Do you have to be Irish to play this music well?

Somebody commented recently about players who could rattle through all the tunes and, yet, fail to play them properly with the required “Irish lilt”. While I feel that everyone should strive to develop a playing style close to the real thing, I would suggest that it’s probably impossible to replicate it exactly if you are not Irish.

I think(that it was) Kevin Burke mentioned at fiddle workshop that there was a identifiable relationship and similarity between local speech/accents and local fiddle styles( This would probably be applicable to other instruments). There appears to be some truth in this e.g. compare the lilting style of Irish/West Coast of Scotland fiddling and speech to the more stilted and rigid East Coast of Scotland styles. I would suggest that there are also some similarities in the Northumbrian tradition. Of course, there are several variations in style in Ireland itself. An extreme example is that of Martin Hayes. His playing style certainly matches his speech but I don’t know which he has exaggerated the most!! 🙂)

I know of several great musicians from Scotland and England who, while they include some Irish tunes in their repertoire-and play them very well, do not play in a true Irish style. Of course, there are some great players of Irish music from the UK but the majority of them are of Irish descent/connection e.g. Michael McGoldrick, Karen Tweed, Claire Mann, Claire Mclaughlin and many more including Kevin Burke himself. A notable local exception is Kathryn Nicoll who was brought up on Scottish music but now plays an almost exclusively Irish repertoire. I think she’s brilliant but an Irish connoiseur might still notice the difference.

Now, I’m sure that there are many excellent musicians on this site(And I’m not including myself here) who are not Irish but come very close to playing the music as it should be. I know lots of Danes and Germans who play really well, for instance. However, I think it is extremely difficult for us non Irish people to get it exactly right. For instance, should you pick a particular regional style and immerse yourself in it or dabble in different styles(even non Irish music-I tend to play a bit of everything). If you learn tunes from other parts of Ireland or elsewhere, do you play them in the original style, your own style, or your adopted Irish style? Would you try to play Kerry style for polkas? Donegal style for tunes like Gravel Walks? There are lots of Scottish tunes in the Irish repertoire, for instance, but they sound very Irish when the local fiddlers etc play them e.g Miss McLeod etc.

Sorry about the length of this posting. Basically, I’m just suggesting that it might not be possible or necessarily desirable to completely emulate this music if you are an outsider. We should still all do our best to play it, though.

John

racist baloney

It might well be baloney, Michael but I was NOT being racist here. I was discussing cultural differences. The players I mentioned above from the UK are good players because they have had more exposure to the Irish tradition and culture than the rest of us because of their Irish connections- not because they are part of an Irish race. Obviously, the more exposure to the music the rest of us have e.g. through sessions, summer schools, living in Ireland etc, the better players we are likely to become. Also, if you live long enough in a particular area, you will pick up the local accent, customs, and music styles in due course but this has nothing to with racial issues.

John

In that case you should have said “you can’t play the music well unless you’ve had lots of exposure to it”, in which case I’d agree wholeheartedly. But what you said was “you have to be Irish to be able to replicate it exactly”. I can’t tell if you’re of Irish descent from your profile, John, but if you are, I’d agree with Michael’s to-the-point assessment. If you’re not, what you wrote seems to reveal your attitude not only towards the music and Irish culture and people, but also your own playing. I don’t mean that to sound like a dig at you, but it comes across a bit weird.

Surely racism is the wrong word. I’m not going to open a Pandora’s box but nationalism or xenophobia rather than racism should be employed here. Racism is bandied about a bit too readily sometimes and this is a lazy use of the language. However, I do agree with the sentiment that it is baloney.

Ethnocentrism? I’m interested to know whether John is of Irish descent. Usually I wouldn’t care but it kind of matters if you want to understand what’s really being said in this discussion.

The short answer is “NO”.

Is it because I is Irish?

John …

The short answer is no.

Speaking as an Irish person myself, I can tell you that the oul’ bloodstock is no guarantee of facility with the music. If it was then I’d be streets ahead of my current stage of development.

The telling point is the one you make yourself - exposure. Some Irish people may get a bit more exposure to the music at an earlier age than non-Irish people. But it doesn’t necessarily follow. The only exposure I had to the music when I was growing up was the occasional tune set on Dubliners‘ records and various players who gave us the odd ceili set at guest teas, concerts and the like down at the local GAA club/church hall/community centre, etc. Apart from that I grew up listening to lots of “folk” stuff, ballads, rebel songs, country’n’western, etc. which formed the bulk of my ma and da’s record collection. Jim Reeves nestling next to The Clancy Brothers; Patsy Cline rubbing shoulders with Songs Of Irish Freedom …

Nowadays there’s rakes of Irish kids who’ll grow up not hearing the music in the house.

Someone pointed out to me once that there are a lot of “foreign” musicians who don’t play the music well. I made the point back that there are a lot of Irish musicians who don’t play it well also. And there are a lot of musicians living outside the bog who play exceedingly well.

Let’s just think … in the session which I attend regularly the core of musicians aside from myself comprises a Scottish bloke on various flutes, whistles and box; a French woman on fiddle; an English bloke on mandolin/banjo and another English bloke on whistle. Plus numerous people - few of whom are Irish - who come and go (including an American mandolinist/bouzoukist who has no Irish blood in his veins but whose facility with the music is breathtaking). Is it in any way inferior to a session at which the majority/totality of members are Irish? Damn the bit! (Indeed my sister who visited a few weeks ago commented on the variety of the tunes and verve with which they were played, contrasting it favourably with the local sessions she takes part in.)

The keys to success at the music are a) enjoying it, b) understanding it, c) living for it, d) personalising it. Learn the grip and learn the talk and after that it’s just practise, as Ennis slyly put it - an in-joke for players of the music who understood that those few throwaway words codified more hard work and dedication than their face value presented.

And that hard work and dedication can be undertaken no matter where in the world a person finds him/herself. You might need to make a “pilgrimage” to the source from time to time to understand something of the elemental forces that gave birth to the music (cos I believe there’s something about the rugged bleakness, savage - pitiless - beauty and mournfulness of the very landscape that informs the music - but then again I always was a bit away with the fairies!). But even that isn’t necessary - and indeed, I’ve heard from some folks that their musical pilgrimages to Ireland have been a bit disappointing. Without knowing where to look, they came upon more boom-ching-a-boom country‘n’Irish musoes than players of the music.

Anyway … I’m rambling.

I’m sure you get the drift …

Perhaps I should have said something like “Do you have to have been brought up in Ireland or in the Irish tradition….?” which would be a more accurate description of what I was thinking. I certainly didn’t mean to cause any offence.

I am not Irish and find it easier to play Scottish music. Not because I’m Scottish (which I am) but because I’ve lived in Scotland and heard it all my life. I’m from Inverness originally and very aware of different styles even within Scotland. This was the main point I was trying to make; i.e how hard it is to replicate a regional or particular style of playing if you don’t come from area and whether or not it is desirable to try to copy it exactly. If you’re not from Ireland, then which style should you choose? Should you immerse yourself in it to the exclusion of all other styles of music?

As far as my own playing is concerned, I like to play tunes from all over but I’m not focused enough to master any particular style, although it is probably more Scottish than anything else.

John

That makes a lot more sense. I took up Irish music relatively late, and outside of Ireland. It’s pretty obvious that playing is going to come more naturally if you’ve had a lot of exposure to the music from an early age when you have the ability to pick stuff up quickly, and that exposure is much easier to access if you’re brought up in Ireland.

It’s sometimes easy to get misunderstood on these sites. I just want to make it clear that I love the music, people and culture of Ireland---I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

John

I think you’re all a little too touchy!! Why suggest someone is being racist when they are merely pointing out that individuals with an Irish connection, whether that be genetic or not, often find it eaier to pick up Irish music? Whether John is Irish decent or not should not reflect on his right to ask the question in the first place!!? I personnally agree with Aidan in that if someone has enough interest and of course a certain amount of natural talent for music then it doesn’t matter where they originate from genetically or geographically. I had a teacher at school who, although being English born and bred, had an amazing grasp of traditional chinese music, simply through his love for it! I hope he never considered me racist because I happened to ask him if he thought he would have been better, had he been born Chinese or grown up in a Chinese community! What a load of c**p!!

yes you have to …. and it is damn hard to become one - especially as a german. but I go on and give it a try.

I played with the munich ceili band a week ago - during the breaks irish flutist C. and me transformed some trad christmas melodies into irish dance tunes: jingle bells can be played as a very nice jig even if you are not that much irish. but silent night as a kicking reel needs irishness of a high degree (which I have not reached so far… but having more pints and more fiddling the coming year maybe I come closer the coming xmas seasons - so ask again 2004 or 2005).

I’m not, I’m not, I’m not going to enter into this one. Oh! What the heck, more Dutch courage taken, this time in the form of a couple of Stones in the Limerick Inn. A Murphy’s pub, fully imported fixtures from Ireland. No ITM, of course, but Kilkenny on tap, shamrocks, leprachauns and a casino to lose the shirt off your back. On second thoughts, I’m not going to enter into this one.
Cheers

Well Aidan, I agree with all you said, and in fact last week we had an Australian helping out on the whistle in our little U.N. session group. Being married to a Glaswegian born of an Irish mother and father, can I claim to have a bit of Irish in me from time to time?

“Why suggest someone is being racist when they are merely pointing out that individuals with an Irish connection, whether that be genetic or not, often find it eaier to pick up Irish music? ”

Because it’s a sweeping generalization not necessarily supported by the facts.

It still isn’t racism. If the claim were made by someone Irish, it would be chauvinism, if anyone else, it might just be patronising. In any case, the point of the question was whether someone would play Irish music better if they grew up with it around and therefore it felt more natural for them to play it. Michael Gill has come up with the ‘this is racist’ comment before. I gather from his personal details that he’s a cynic. It would be nice to get some witty cynicism rather than this type of facile and tired remark.

John, you wrote, “It is sometimes easy to get misunderstood on these sites.” I agree, but in this case the misunderstanding started with your initial post, which didn’t say what you meant to say, right down to the thread header. Slow down and think before you hit “post.”

Well, I’m English. I was brought up by an Irish stepfather, who had no interest in or knowledge of the music, and, growing up up in North London, I had exposure to a darn sight more Irish music than English traditional. But the thing I had most exposure to when growing up was reggae.
Does this mke me a racist?

This question and it’s variations come up quite frequently. The answer is of course “no” in it’s short form, as others have pointed out. Try https://thesession.org/discussions/87, although of course it meanders about in our normal way, even way back then in close to what was our infancy…

There’s a tune Danu play called “Think before you think before you speak.” which is probably appropriate for me, in this instance, Will.

In answering my own question (or the one I meant to ask), I would agree that there are many great musicians with no Irish connections who play the music very well-in a lot of cases, the result can be even better as Aiden points out.
I was more concerned whether it was possible for them to emulate particular regional styles of Irish music (or that of music from other countries) without having been brought up there. These days, perhaps, there is a convergence of styles so is it really that important?
The same situation would apply within Ireland itself. Would playing Kerry slides and polkas come naturally to a Donegal fiddler, for instance? Would he/she necessarily want to change his/her style to suit? As I said, there are lots of Scottish tunes which have seeped into the Irish tradition yet the local players do not attempt to play them in a Scottish style. Should they? I would say “Only if they want to ” but, if they do, that’s fine by me.

So really, all I’m saying is that it is difficult for most of us to fully adapt to musical styles from other countries and cultures. I just chose Ireland as example because this site is about The Irish Session. I’ll continue learning Irish (and other music) but there’ll probably always be a hint of Scottishness in my playing no matter how much I improve.


Again. I’m sorry for any misunderstanding. I hope that you can see what I was trying to get at a little more clearly now.


John

“Whether John is Irish decent or not should not reflect on his right to ask the question in the first place!!?” Nobody has said that he had no right to ask the question. I was interested to know whether John was of Irish descent because such comments can be interpreted differently depending on who is writing them and what their background is. Anyway, he’s explained what he actually meant to say, so great. We can all be friends and agree that exposure to the music is important, which is fairly obvious anyway I would’ve thought. If you want to learn how to cook good authentic Thai food, you’d do well to spend time learning from chefs in Thailand…

PS John, although in many ways English culture is similar to Australian (especially as they are both English-speaking), as an Englishman living in Australia I am often struck by how often I miss stuff in conversation, just because it refers to something like e.g. old TV shows that aren’t showing anymore, or something obscure that’s particular to Aussie culture. Sometimes whole conversations go totally over my head. I find myself thinking that I would have to have been brought up there or at least lived there for years and years to get a full understanding of the culture, even though I’m English-speaking and have lived there for a while (Will would disagree about the English-speaking thing maybe). That’s pretty much along the lines of what you’re saying isn’t it? Well, at least you don’t have to be Aussie to live there 🙂

Execute me! What does Irish mean? Two incarnations away I was Irish. Will that still make me a fraction Irish when, at the same time I was Turkish only one incarnation away? Or will my Irish bit of my karma have negative influence on my Turkish playing? Afterall we are almost all breed up in a religion from The Middle East- not to mention the Vikings who plundered and SETTLED also in Ireland?
I cannot do anything than try to do my best no matter what I’m playing - I love it
Leif

Hi Leif. As well as attempting to play Irish music, I have been trying out Harald Haugaard’s Great Danish tunes and other Scandinavian music. I love it too but even although I can learn the tunes I haven’t mastered the Danish style of fiddling either. 🙂)

John

Hi john
Aren’t you a little viking? (Check your incarnations) I think so. They were rather imperialistic (The vikings). Keep up the good work with Scandinavian! It also gave me hard times once. 😉
Leif

…so, how ’bout them Vikings? *snicker*

We also have a few of them reels, did we the vikings come first? Or did vikings learn from their slaves? This is may be a little speculative but I guess that historic musicologist would say that we (no matter what tribe of DNA) all lerned from each other. In this case in northwestern Europe. *snicker yourself*
(what does snicker mean?) Isn’t it a Viking longship???? ;-]

Sorry, inside joke. The Vikings are also an American football team, from Minnesota USA. (Or at least they were the last time I paid any attention to football, about 25 years ago.)

I’ve wondered about this whole question before, but not particularly with relation to a particular ethnic background, but purely with relation to speech patterns. If “uttering” a musical phrase uses the same parts of the brain as saying something, then perhaps there’s a fundamental relationship between our accents and the way we express our music. In Cape Breton, someone might say they can “hear the Gaelic” in a fiddler’s playing; Stephan Grappelli definitely sounds French, and I’d guess that regional styles of playing in Ireland are linked closely with the local accent. But people *do* manage to speak foreign languages so that they can’t be distinguished from native speakers (although it’s rare), so maybe that’s what’s called for, and why some can do it, but many more “speak” the music with a noticeably “foreign accent”. I’m aware, as someone with a nondescript English accent, that I really can’t do justice to those beautiful Gaelic airs unless I go away and learn the language.

Reminds me of when I was just starting out trying to learn the Blues on the Harmonica. At that time it was still fashionable to sat that ya had to be black to play the Blues, ‘cos no one else could ever understand the experience of the American Black Man except the Man himself. Therefore, anyone who hadn’t grown up poor and black on the South Side of Chicago, or put that cotton in a ’leven foot sack just wasn’t authentic enough to be given a shake in the music.
Fortunately, the so called British Invasion put the laugh to that piece of silly sophistry, at the same time reminding Americans what a powerful, expressive musical tradition they had in their own back yards.
Play it, boy! Play it good as you can! Don’t let nobody tell you not to!
Rob

Leif: a “snicker” is a sort of laugh -- sort of like, “snh snh snh” or some such. I personally use it when I’m making a joke that’s a little … off. One way or another.

It’s also the name of an American chocolate bar with peanuts and caramel in, and now I’m hungry. 🙂

Zina

ah, you were hungry before :-|

Before what? LOL -- I’m always hungry. It’s amazing I don’t weigh in at 500 pounds, it really is.

IMHO, no you do not have to be Irish to play this music well. Many people in Australia who play well have some celtic ancestry in the ol family tree, but many do not. The music transcends all those genealogical/cultural barriers: call it “music sans frontierres”. To paraphrase Joe Cooley,“I think it’s the only music to bring people to their senses” 🙂
Wish you hadn’t mentioned chocolate…

Don’t I have ANY chocolate in the house? It’s snowing, and I really don’t want to go out for it!

…mmmm. triple chocolate chunk brownies, with vanilla ice cream, smothered in warm chocolate fudge sauce….

There are snickers in Australia and the UK as well Zina……mmmm snickers…..
Just a thought - most of the people playing in Ireland these days listen to albums etc, so I guess theres a bit of a crossover of styles anyways. Two of my friends from Clare absolutley adore Lunasa, last time I checked Kevin was from the UK, and Fintan from The North etc etc 🙂

Will, remind me to kill you, okay? LOL

Zina--make a note to yourself--always keep extra chocolate in the house for emergencies. Keep it in the freezer, that way you won’t think about it until you run out of your regular stash!

I’m glad that I clarified my position as the more recent responses e,g from Rog, Robert, Greenwiggle, BB etc were of the type which I was hoping to elicit. I realise that it was my own fault that I misled some of you earlier. As Will has pointed out, I’ll have to be more careful how I word my posts in future.

John

No problem John, good on you

Zina, Greenwiggle and Will:
Do you know why danish (a kind of cake) is called danish? Or will the mere thought of it lead you astray? 😉 LOL (just learned it!)

Lief,
What we call Danish Pastry over here, you would call Wienerbrod (Sorry. Don’t have the 3 extra letters on my keyboard) which roughly translated means Vienna Bread. I noticed that the pastries in Vienna are very similar to Danish pastries so this is probably why you’ve named them as such. Yum. Yum. I probably enjoy food as much as my music 🙂)

John

Lief, on these threads, Zina is the pied piper of “astray,” she can’t be led ther herself. 🙂

John--*I’ve* *never* worded my posts poorly. (*heavy self-directed sarcasm*). Yes, good on you for straightening things out.

As for regional styles, these days it seems harder to find players who aren’t a blend of influences. As Bridie says, recordings have broadened our listening choices. Some of us consciously play certain tunes in certain styles (depending on where I learned certain tunes, I tend to think of them as Donegal tunes or Sligo tunes or Clare tunes or Sliabh Lucra tunes, and my bowing and ornamentation changes to suit) and the result is either a mish mash or a parade of multiple personalities.

More common these days are players who immerse themselves in the individual style of another player--so you get Martin Hayes clones, or Matt Molloy wannabes, etc. Anything is possible, given your perseverance and willingness to bury yourself in listening to a particular approach to the music.

I’ve no idea, myself, Leif -- I always imagined that it was some weird Yank take on some food a real Danish person wouldn’t recognize in that form (not unlike some of the travesties called “strudels” here that are a sort of cardboardy version of the real thing).

But then I understand Germans have this thing called a “Hawaiian breakfast” that absolutely would horrify a Hawaiian to start the day off with, English people eat baked beans for breakfast (urggh), Scottish people will on occasion fry their candy bars, and there’s also people out there who *rinse their toothpaste out with WARM water…!* LOL

Will was being sarcastic in his first sentence, too -- I’m the world’s easiest hijack! 🙂

Me, I’m still at the stage where I have no actual style yet, as I’m still trying to decide what works for me and what doesn’t (Will says I play each tune like the person who taught me the tune or the recording I learned it off of). *sigh* It’s developing though, zygote-like, and I’ll probably end up with a style that, mutt-like, ends up something like what John Carr, a fiddler out here in Colorado, calls Pan-Irish…

Oh, help! I don’t think I want to know the connection between a Swede (=me) and a swede (=turnip) 🙂

LOL -- is *that* what a swede is? I always wondered. I love turnips. Probably because we rarely ate them when I was a kid. But I like parsnips even better…one of the best winter veggie dishes ever: roasted potatoes, turnips, and parsnips cubed into a casserole dish and then baked with spiced heavy cream and a bit of grated parmesan…yummmmmmmm….

To complicate matters, when we (the Swedes) want to blame someone for being not-so-very-intelligent aka stupid, we often use the swedish word for turnip…Ooops! letting out national secrets in the public….

over here we distinguish between swedes (yellow in colour, and confusingly known as “neeps” in scotland) and turnips (generally smaller, white on the inside and purplish on the skin). fine winter food? haggis, tatties & neeps… yum!

Yes. And we used them for lanterns at Halloween. Pumpkins were a rare commodity in Scotland when I was a lad.

… and they weren’t nearly as good for making lanterns with as far as i remember, ’cos smaller
and very thin skin. they’d go soft pretty quickly.
we always called them “turnip lanterns”… i reckon the pumpkin thing must be an american import.
yey, how on topic is *this*?!

I remember the first time I ever actually ATE a pumpkin, which is of course essentially a very large winter squash -- I was astounded, because I never knew they were edible before then, because of course as a kid we only used them as Halloween lanterns. Of course, you have to add a whole lot of stuff to make them taste *good*, but yeah, they’re edible…

Zina, that bit about folk rinsing their toothpaste out with warm water, that was just to scare us right? Right, Zina? Right?

LOL Be scared, Paul…be very scared.

Zina, what do you mean add a lot of stuff to make it taste good? Pumpkin soup is the easiest thing in the world…mmmm steaming hot with sour cream and cracked pepper..and don’t forget hot fresh pumpkin scones…served with mashed spuds mixed with wasabi and lime! I wonder what Michael Coleman used to eat fer breakfast?

Lots of good points in this thread in reply to the original post, and I wont repeat any of them…but I can’t help thinking that this kind of question arises when one becomes fixated on a particular style of music, albeit I.T. (from any or several regions).

When I play I.T., I play in a style which is not distinctive to any particular region or player, but my tone is clear (medium to bright), dynamics are powerful, technique is solid and the tunes I play are immediately recognisible. I can confidently say the same about any other style of music I play. I’m of Irish / Scottish descent, and I’m sure I have a stack of detractors who say I don’t play in a *true* Irish style. Well, too bad! Now there’s another question - what is a *true* Irish style? Is it soft and lilting (nice to listen to but can’t be heard in a pub), or - rousing, loud and played from the heart (so the purists get annoyed)…or somewhere in between…or is it all or none of these things….see what I mean about becoming fixated on a style?

Here’s to playing music and damn well enjoying it - and hoping your listeners enjoy it too.

Jim

Jims got it right there--who’s to say whether someone’s playing is “irish” or not, and how would you know? And at what point does it really matter? (Well, for competitions I suppose.)

Point is, if you listen to a lot of trad music over the years, you’ll know what you like and can try to emulate that. You might specialize in one regional style or another, or base your approach on a few favorite players. Grand. As long as the session crowd leaves a chair open for you, who cares whether some bean squasher wants to harp at you for not sounding “Irish” or “traditional”? Ask them to define their terms, and then ignore their attemtps while you play some tunes.

Well, I’ve heard Jim play, when I was down below in Southampton, and I can’t say I was over-concerned as to whether he was playing in a Clare, or a Donegal, or even a Scottish style. My observation was: this guy knows what he’s doing and he’s producing a very fine sound, and was in control of his instrument. So, if Jim wanted to, he could knock out his Donegal-accented tunes, or his Scottish-accented ones, but they’d be all Jim speaking (or playing), that’s for sure. I think that’s the key to really being able to play the music -- when it’s yourself that dictates the delivery, and not being tyrannised by a so-called (and let’s face it - for most of us here - it would be an *affected*) regional style.

BINGO!!!!!
Right on the money Orpheus…to learn to play “exactly” in the style of say…John Doherty, would be like imitating Edith Piaf when singing. It is more important that you portray them without affectations or false accents. From the heart and with your own accent/interpretation, whilst staying within the traditional structures.After all it was originally an individuallistic artform.The tyranny of distance and lack of resources made different communities take on their own “style”.

Same argument applies to all kinds of music and other forms of art. Learning to interpret music and work out your own honest individual style is a lot tougher than learning technique (of course, you’ve got to acquire the technique first anyway). You won’t get very far trying to sound like one of the world’s great performers, because, technique permitting, that’s the easy option - the *great performer* has already unwittingly done the hard interpretative work for you. That, btw, is one reason why I can’t abide “tribute” bands.
Trevor

Touche.

Like, the sour cream and the pepper, GW! Although I like my spuds best with butter and chives -- never thought about wasabi and lime. I’ll have to give that a go at some point or other.

BUT -- today I found some Bisto Chip Shop Curry mix while I was at the import shop for tea! YAY!!!!

I think that picking a style, whether regional, or that of a ‘personality’, to play in is a rather bizarre approach to playing music. If the music that you assimilate is primarily that of, say West Clare, then the music you produce is likely to naturally sound like West Clare music, but if you try to force your playing to sound in a particular style, it must diminish your personal style, surely(?)

I take it then that if some ITM musician of note says, after joining and playing a few tunes with you, that “your playing has personality” then it would be proper to consider it a great compliment?

Um, yes, maybe, but not all personalities are good personalities. The word personality is not one that carries any value per se. I’d rather someone said that they liked the way I played. Unfortunately few do.

It would actually probably be best to assume that it was a “look at you!”, Jan. 🙂

Jan, the best compliments on one’s playing are concerned with the tunes, as in “that was a great set of tunes”. At least that is how the Irish folks compliment each other’s playing around these parts, it is all about doing justice to the tunes! I do think the compliment given you was a nice thoughtful one, especially from someone who might know what they are talking about.

If anyone still thinks the answer to this is “yes”, how would you explain “Paddy and Bridget”.
See below -
http://celticgrooves.homestead.com/CG_Moriyasu_1.html

Hey! I didn’t say it was said to me (although in fact it was). It was a couple of years ago now, and it has puzzled me ever since. When he said it I thought it could have been meant as a compliment, then again it might not have been. Hence the ? But a session formed around us (probably because he was playing) which is something that had never happened to me before. And it felt really good.

I’m about trying to do justice to the tunes and I like the idea of a “great set of tunes” compliment. Much better than the “Where did you learn to play like that” I got recently.

Ah well! What can a person expect when the only sessions for 1,500 kilometre radius are the jammy bluesy singer songwriter into the mike thingys.

Jan, Is there any way to start a session closer to you? Are there other players or teacher of trad music that might be interested in that?

Put an ad in the paper and got NO takers - NONE. No Irish trad teachers. Two Irish pubs, with sessions of said variety. Anyway, its exodus time, almost everyone is leaving (on hols or forever). Will give it another go when the next crop of newbees arrive at the end of January.

Zina, never heard of hawaiian breakfast in germany.

But very common is “toast hawaii” which is a slice of buttered white bread with ham, a slice of canned pine apple, seasoned with black pepper and curry powder topped with cheddar cheese and baked in the oven for about ten minutes …. thats definitely not very hawaiian, but its a tasty snack (you can serve it with “toast pizza” and many other hot sandwich snacks - makes a good tv dinner). what makes it “hawaii” is the canned pineapple we usually get from the alaskan pineapple farms - so maybe some crazy chef created a “hawaiian breakfast” once, but thats a particular case.

BTW - I still have the strong opinion you have to be Irish to play that music anyway ( to play it well is something different). And I think the Moriyasu example proofs that perfect: Would anybody like and play this music if he is not at least 1% irish by genes or by heart?

Crannog,
you really eat that? That sounds pretty disgusting. I’ll have to tell my son about it, he’ll love it…

Before this thread disappears off the page and out of our lives, forever---like a sailing ship when the earth was flat 🙂), I’d like to thank you all for your many (sometimes very frank) responses. Of course, I really meant “being brought up in Ireland or in the tradition” as opposed to being “Irish” as such. The other thread proves that we can’t really agree about what being Irish means, anyway. I would still say that being brought up in Ireland/the tradition would give you an advantage in learning to play this music but this would be only because of the extra exposure you might receive. As Aiden points out, you might not even get this anyway. Also, if you’re determined enough to learn to play Irish music, you’ll expose yourself to it in every way possible e.g recordings, sessions, workshops, summer schools etc. So, I’m very happy to concede that you don’t have to be Irish to play this music well unless you accept Mark’s(Dow) view that “Irishness” comprises the “Irish things we have soaked up in our heads” which would include the music. In that case, we would all be Irish anyway!!

One of the main points of my topic was the question of different styles. As pointed out, there is much convergence and cross over of styles these days so, perhaps, it doesn’t really matter too much.

Hopefully, I haven’t stirred things up again and we’re all still pals.

John

http://www.marions-kochbuch.de/rezept/0057.jpg

marion topped the cheddar with strawberrys - I don

sorry, here

This question reminds me of a talk B.B. King gave at a National Press Club luncheon where upon he was finally asked “do you have to be Black to play the blues?”.

Being the gentleman he is, B.B. described a number of talented white musicians he’s played over the years - some from poor inner cities, some from well-to-do suburbs. He concluded with the statement that “No, you don’t have to be Black to play the blues… but it doesn’t hurt either”.

“This question reminds me of a talk B.B. King gave at a National Press Club luncheon…”

I like that quote. Related one from Big Bill Broonzy, another immensely talented black musician who suffered a lot of knuckleheaded questions:

“The guitar doesn’t give a damn what color your fingers are.”

I like it because Broonzy puts emphasis on skills, not genetic predisposition.

chris smith