Irish Concertina Players Of The 1800s

[Lawrence Reeves]

I have been going through my bookcase and organizing lately. I am glancing back through books on history of fiddles, such as the Northern Fiddler, and Between the Jigs and the Reels which focus on Donegal fiddle traditions. In contrast, books written by Captain Francis O'Neill surprise me in the lack of concertina reference. I have a suspicion that concertinas would have been played in Chicago during the times O'Neill was collecting. In his book, Minstrels and Musicians, he has sections on the pipers, flute players, and fiddlers. Why no reference to concertina players? At first I wondered if he thought it to be a "borrowed "instrument, but figure that it is no more "borrowed" than the flute or fiddle. Gearóid ÓhAllmhuráin has written his dissertation on the concertina styles and players from his native Clare( sadly not in print for purchase), but what of other strong traditions in the west of Ireland pre Stack Ryan? Ryan has been credited by Tom Carey, Bernard O'Sullivan, and others on the Clare Set recordings. But we should assume that others were present in Clare, Limerick, and Galway before Stack Ryan. Where we can look back a few generations for uilleann pipe history, it seems that the concertina in Irish traditional music appeared right at the begining of the 20th century. Who would have influenced William Mullaly?

[Dan Worrall]

Hi Lawrence,

 

I've recently finished a lengthy piece entitled 'Notes on the Beginnings of Concertina playing in Ireland, 1834-1930', which has been reviewed and edited, and is currently being loaded on the Concertina Library at www.concertina.com. I'm not exactly sure of the final release date, but it should be very soon, and I will post the notice here. The article is of a similar scope to my earlier 'Brief History of the Anglo Concertina in the US' piece, also at the Library. I've been fortunate to receive editing comments and suggestions from Gearóid ÓhAllmhuráin and Noel Hill, along with Randy Merris and Allan Atlas.

 

In this new piece, I attempted to address all the questions you have asked. In short, O'Neill ignored the anglo, along with the tin whistle, accordion and banjo, all of which were in full use at the time of his Irish visit. Some of his Clare sources were close friends of concertina players, and there is no chance he didn't know about them. The reasons he ignored them are complex, and I'll let you read them when the article comes out, to see what you think of them. And yes, there were much earlier German and Anglo-German concertina players who came before Stack Ryan and Elizabeth Crotty and William Mullaly (lots of good documents taking 'anglos' back to the 1860s and earlier), and the extent of this early playing---both in numbers and geography---and what types of music people were playing on it may surprise you (it did me).

 

I'll be eager to see what you and others think of this piece; like you, I've long been curious about the beginnings of the concertina in Ireland.

 

Cheers,

Dan

Edited October 24, 2007 by Dan Worrall

[Guest Peter Laban]

I think this discussion already shows the danger of compilations of commercial recordings: examples of only a few (outgoing) players from a limited area are taken as all there was. It's the danger of a recording project like the 'concertina styles' one, it overly highlights the few players included but not the arguably far more numerous the compilers didn't find. In the Cree area Solus Lillis for example will be regarded as important as his contemporary, Stack Ryan.

 

Some of us will just about recognise names like Mary Haren, Micho Doyle, Bridget Dineen or Pappy Looney because of a few rare recordings were made almost by co-incidence but most players just played locally and are by and large only remembered locally because they were never recorded much and if they were, recordings were never made widely available.

 

 

Older people will tell you the concertina was extremely numerous among players, at least in Clare. It has been said that 'every house had a concertina in it' and while that may have been a slight exaggeration, it probably was only a slight one: I have met people who could name more than twenty concertina players active during the early 20th century in the area between Spanish Point and Quilty alone, not quite one in every house but near enough.

 

Tapping into local knowledge it's easy to find more names: Willie Clancy's mother played the concertina, the man in the next house, Peter Smyth played. He was Kitty Hayes' father. Kitty told me about several houses along her way to school as a young girl had concertinas in them, in some she stopped sometimes to pick up a few tips or a tune, notably from Mrs Garrihy at Furglan Cross.

 

Martin Rochford told me that when he was learning concertinas were equally numerous in East Clare during the twenties and thirties. 'Promising youths would go to the fiddle, the less promising to the concertina' is another thing he said, cost of the instrument (the fiddle way more expensive and rare) was a big factor in this. The easy availability of low quality instruments probably also played a big part in them being overlooked by historians and recording fieldworkers (ever notice rarely a German concertina, the overwhelmingly most common concertina in use, is played on 'field-recordings'?) .

Edited October 24, 2007 by Peter Laban

[Lawrence Reeves]

Larry Lynch wrote a book on the Sets danced in older variants a few years back. A real plus for me was he not only transcribed the set as taught to him by older dancers, but noted the "older" tempo they were danced. He was very careful to listen and recite, instead of create his version of a Set. I was also happy to see that he listed the players from each area, the instrument they played, and a list of tunes popular with these players. It is great to see that some tune choices are still in use, however my feeling is that the tempos have been pushed too far. Not only is the music compromised when played too quickly, the dancers can't put all of the subtle footwork into play. Another area I find odd, is how certain figures of the sets have changed from reels to polkas, or jigs to reels. I am no dancer, but play for them, and have to feel as though a "pure" rendition at older tempo, would allow a better interaction between dancer and musician. I have to wonder about the connection of the "German" concertina and Sets brought into the west of Ireland from the British Army returning from the continent in the 1850s. I learnt an odd jig from Gearóid ÓhAllmhuráin about 8 or 9 years ago during a workshop. I have also heard it on an older Kilfenora Ceili Band CD. This tune sounds very "un- Irish", but certainly in that area of Clare it would have been danced to.

[Dan Worrall]

I have been going through my bookcase and organizing lately. I am glancing back through books on history of fiddles, such as the Northern Fiddler, and Between the Jigs and the Reels which focus on Donegal fiddle traditions. In contrast, books written by Captain Francis O'Neill surprise me in the lack of concertina reference. I have a suspicion that concertinas would have been played in Chicago during the times O'Neill was collecting. In his book, Minstrels and Musicians, he has sections on the pipers, flute players, and fiddlers. Why no reference to concertina players? At first I wondered if he thought it to be a "borrowed "instrument, but figure that it is no more "borrowed" than the flute or fiddle. Gearóid ÓhAllmhuráin has written his dissertation on the concertina styles and players from his native Clare( sadly not in print for purchase), but what of other strong traditions in the west of Ireland pre Stack Ryan? Ryan has been credited by Tom Carey, Bernard O'Sullivan, and others on the Clare Set recordings. But we should assume that others were present in Clare, Limerick, and Galway before Stack Ryan. Where we can look back a few generations for uilleann pipe history, it seems that the concertina in Irish traditional music appeared right at the begining of the 20th century. Who would have influenced William Mullaly?

 

Lawrence,

 

Just a footnote to this discussion. By now you might have looked through my article on the beginnings of Irish concertina playing ( http://www.concertina.com/worrall/beginnin...ina-in-ireland/ ), and have seen there what I learned...that O'Neill ignored not only the concertina but the melodeon, tin whistle, and banjo, as he considered them modern instruments and 'beyond the pale' for Irish music, as we might consider an electric guitar today.

 

I heard from Nicholas Carolan this morning on this subject. He is the Director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, but more importantly to this discussion, the author of the definitive biography of O'Neill (A Harvest Saved: Frances O'Neill and Irish Music in Chicago, Ossian Press, 1997). He echoes what I wrote:

 

"...the middle-aged O'Neill, writing his discursive works in the 1910s, was living mentally in the pre-concertina musical world of his youth and that of his fellow Chicago musicians, none of whom were very young, and also in that of his written sources. In addition, I presume that he knew nothing of an emerging Irish concertina tradition. On his 1906 trip home he was actively seeking out pipers and fiddle players. He presumably thought of the instrument only as one used (as it was) for the playing of general popular music, including sometimes Irish tunes. The tin whistle (which he himself played) and melodeon were similarly off his radar in research terms and in terms of their being 'Irish' instruments."

 

For your question, "Who would have influenced Mullaly?", you've seen that the main thrust of my work has been to show that the concertina was played nationwide in Ireland, not just predominantly in Clare as several writers have previously suggested. There are many references to these non-Clare players in my article. Mr. Carolan added a few more: he heard his paternal grandfather, a grand-aunt and several others of their siblings play the concertina during his youth in the 1950s, in County Meath (I'll add these to the list in the article). When taken with the other reports of other non-Clare players, Mullaly may well have had as many concertina-playing neighbors in the eastern Irish midlands as Elizabeth Crotty did in Clare.

 

I put forth the idea that Clare was an area where the concertina and other parts of ITM were preserved by geography and poverty. He agreed, and added another idea:

 

"Clare is a highly musical county of course, and aided by its geographical position was an important survival area for older music in the mid-20th century. But it was not unique. It is a question to what degree 20th-century perceptions of its relative musicality were skewed by the national broadcaster."

 

In other words, when the 'revival' came, so did a music press (and a brand new set of concertina players and non-Irish music aficianados) who were not as up to speed on the origins of Irish concertina playing as they might otherwise be, because of the half century long 'lean period'. Now that regional Irish newspapers are coing to digital light, that small part of the instrument's history can be corrected.

 

Cheers,

Dan

 

ps. I'm told that ITMA is re-issuing the Mullaly recordings in 2008, with an expanded set of notes.

[allan atlas]

see also Gearoid's article in volume 3 of Papers of the ICA..........Allan

[Dan Worrall]

see also Gearoid's article in volume 3 of Papers of the ICA..........Allan

Hi Allan,

That is a very nice summary of Clare players, but it doesn't treat the matters at hand in this particular thread, namely the extent of non-Clare players like Mullaly in the 'old' days, and the reasons why O'Neill ignored the concertina in his writings.

Cheers,

Dan

[michael sam wild]

On an RTE interview to launch his Concertina 2 CD Noel Hill commented that there are a lot of young players who are going back to the source musicians. He reckoned his generation 'screwed it up' and he mentioned his disillusionment after his earlier releases. I am pleased at the recent issues of more CDs of older players from archives, even since this thread started and of course Dan's research helps tremendously.

 

 

 

 

 

I belive it helps one's playing and understanding to go back to the well for water at regular intervals

Edited July 19, 2012 by michael sam wild

[Ptarmigan]

I think this discussion already shows the danger of compilations of commercial recordings: examples of only a few (outgoing) players from a limited area are taken as all there was. It's the danger of a recording project like the 'concertina styles' one, it overly highlights the few players included but not the arguably far more numerous the compilers didn't find.

 

Indeed Peter.

 

For example, on a Scottish music forum recently someone asked the question ~ Are there many people using the English Concertina in Scotland today. This was the first reply:

 

"There are not many at all. Myself, Norman Chalmers, Stuart Eydeman and a few more in ceilidh bands."

Simon Thoumire

 

However, I was very curious to find out just how many there really are & at the last count the list has reached no fewer than <<< 42 >>> active players today!!!!

 

Cheers

Dick

[Ptarmigan]

He reckoned his generation 'screwed it up' and he mentioned his disillusionment after his earlier releases.

 

I don't think Noel should be too hard on himself, after all he helped to create loads of interest & kick start the huge enthusiasm for & in the Concertina today, in Irish Music. Musicians will always be going back to source for the pure drop.

 

Interesting to read that O'neill didn't think the Whistle, Melodeon & Concertina were Irish enough.

It makes you wonder what he'd think of the Bouzouki, Banjo, Bodhran, Guitar & Mandolin in todays sessions.

 

Cheers

Dick

[michael sam wild]

I'm not sure that Noel included himself in this. I think he had stuck to the 'good old way' but that there were lots of way out bands who mixed all sorts of music with Irish traditional styles.

 

Where do we actually stand today? I am very interested in how lots of young players are playing unaccompanied and simple single note styles as though they are trying to fix the tunes and ornaments before we take off on another style of fusion music.

 

Ireland seems to be in a state of working out where it stands in Europe ( what with mass immigration and racial homogenisation ) and the world in general . I know that, in every decade, from time to time, having messed around with jazz, blues,folk, world music etc , I have always come back to the source and my old home recordings, LPs and the new CDs of old tunes. That's where i am at the moment. Drinking again from the pure water of the source, the pure drop.

 

Mike

[tombilly]

O'Neill ignored not only the concertina but the melodeon, tin whistle, and banjo, as he considered them modern instruments and 'beyond the pale' for Irish music, as we might consider an electric guitar today.

 

The whistle??? I could possibly understand him thinking that way about box and banjo but surely the whistle is a very old instrument. I think Fintan Vallely has pictures of Irish bone whistles in his book Timber. Maybe he considered the whistle as too simple an instrument but hardly too modern. There are plenty of accounts of people fashioning simple whistles and flutes from elder bushes, grasses, reeds etc.

[Guest Peter Laban]

O'Neill did omit a few instruments but I don't think there's any hard evidence he thought them 'too modern'. There was a discussion about this fairly recently, elsewhere. Paul de Grae put forward a few points in that discussion:

 

He certainly played the whistle and the flute himself.

 

in the chapter about the flute (and it's patrons) in IMM he wrote:

 

No instrument was in such common use among the Irish peasantry as the flute. From the "penny whistle" to the keyed instrument in sections it was always deservedly popular, for unlike the fiddle and the bagpipe it involved no expense beyond the purchase price. Complete in itself, the flute needed but a wetting to be always in tune, and disjointed or whole could be carried about without display or inconvenience. Besides, if not broken by accident or design it would outlive its owner. Soft or shrill, its carrying power was remarkable. Who that has heard the mellow music of either whistle or flute a mile away on a fine evening, will ever forget the experience?

 

He also said :

 

As most Irish fluters were amateurs, or rather non-professionals, few are the imprints which their footsteps have left on the sands of time.

 

 

 

Personally I think it would rather be an issue of status, pipes at the top closely followed by the fiddle, at some distance from that the flute and all others below that again and probably just played by amateurs, gaining little attention and leave few imprints in the sands of time.

Edited November 4, 2008 by Peter Laban

[michael sam wild]

O'Neill did omit a few instruments but I don't think there's any hard evidence he thought them 'too modern'. There was a discussion about this fairly recently, elsewhere. Paul de Grae put forward a few points in that discussion:

 

He certainly played the whistle and the flute himself.

 

in the chapter about the flute (and it's patrons) in IMM he wrote:

 

No instrument was in such common use among the Irish peasantry as the flute. From the "penny whistle" to the keyed instrument in sections it was always deservedly popular, for unlike the fiddle and the bagpipe it involved no expense beyond the purchase price. Complete in itself, the flute needed but a wetting to be always in tune, and disjointed or whole could be carried about without display or inconvenience. Besides, if not broken by accident or design it would outlive its owner. Soft or shrill, its carrying power was remarkable. Who that has heard the mellow music of either whistle or flute a mile away on a fine evening, will ever forget the experience?

 

He also said :

 

As most Irish fluters were amateurs, or rather non-professionals, few are the imprints which their footsteps have left on the sands of time.

 

 

 

Personally I think it would rather be an issue of status, pipes at the top closely followed by the fiddle, at some distance from that the flute and all others below that again and probably just played by amateurs, gaining little attention and leave few imprints in the sands of time.

 

I think you are right. Status and perception are quite important, particularly amongst those who play to the public rather than within the tradition. It's hard to pose in front of a mirror with a gob iron or whistle rather than a guitar or banjo, 'sticky out' instruments rule!

Mike

[Dan Worrall]

O'Neill did omit a few instruments but I don't think there's any hard evidence he thought them 'too modern'. There was a discussion about this fairly recently, elsewhere. Paul de Grae put forward a few points in that discussion:

 

He certainly played the whistle and the flute himself.

 

in the chapter about the flute (and it's patrons) in IMM he wrote:

 

No instrument was in such common use among the Irish peasantry as the flute. From the "penny whistle" to the keyed instrument in sections it was always deservedly popular, for unlike the fiddle and the bagpipe it involved no expense beyond the purchase price. Complete in itself, the flute needed but a wetting to be always in tune, and disjointed or whole could be carried about without display or inconvenience. Besides, if not broken by accident or design it would outlive its owner. Soft or shrill, its carrying power was remarkable. Who that has heard the mellow music of either whistle or flute a mile away on a fine evening, will ever forget the experience?

 

He also said :

 

As most Irish fluters were amateurs, or rather non-professionals, few are the imprints which their footsteps have left on the sands of time.

 

 

 

Personally I think it would rather be an issue of status, pipes at the top closely followed by the fiddle, at some distance from that the flute and all others below that again and probably just played by amateurs, gaining little attention and leave few imprints in the sands of time.

 

I think you are right. Status and perception are quite important, particularly amongst those who play to the public rather than within the tradition. It's hard to pose in front of a mirror with a gob iron or whistle rather than a guitar or banjo, 'sticky out' instruments rule!

Mike

 

Hi Mike, Peter,

 

I must have missed the tail end of this thread, back in November. Let me fill in some thoughts on O'Neill and his disdain for 'modern' instruments. Firstly, it had already been mentioned that O'Neill played a tinwhistle. In the fifth post I quoted Nicholas Carolan on that. But what he thought of it is clear from the record. First, let's look at his seminal early 1900s 'Irish Music and Musicians'. In the foreword of the 1973 reprint, Barry O'Neill could not help but do a count:

 

The titled sketches include 191 Uillean pipers, 54 fiddlers, 38 harpers, 19 pipemakers, 12 fluters, 10 warpipers, 8 music collectors, one accordion player, and one ceili band. No players of the concertina, banjo, or tinwhistle are mentioned. These numbers certainly are not intended to reflect the relative sizes of each population. Rather, they show Captain O'Neill's attitude as to which instruments are properly traditional ones.

 

O'Neill wrote a lot of things, but this next little quote pretty much sums up what he thought of the whistle. He related an incident at a Cork Feis in 1906 where some "wonderful" young dancers were to perform on stage:

 

With commendable promptness the dancers and the expectant onlookers, many of whom had traveled far to enjoy and encourage the revival of traditional Irish music, were treated to a ‘tune on the pipes’? No, sad to relate, but on a French celluloid flageolet…

 

 

We should remember here that the whistle is not as old as some may think, when one considers its reach to the masses. Fintan Vallely (Companion to Irish Trad'l Music) had this to say about that:

 

The principle of the whistle has been around for a long time, in many cultures, world wide, but as an instrument of Irish music dates only to the nineteenth century.

 

He relates that there was a precursor, the hand-made wooden flageolet, allearing in the late 1700s, but it was the introduction of the tin whistle that set things off. Although first made in Britain in 1825, he continues that:

 

Only with mass production was their cost reduced sufficiently to give the instrument mass popularity, and among the first such manufacturers was the Clarke company in 1843.

 

From the Clarke's site, we learn that Clarke's first tin whistle

 

played so well that Robert decided to begin a business manufacturing these instruments. He also heard that there were big opportunities for manufacture in Lancashire. Together with his son, he walked all the way from Coney Weston to Manchester, pushing his tools and materials in a handbarrow. On the way he stopped in villages where there were markets and made the Tinwhistles. These he sold to villagers. Sometimes he met navigators, Irish labourers who were building railways and canals, and sold his Tinwhistles to them. These Irishmen took them back to Ireland, where the English Tinwhistles rapidly became Ireland's favourite folk instrument. When Robert reached Manchester he set up his factory in a shed and soon became a successful manufacturer.

 

 

O'Neill, when he returned to Ireland late in life as a collector, would have seen these cheap factory-made whistles by the score, as he saw German concertinas and of course banjos, likewise cheap and factory built. He did not however deign to recognize them in his writing. The modern world was moving fast from the days of his youth, and he wrote often of his distaste for it. This strong distaste for where things were headed was also wrapped up in the cause of Irish/Gaelic nationalism, which we tend to overlook these days. Here are a couple of period quotes from others that tell you about O'Neill's world; he was a staunch supporter of the Gaelic League. The first was from a speech at a Gaelic League meeting in Dublin in 1908, the second from 1884:

 

They should get back to their native music. They were at one time the most musical nation when a harp hung in every house, but now they had got down to the concertina and melodeon, and even to the mouth organ. They had thrown away the music of their great composers for the abortions and abominations of the English music halls, which if they had any sense at all had an immoral sense that any man would be ashamed of.

 

Since the Union, Ireland has shuffled off her ancient language, with its thousand years of history and its striking imaginative literature, with almost indecent haste. She has neglected the priceless treasure of her ancient national music, and her western peasantry sing the music hall songs of London. The Irish harp and the Irish pipes have given way to the banjo and the concertina. The people have even in thousands of cases changed their names, lest any trace of their Celtic nationality should cling to them.

 

It is in this environment that we must think of the Captain. New-ness and foreign went hand in hand....English tinwhistles, American banjos, German concertinas and accordions all flooded in the country in the time gap between his birth and when he finally returned. Status was much less of a thing with O'Neill, in my opinion. After all, he was championing the music of a poor peasantry...he made this point over and over again in his writing. Purity was more what he was after....the same sort of national purity that Cecil Sharp was looking for in England at the same time.

 

Cheers,

Dan

Edited January 15, 2009 by Dan Worrall

[Guest Peter Laban]

I have no doubt Francis O'Neill was affected by a few misguided nationalist notions as to what was correct and what was alien and that these notions coloured his writing. Ofcourse the 'status' I wrote about was/is determined by a complex network of similar notions. I remember Martin Rochford describing how he started the fiddle at ten years of age: after having got the basics on the tin-whistle it was time to 'move up', the middling would go to the concertina and those showing signs of promise would go to the fiddle (pipes were not an option at that time and place, Martin did eventually ended up playing them as well). No doubt the same mechanism made that when Paddy Murphy won his first medal at the fleadh it was in the 'misc' category, a separate class for the concertina had yet to be inserted and long after that there was the lingering sense the concertina was a mere 'women's instrument'.

[Dan Worrall]

I have no doubt Francis O'Neill was affected by a few misguided nationalist notions as to what was correct and what was alien and that these notions coloured his writing. Ofcourse the 'status' I wrote about was/is determined by a complex network of similar notions. I remember Martin Rochford describing how he started the fiddle at ten years of age: after having got the basics on the tin-whistle it was time to 'move up', the middling would go to the concertina and those showing signs of promise would go to the fiddle (pipes were not an option at that time and place, Martin did eventually ended up playing them as well). No doubt the same mechanism made that when Paddy Murphy won his first medal at the fleadh it was in the 'misc' category, a separate class for the concertina had yet to be inserted and long after that there was the lingering sense the concertina was a mere 'women's instrument'.

By the time Paddy Murphy started to win fleadhs and All-Irelands, in the 1950s, the concertina had been in Ireland for a century. That time period, and the contemporary reaction to the concertina then, is not even close to the reaction to the concertina seen in O'Neill's day, when the German concertina had been around only a few decades. The reason I put the two Gaelic League quotes in was to show that the concertina and banjo at that time were strongly connected in the minds of O'Neill's Irish social and musical counterparts to minstrel music and the London music halls....the modern rock and pop music of their era. In my research, that fact is clear....there are many accounts that show it. Another thing that those old accounts show is that working class people were entranced by the 'modern' German concertina....there had never been anything like it before, and it wasn't yet thought as a 'step down', as it was in the late 20th century. It was a modern and nicely inexpensive instrument, good for playing modern music. Of course, there also was a fair number of people in the countryside starting to use it for 'regular' Irish music....but that was hardly its sole use when O'Neill visited in 1906. Anyone of that era who wanted the 'real stuff' as it was played 'in the old days' would have difficulty with newer, imported instruments...just as you would today in a Milltown trad session if someone brought in an electric bass guitar or an electronic synthesizer. That, not 'status', is where O'Neill was coming from, I think. It is a bit of a slippery slope to think that the concertina we know today was always thought of in the same manner as it is now; people back then didn't think of it as a low-status starter instrument, but as a just-introduced instrument with some interesting characteristics. That situation had changed by the time Paddy Murphy started competing in fleadhs...and of course, by then no one there was playing much 'pop' music hall and minstrel stuff on it any more.

 

Regarding the term 'misguided,' I would quibble a tiny bit about that wording. O'Neill lived when Ireland was under foreign occupation. The land was owned by largely absentee English; the courts were English, the soldiers were led by English. Schools in my grandparent's youth in Mullagh and Inagh forbade use of the Irish language. O'Neill and his contemporaries saw that, and saw also that the village music of their youth was being dropped wholesale in favor of pop music that was coming largely from London tastes, on imported instruments. They can be more than forgiven if they saw a connection between occupation and that pop music, and then thought that the founding of an Irish State was a way out of that. It is easy for us today, in a kinder and gentler situation, to forget that world, and thus discount their opinions and desires. Political correctness might suggest that we should see them today as 'misguided', but we don't walk in the same shoes. There is an Irish State today, and an EU.

 

Just my thoughts.

Edited January 15, 2009 by Dan Worrall

[Guest Peter Laban]

Regarding the term 'misguided,' I would quibble a tiny bit about that wording. O'Neill lived when Ireland was under foreign occupation.

 

My use of it is coloured to an extend by today's version of nationalist notions where it comes to music. I understand O'Neill's background and what motivated him. But it was the same background and thinking that eventually told the people of Mullagh it was not OK to dance sets on social occasions and that they should dance a contrived and made up artificial notion of pure (ceili) dancing instead. The protectors of the purity more often than not bring their own oppression. And in that sense I feel their train of thought is misguided.

 

Even today the notion that the pinnacle of culture is 'an Irishman playing his native music on the pipes' (I have heard Noel Hill say that on more than one occasion) is very much alive in some circles. I believe strongly this music belongs to the players and that the players, collectively, will ultimately decide what belongs, what will be embraced and what will be left by the wayside. And in that sense the concertina has been the popular choice: easy to handle, originally cheap and very suitable to put music under the dancers feet (at least until louder accordeons arrived). The pipes may have been the choice of the self appointed guardians of the culture but let's face it, you should see musicians' reactions when a piper turns up where music is played.

Edited January 16, 2009 by Peter Laban