, in a quick summary, Irish music is the indigenous music of Ireland - obviously. You might hear that difference and what that means when you go to Ireland - perhaps not so obvious. Maybe it can be replicated in other places too.

What a load of codswallop

That is an obvious and predictable reaction coming from you. Not that it really matters though.

Getting that sort of reaction from llig usually means you are absolutely on the right track.

It’s not where you ARE, it’s where you’re AT that makes the difference.

nicholas, watching Mickey Finn play upstairs in the Crane night after night in ’83 was for me a corner turning episode. A genius. Lived for the music. And to be witness to such clear yet interdigitated clever and oh so soulful playing was such a privelege.

Ha! Right, Phantom

Dubh, I hope you understand that I meant obvious in a good way--that the music clearly reflects the culture of the people who first created it. And that the culture clearly is influenced by the geography (not to mention climate).

I think location influences art. Not the only influence, and maybe not the strongest, but it’s hard to imagine tunes like the Morning Dew or Cliffs of Moher being crafted from a hot, sunny Caribbean beach, say.

I did, of course, Will. Totally agree actually.

Just adding to the perspective is all, hopefully interesting to some - and to get that predictable-as-a-cow-prod reaction from llig.

Rubbish. You think that those tune wouldn’t sit fine with easy going beech and fun loving rastas? Or is that a racial stereotype? The only thing you wouldn’t have is name like “the Morning Dew”. You think of the sea cliffs at Moher only because of the name of the tune. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the actual music that has anything whatsoever to do with spectacular see cliffs.

Yes there is, can’t you hear it? No, you wouldn’t would you.

I know it’s boring to keep using the language analogy all the time, but you can draw a comparison here too. Languages grow with the people who speak them. They are all equal but very different. What one language lacks in complexity is made up for in other ways. The problem comes when people start to wonder why a fully developed language is the way it is. They romanticise about it and see it as a symbol of their culture. Then they start trying to find ways in which to link their language to their geographical surroundings so that their language can be linked in a less abstract way. They start saying stupid things like (and I’ve heard this one): “when we say vowel sounds we don’t open our mouths very wide like ‘aaahh’, because our particular territory is very cold and mountainous and we take care not to breathe in the cold air”.

oh yeah in answer to your original question, no one can predict how history will unfold, if your worried about adhering to what sessions should sound like in Galway to be replicated without missing a note in eg Christchurch New Zealand; I tell you if I were a burger of the aforementioned good city i would feel a slight squirm factor but mostly that empty mildly curious eyebrows raised, thing, signalling, are you joking? You want to emulate us?
Some of the above posts - hats and waistcoats, and no doubt gaiters and boots and fvck knows what else worn by various forms of @rseholes dressing up to go out and play “working class” music, and extol the virtues of the Union movement, meanwhile shopping at marks and sparks or sainsburys have conveniently forgotten about the vast underbelly of migrant workers in this country, the huge number of exploited small farmers in countries which have no say in how their produce is tarriffed into EC/USA.
Come back to me and tell me what you intend to to do to help those people then I might start taking this pathetic website, for people obtaining solace behind a few tunes, rather than facing up to the world, a bit more seriously and give it some reespect - till then, just crash those rocks togetther guys.
Just remember -
You’re worth nothing till you help another person.

I’m not saying you can’t hear the cliffs, but that you can only hear the cliffs in the tune because you know the name. If you didn’t know the name, never in a million years would you guess it.

Thanks, that’s really helpful.

Last post to Thistle.

That’s not the point, llig. Of course you wouldn’t guess the name if you didn’t already know it. It isn’t meant to be a guessing competition.
So *why* might the author of that tune have called it that, whether he/she actually called it that or something else, or nothing. Sure, it might have been for no reason other than to help a group remember the tune, but much music, including this music is descriptive. I think Martin Hayes would probably agree with that, and people like O’Carolan as well, going back.

It isn’t a black and white scenario all the time as you seem to assume it is or should be, it would be very soul-less and boring if it was.

…goodness knows what your session sounds like. I’ve got an impression though.

The people at one extreme say that you can hear the cliffs in the music. This is rubbish - they only hear the cliffs in the music because of associations from what they hear on TV (notice how whenever Irish scenery appears on a telly programme they play a reel in the background from a crappy CD like “Celtic Mists”). The people at the other extreme say that Irish music has no associated social context and cultural load - that the music is abstract and arbitrary. I think the answer lies somewhere in between, as with pretty much anything.

Bad weather, poverty, grief and boredom would have been bigger
influences than landscape. Also I guess the kinds of instruments
available. Fiddle and whistle would have been affordable - it’s still
that way - so you have a lot of tunes that go well on those instruments. The pentatonic scale shows up in a lot of Trad tunes,
but it shows up in lots of other music too. Group playing in a pub, apparently,
is an American tradition not an Irish one.

I don’t understand how you can hear poverty in a tune. I can understand how you can hear the influence of other musicians and motifs from other tunes or traditions though. Also, I always thought sessions started out in London…

I don’t mean that you can ‘hear’ poverty. Making your own music
is cheap recreation so it’s one of the reasons for the Tunes culture
developing.

that doco I mentioned before brought it home to me, obvious it should have been though, that the indigenous music was created by the players in that culture interpreting how what was around them made them feel probably. It certainly wasn’t through the dots because they didn’t have them, and it wasn’t through the ‘science of written language either’, because they didn’t use that.
Similar to a lot of indigenous music and dance probably.
Morris Dancing even.

“The Public Dance Halls Act 1935”
# Posted on April 18th 2007 by ceolachan
https://thesession.org/discussions/13335#comment276205

http://www.setdance.com/pdha/pdha.html

. . . in 1977, Junior Crehan said:

"The way of life at Markham’s Cross and the country house dance was rooted in our traditions and culture.
But this way of life was ended in the mid-30s by a number of events; and while it is hard to say that it would have continued . . . "

Might be something in my head, but I do hear emotion in music. I have been around my share of poverty. It can have a profound effect on people. Sometimes it is stone quiet.
Not always.

It is unusual for me to agree with llig (being a bodhran player), but unless you can connect a tune to it’s composer, then you have no idea as to where it is actually from. Irish musicians were no different from any other - they heard a nice tune and they would pick it up and play it, and probably not care where it came from - a good tune is a good tune.

David

I can’t wait to get home from work and play some tunes. Its raining steadily today - real Irish weather. So my playing should sound really authentic for once.
PS: it doesn’t rain much in Perth which is why my playing doesn’t sound very trad/Irish
Oh I nearly forgot - 🙂

I like what dow said above--that truth likely lies between the two extremes.

I used the word “influence” in my previous post for just that reason--I’m not saying the Cliffs of Moher are in the tune. Just that such cliffs (in tandem with the local culture) are more likely to inspire a certain musical response (akin to the tune CoM0, and not another type of musical response (such as, say, a Jimmy Buffet song). Not that it cannot happen. Just that the mix of isolation, epic scenery, wind and weather, and big feckin cliffs is likely to to produce a tune that dwells more in the minor. And a hot sunny beach and blender full of tequilla is more likely to render a Margaritaville concoction, eh?

But more to the point of Patkiwi’s original query, sessions operate on an odd mix of local customs and informed or ignorant expectations of what “Irish” culture would do with the situation. Even in Ireland, many or most pub sessions are mostly a contrivance. And so come in many guises.

On a more serious response to the question as I read it: my only Damascus type experiences with going back to Ireland for a session or two was the realisation that sessions can be as poor in quality in Ireland as they can be in Australia. Or vice versa.
The culture around the sessions I experienced in ireland were also as varied as those I have seen elsewhere.
I don’t really care if the person I am playing with here in Oz has actually played in Ireland or not - never really thought about that in fact.

When I was in Ireland, many years ago, the place seemed to have more country music than anything else. never went in, but I suspect some of them would have been wearing the gear. Is that any different to folks trying to look ‘Irish’ elsewhere in the world?

Agreed, Donough. I think what makes a good session is building a local sense of musical community. If it’s to be an Irish trad session, there will be some boundaries (to keep it from turning into a horo fest or bluegrass jam, etc.). But the gist of “session culture” is ’treat others the way you want to be treated." Works the world around.

country music in Ireland. disilllusioning indeed!

About the OP’s question about an “aha!” moment, I’ve not been to Ireland and I’ve done all my session playing here in the USA.
At our sessions we’ve always had a number of Irish people either as regulars or who drop in, so I don’t think our “session culture” is really much different. I guess you could say that their presence keeps us on the right track, focused on the real music.
I’ve had many “aha!” moments over the years whenever I’ve heard a great Irish player at a session here I’ve not heard before.
And at our local uilleann tionoil whenever a fantastic piper I’ve not heard before visits and teaches and performs.

About going overseas, it was an eyeopener when I went to Scotland in 2007 and stayed in Glasgow for a couple weeks and visited a session there. The people there played tune after tune, hour after hour, that I’d never heard before, and on the other hand when I would start a tune that I thought was a common one they said they didn’t know it.
The tunes they were playing were mostly recently composed tunes by Gordon Duncan etc, highly chromatic and modern-sounding. One of the session leaders was playing Lowland/Border pipes.

Now about a style of music somehow fitting a place, I feel this quite strongly about Appalachian traditional music and Appalachia itself. I’m from Appalachia and though I’ve been in California for many years I still visit back there often. Their music fits their landscape somehow. When I hear that music here in California (which I rarely do) it somehow doesn’t sound right.

Likewise I’ve been playing the Scottish pipes for many years and have visited Scotland several times and that music just somehow fits that place. I know it’s silly, that music itself is abstract, but there it is.

There’s actually a book called Folk Song Style and Culture which posits a connexion between the style of folk song practiced in a particular culture, and the material culture/economy of that culture. It claims for example that cultures with a pastoral economy, wherever on Earth they live, have certain song and dance features in common.

To me this seems impossible. It would be like saying that every language spoken by farming peoples have one sort of grammar, while every language spoken by hunter-gatherers have a second sort of grammar.

Well! I am very excited now to see the foggy dew outside my window. If the rest of the family wasn’t sleeping, I’d start playing right this minute to see if it helps me sound more authentic. (Thank goodness we’re having a cold and rainy summer). And do you think the fact that my husband has been unemployed for the greater part of a year will help improve my playing? I can hope. Now, potatoes for breakfast… 😉

We’ll never know whether things like geography or climate have a traceable or predictable effect on indigenous music because the definitive experiment cannot be performed. Lacking that, we can speculate, romanticize, deny, whatever. Attempts at comparing existing cultures can only produce a slightly more rational kind of speculation. But it’s still speculation.

Hmmm. What I’m getting at is things like the Inuits having dozens of words for snow, while someone living in sub-saharan africa might have only one, if that.

As abstract as music is, there are still aspects that resonate consistently across all people. For some reason, if you flatten the third note of the major scale, it sounds “sad” or at least “somber” to most people. Cultural affinity for somber music could result from living in a grey, drizzly, hardscrabble environment. Just a hypothesis….

Your hypothesis is right on and it is true. Go for it.

I met &/or heard a disproportionate # of good whistle players in Ireland (Clare & Kerry) under the age of 18.
Here’s a thought, ~ keep a whistle handy at all times.
Start young if you still can. If not, just start. ;)

My epiphany: Mozart never sounds right anywhere outside Mittel Europe.

Yet Hank Williams still sounds great anywhere. Louis Armstrong, too.

‘Mozart never sounds right anywhere outside Mittel Europe.’

That’s the ‘Paris’ symphony up the creek then.

Are their peoples who’s music is influenced by the sounds of nature in their locality? Or the rhythms of dance that imitates the movements of animals. Or songs to sooth the stock or, say, attract prey (I guess those could be rural myths).

biggus dave—
Yep, and don’t get me started on whether Yanni should ever play outside Greece.

Will: “Cultural affinity for somber music could result from living in a grey, drizzly, hardscrabble environment. Just a hypothesis….”

My feeling is that subtle connections like that probably exist in some form. I just don’t think it’s possible to confidently trace backward from the music to the environmental influence. I also suspect that the wide agreement on vaguely somber vs vaguely happy music reflects something innate, not learned. This was recently reported again from a study of an isolated tribe who allegedly had no exposure to outside music. But, of course, we have no way of verifying that their culture was never at any time influenced by outside musical traditions.

Personally, I have a very direct visceral reaction to some of the modal and harmonic aspects of music, sort of like the way some cats react to whistling, but it doesn’t communicate anything concrete to me. When I heard those amazing Bulgarian ladies on their first “Mysterious Voices” tour, they sent me into something I can only describe as an out-of-body, floating-in-air experience, but I have no idea what they were singing about.

Oh I think the music is readily portable. But it’s clearly influenced by the environment of its origins. That’s how we can tell Irish trad apart from, say, Tibetan throat singing or macedonian horas.

Bob, I’m not saying the connections are concrete or traceable. Just that music draws on our basic human emotions, whether we’re creating that music from scratch or hearing someone else play it. Music *moves* us, and yes, our reactions to things like major vs. minor seem to be hard wired into our species. Some of this happens through aculturation, but some seems more lizard brained than that.

Being moved yet having no idea what someone is singing about is exactly the power of music, eh? And I suspect our emotions go into composing music at least as much as those emotions are stirred when we hear the music played. All influenced by where we live and the “mood” of the weather, etc.

I understood Dows analogy to be “musics grow with the people who make them”. Peoples specialise and grow apart, peoples mix, peoples migrate, peoples borrow.

Do Bulgarian harmonies, and the harmonics (or whatever the term is) they put into their voices, give Bulgarians “an out-of-body, floating-in-air experience” ?

Dunno. Why?

I think we agree, Will.

If that “Dunno” was to me, because if it gives Will that feeling, and I know what he means, then it is stronger that the difference betwen major and minor and I am curious if it is resonating differently with us peoples than with them peoples.

Sorry Will, there is an assumption there but I assume you mention it because the effect is special.

I find these types of threads intellectually stimulating. In fact, there have been many studies that show how geography and culture (in many contexts) are related…. you just have to do the research (scholarly research, not googling). In fact, I think some of these musical geographies are quite obvious. A lot of people on here talk a lot of “feeling” and “knowing” the music…. it’s ironic to read some posts on this thread by some people that usually get wired up on others…. seems to be some contradiction from things I read before…. which in itself is an ironic thing for me to write here, considering all the bombardment about just that in my first visit to this site…..

Anyway, if you have enough training, experience, and atunement, you can “hear” what “culture” a piece is from simply by listening. Perhaps others say they can’t because all they listen to is Americanized ITM????

“Anyway, if you have enough training, experience, and atunement, you can “hear” what “culture” a piece is from simply by listening.”

Sure. Irish, Breton, Quebecois, Cajun, bluegrass, klezmer, Appalachian, etc are readily identifiable. Was anybody questioning that?

Geography can certainly affect culture, but a tune’s composer being inspired by a geographical feature is not identifiable in the tune.

“In fact, I think some of these musical geographies are quite obvious.”

Could you please elaborate on that?

What culture is this from ?
http://www.asaplive.com/farneaudio/m3u/RF4.m3u

Bob, if geography affects culture and music is a part of culture, then geography affects music. It’s not at all uncommon to hear motifs in this music plainly inspired by some identifiable part of the place people live. Tripping Upstairs, The Skylark, the Rolling Waves--doesn’t take much imagination to hear the inspiration for those tunes in their melodies and phrasings.

Hello, all! First post.

The first thing I must know…

Did Michael Gill invent Irish Traditional Music?

I take it he did.

Michael says what he thinks. There are others, in the tradition, who also say what they think. Michael was not the 1st.
It’s been going on for ages.
;)

Very many tunes are named after places in ITM. The practice continues. Surely friends of Tommy Peoples or Charlie Lennon, for instance, could ask them why or how they named their “place” tunes. And this might be described in the memoirs of composers no longer with us.

Seems a good place to start.

“Bob, if geography affects culture and music is a part of culture, then geography affects music.”

Well, duh! 😛

I’m just saying that if you listen to a tune without knowing the title or anything else about it, unless it’s something like a bird call or the wind being imitated, there’s nothing that tells you it was inspired by rolling waves and not by a cloud formation or by Henry the Horse dancing a waltz. Hearing the inspiration when you already know the inspiration is not surprising.

As I’ve said, I do feel that there are subtle connections between environment and indigenous music, but any attempt at scientifically verifying such a thing is severely limited by the perils of anecdotal evidence, post hoc analysis, etc. Ethical considerations rule out controlled scientific study.

I guess I’m dwelling on too narrow a point. Please ignore me and carry on.

narrative tunes ~
“Farewell to Ireland”
“Coachman’s Whip”
. . .

Has anyone here got one of those Road To Lisdoonvarna moments where a visit to Syria has changed they way they view session culture, especially after being involved in it in their country of origin prior to the trip ?

Yep, Bob, “subtle connections” was all I was getting at.

Oh heck, got quarter of an hour to spare … waiting to go out to dinner … so. People seem to have left out the traditional music of The Andies which I think is quite recognisable as such no matter where in the world it gets played. If Irish Traditional Music is not recognisable as such then it isn’t Irish Traditional Music no matter where it is played. Now we all know that Llig thinks that the centre of the ITM universe is in Sandy Bell’s where he hangs out, but if they are not playing recognisable Irish Trad there, then they are not and it isn’t Trad. I am in agreement with DD (I can’t spell it … sorry DD, you know who you are) in that sometimes some music is appropriate to a landscape and sometimes it is not. Fine to play Trad in the landscape but its not really the right fit, eg it seems fine to play trad in the bush around here, but there is much more appropriate music for the landscape, and that is traditional music that comes from here, Indigenous music. Whoops me time is up … I haven’t been to a session in Ireland so what would I know anyway … but either way it isn’t worth getting het up about. Cheers

Random: Some of us have recurring -- let’s call them -- “Tar Road To Sligo” moments when we visit old miners’ union halls, or abandoned cemeteries in the mining districts. Lots of Irish music was played in the former; lots of Irishmen were planted in the later. Sessions began in the city of London, someone said. What then were the gardeners up in Golden Gate Park doing on their lunch breaks, with their musical instruments, instead of eating lunch? For that matter, there were building sites all around this country where builders played tunes instead of eating noonday meals. Did this crowd ask if their music fit their new surroundings? If we feel trepidation about playing Trad around here, it’s because we are re-introducing Trad to the landscape after an absence. Mightn’t the trepidation come mostly from the fact that, while our predesessors were Irish nationals, most of us Trad musicians out here now aren’t particularly Irish?

And besides, what we call Irish trad today probably bares little resemblance to what was played in Ireland 130 years ago. It’s been an evolving tradition, influenced by many other cultures. And I’m sorry, the earliest, turn of the century, recordings of Irish piping are ‘rough’ to say the least. Certainly doesn’t bring to mind misty cliffs or rolling waves.

Great discussion !- which I’m just joining.
This might interest you, Michael, Will and Bobhimself. (I had the same reaction to the Bulgarian voices and have *always* had a strong attraction to modal music. It’s definitely connected to a degree of melancholy in my own temperament. I think different cultures develop recognizable different ‘national’ temperaments which they express in cultural forms and arts. Of course this is changing all the time.

I read about this years ago … and agree with the premises, likely because they correspond to my own temperament (more Apollonian than Dionysian).

Aspects of visual literacy correspond to aural literacy. (Michael’s formalist stance) This has nothing to do with ‘description’ or ‘emotion’ in music which is a totally different approach and frame of mind. In visual design there is both literal physical and relative psychological stability of forms, based on the angles of simple lines.

For example, a horizontal line suggests tranquility, rest, lack of motion, sleep and absence of gravity and even death. (Think of a seascape or desert horizon).
A vertical line suggests thrust, reaching, energy, upward force against gravity and vitality. (Think of high-rise buildings and towers, standing upright and phallic symbols )
A diagonal line suggests either falling down or struggling to remain upright – and is therefore an unstable, unsettling form. It can be *felt* as unhappy or threatening.

Correspondingly in music, a major third can be envisioned as an equilateral triangle, with equal sides. It is a balanced, psychologically stable form which is complete and satisfying on its own. A minor third has unequal sides and shape and is unstable, needing resolution to release the ‘anxiety’ it causes the listener. The major and minor seconds of the Bulgarian music trigger similar reactions and are utterly satisfying or unsettling according to one’s expectations and tastes.

The brief ascending and then cascading, descending notes of part A of ‘Cliffs of Moher’ do suggest a fall from a height if they are perceived in visual terms. But a musician perceives them in *aural terms*. The sequence can’t be translated by words (tune titles) or visual analogies. *Emotions* is how most people express it because ‘emotions’ describe their subjective bodily responses and reactions to their musical perceptions – pleasure or the anxiety of a musical fragment being ‘unresolved’.

I don’t think that ‘analysing’ music in this way in any way diminishes music’s power or mystery, but rather increases it.

Ephphatha!

Bunkrapt

being Irish I know this question was directed elsewhere so I will try not to jump in to hard. to know Ireland truly be in touch you have to spend time there . not days weeks or even months but time. not at the session but out and about. in all weathers fair and foul. long days and longer nights . I company and all alone save for the lingering ghosts of generations past that more than not will frighten you with their lamentations of hardship and strife. Youl need to spend time and time again at the sports fields and feel the harsh realaties of a nation at contact with itself the raucesioness and thrill of the clash of the ash the thumps and slaps and grunts of contact. you want to smell the bogs and the seas and ocean. all this and much more is in the music and we have not even sat to session yet. there are the people who absorbe the tunes . those whos breathing and mumerings and rauciousness become part of the tune when music dose not just herrald of a culture but dances in harmony and unites the living and the dead. this is culture living . it cannot be baught and it cannot be sold its core cannot be changed . its ambassadors may show glympses of of it but its far more expansive than can be spoken of at a moment. its center is in its Island and that richness can and does have profound quality without comparison . good and bad sessions are are mute. spirit of the masses and generations are carried strongest on the home turf the sod.

Poetry

And yet the music is not made of the turf and the sod. It may well have been made from the turf and the sod. I may well be the relic of generations past and the link to the slaps and grunts of generations present. But it is not made of these things.

The music has no smell. The music cannot distinguish between night and day for it has no sight. The music exists only in the hearts and minds of those who play it. It floats around in an abstract ether and follows like a gentle breeze those who have it in their hearts and minds. And those that have it in their hearts and minds cannot sell it. And those that don’t have it in their hearts and minds cannot buy it. Those who try to buy it change its core.

And when those who have it in their hearts and minds pluck it from that abstract ether and turn it into glorious sound for those precious fleeting moments, they are giving it away. Not merely showing glimpses of it, but opening their hearts and minds and giving it away freely. And those whose hearts and minds are open to it are free to absorb it’s every nuance. And so the gentle breeze, like clouds across continents, spreads.

It haunts the streets and alleyways of Irish neighborhoods in Boston, New York, London and Chicago. Tin whistles and flutes sing on the wind in old graveyards and ghosts gather for tunes in historic pubs by the waterfront. Bodhrans beat out the rhythm of the footsteps of time as we march the diaspora across the world. The ethereal honking of Uillean pipes mix with traffic noise from Philadelphia to Downingtown and the ghost of a soldier is playing a tune on the fiddle, perhaps ‘The Cliffs of Moher,’ every July 2nd, before he dies, again, with the Irish Brigade on the bloody fields of Gettysburg….
sorry, it’s all bullsh*t, just wanted to give it a try……

Coming back to the question in the original post, gimyatunes post reminds me that the way I view session culture, as a ‘punter’ and reader on this board was largely shaped by on a wet weekday in September in a town in the west that the Rough Guide said was well known for its traditional music. Early evening, town centre bars kitted out for the music all had no drinkers but two or three musicians (in 1970s clothing - think Bothy’s youtube clips) with no-one yet, I now realise, to ‘anchor. Went to a hotel further out, where the ’Home Cooked Food‘ sign was bigger that the ’Live Music Tonight’ sign, intending to eat and go back to the centre later. Large bar at the back with noisy jolly crowd but no music. Smarter bar at the front, served through a hatch, where we tourists (us, a German couple, a Dutch couple) could be fed. A guy of about seventy playing fiddle, a woman in her thirties on box. Background music. Apart from looking up at the tune changes and ends of sets (partially habit, partially deliberate to show I was listening and knew it was not the same tune all night) no real contact with the musicians. All very pleasant; maybe a ceili band repertoire.

Toward closing time they stopped playing and finished their drinks, we and the dutch couple who we had found also had a wet tent to go back to lingered over our drinks. The fiddler goes to the rack for his raincoat just as a group of people come from the other bar for their coats. Shout of recognition, hand shakes slaps on the back then one guy goes out, the rest go back to the bar hatch. Five minutes later he was back with his fiddle. Turned out they have been in band together in the 1950’s and had not met for forty years (this was about 1995). They played set after set for over an hour. Curtains drawn, door locked, us and the dutch couple now in the middle of, and sharing the craic with, a crowd of about 40 from the other bar and the hotel staff. The guy who had been playing all night eventually had to call a halt because of the arthritis in his fingers.

Part way through one of the guys at our table sat back and said, “This is good”, then corrected himself, “No, before was good, this is special”. Now I suspect that is was ‘special’ but not an uncommon occurrence. We were just bloody lucky to be there. Gives a context for a lot that is said here.

Part of what the music is about was very much there and very concrete for a time.

You can’t buy stuff like this, not for any price.

Just reread that. It was meant to be: with no-one yet, I now realise, to ‘anchor’. No offence intended.

Ephphatha translates to be opened.
I picked it up following a tangent off the 1st post.

~ be opened
;)