This tune appears as the 2nd tune on track 12 of Dervish’s “Harmony Hill”. Their title is simply “Kerryslide” - all one word. There are two slides in the set (I’ll post the other one after I’ve written this), but they’re played more like flings than slides - a bit slower than they’d normally take a reel, and with perhaps more emphasis on the first beat of the bar than they’d give a reel. They certainly don’t have the feel of the slides they play as the last set on their follow up album “Playing With Fire”. This time they slow down the melody slightly and speed up the backing rhythm into fast triplets. So here’s the Dervish setting:
It’s not the first confusion of a swung 4/4 highland fling with a slide, but more often they’re flattened into reels. The same has happened to barndances/schottisches… However, the melody often is ‘telling’ the truth of it, even if the musicians haven’t been able to connect the dots…
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