Irish, A Whole New World

[JimLucas]

Apparently Henk understands me, but then I am 1/8 Dutch, so maybe that helps...

Hmm. I'm supposedly 1/4 Dutch. I wonder if he understands me?

[bill_mchale]

Its not that a mixed style would necessarily be bad, in fact it might be brilliant but it would also not really be traditional anymore either.

So contemporary "Irish traditional music" with bouzouki (a Greek instrument, recently adopted), banjo (an African-American instrument, adopted somewhat earlier), or violin (an Italian instrument, adopted even eariler) isn't really traditional? Of course it is!

 

Well Violin has been in most traditional music so long that I doubt any of the modern folk traditions could really be said to have been innovative in any of the genres we recognize today.

 

Instruments will enter and leave traditions slowly over time, the bozouki, the banjo the accordion all took years, even decades before they were completely accepted as parts of tradition; it makes it rough for the players of the instruments, but it helps keep the pace of change within tradition to a pace that allows the tradition to remain a tradition and not morph into something else.

 

I know that's not what you meant, Bill, but it shows where your argument leads if taken too far.  Somewhere, you have to draw a limiting line, since everything in the tradition -- every song, every fragment of every tune, every instrument, every stylistic element -- was once "new".  You seem to be drawing that line at now (or a little before now?), suggesting that anything added before you became involved with the music is "traditional", while anything people try to add later is not.  But traditions dochange, and still remain traditions.  And even things once considered radical and threatening (I remember my parents' reaction to Elvis Presley) either die out or become comfortably "traditional".

 

Not at all, I recognize that Irish Music (or any other traditional music) is different today than it was 20 years ago and it will be different in 20 years from what it is now. But I see traditional music genres as being similar to language; the vocabularity within a given tradition changes slowly enough that people can recognize it across generations. A person can pick up a recording of Irish Music made in the 1920s and still recognize it as ITM, just as a person can understand the movies made in the 1930s (the advent of talkies ). In contrast look at less traditional forms of music; Genres like Country and Rock barely resemble the Country and Rock music of the 1950s (there are exceptions.. but they are definitely exceptions not the rule). Now what has happened to Rock and Country is not wrong, but neither is trying to be Traditional Music. Elvis was many things, but he and is music was not and is not in and of itself a tradition.

 

In other words the issue is rate of change. Music that changes too quickly will loose its connection with the past. Rock Music came from the Blues but it changed so rapidly that by the 1980s and 1990s there was little of the Blues left in it among the new and emerging artists of the time. But that connection with the past is in large measure what "traditional" music is all about.

 

BTW, tunes are often the most fluid element in a tradition, at least in ITM; while there are always standards that seem to transcend time and space, there is often also people introducing new tunes from other sources, either ones they have written or picked up from somewhere else (I think it is highly appropriate to borrow tunes from one tradition and reset them for another tradition). Tunes are the sentences of music traditions, its the musical language you say them in that define what tradition you are speaking .

 

Change will occur in the traditions whether we like it or not, there is no need to rush it along.

On balance, I would also say that there's no need to dogmatically resist it. I would even go so far as to say that dogmatic resistance is bad, stifling not only creativity, but tradition itself. If someone tries to introduce something new, some people -- you among them? -- will almost certainly resist, some others may embrace it, and some will just sit back and wait for the dust to settle. Then there are four possible results:

.. 1) The innovation will become accepted and integrated within the tradition, altering it irrevocably.

.. 2) The innovation will become accepted and integrated within the tradition, but as a small sub-genre.

.. 3) The innovation will fall away for lack of support.

.. 4) The innovation will spawn a new tradition, derivative but independent. The old tradition may either (4a) die out or (4b) continue a parallel existence.

 

I would argue that the resistence is a good and healthy thing in traditional music; I think it is needed to keep change within the music at a pace that allows the music to remain a distinct tradition. If everyone accepted everything that someone brought to a session the genre would quickly morph beyond the point where it was recognizable, it would seek to be a tradition. Innovations need to earn their place in the tradition, they need to show that they can add to the traditions richness without taking away the traditions essential character.

 

Consider the Button Accordion, particularly with half-step tuning; it probably took 30 years or more before the instrument was really accepted in Irish Music. As a box player I feel bad for the players who had to struggle against resistence from fiddle players and flute players (two instruments I think sound really good with the Box). On the other hand though, I am glad that the Box really had to earn its spot. It forced the people who wanted to see the box an accepted part of the tradition to prove that it belonged there.

 

I would say that The Beatles' use of sitar in rock music is an example of case 3.  But probably most instances of case 3 are things neither of us has ever heard of.

 

I think it is also important to remember that Rock music isn't traditional music, indeed it is a genre that has trived on innovation. A band that sounds like another band in rock music is likely never going to get anywhere and even a band that makes it albums all sound alike is likely only to have one or two albums sell well.

 

I think an interesting example of case 2 is the introduction of the soprano saxophone into traditional Swedish music.  A few years ago I knew of one person using soprano sax for Swedish fiddle tunes.  Now I know two, and I suspect there may be others, though not many.  The important thing is that they are respected and welcomed in the tradition.  There isn't (yet?) a mass movement to the instrument, but the traditional fiddlers love it when these guys join them for a parking lot jam, and they're also in great demand as both stage performers and dance musicians.

 

There are many examples of case 1 in Irish music.  Past examples would include the incorporation of the violin and banjo -- noted above -- but also the flute, the uilleann pipes (about as different from the old pipes as a car from a wagon), and -- of course -- the accordion and concertina.  More recent examples would be the adoption of the bouzouki, use of chords other than simple triads and 7ths, and the low D whistle.

 

Well the thing with flute, the pipes and the Fiddle, they all entered before there was much in the way of bands or sessions; in other words the tradition was markedly different then than it is now. Solo playing was more the rule than it is today. The bouzouki and the expanded use of chords are definitely modern innovations but hardly ones that were immediately ebraced; bet you will still find people in some areas that object to both. The low whistle I think got a pass because it basically fills the roll of a flute but is just a bigger version of a the whistle. That being said, it is not universal yet; I don't think I have seen anyone play a low whistle in a session here in Baltimore. They either play regular whistles or play a flute (and for my money the flute is a much better instrument, much more expressive.)

 

A major example of case 4a is the polska, the dominant traditional dance form in Sweden.  The name means "Polish" -- in both Swedish and Polish -- and in its various forms it derives from Polish dances that became widely popular throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.  (Irish "mazurkas", by the way, make great hambo tunes.  The hambo is a form of polska, and "mazurka" means dance from Mazur, the lake district of northeastern Poland.)  Not only the dance, but several of the polska tunes extant in Sweden today can be traced back to Polish originals.  Variants of the polska are also danced in other Scandinavian countries.  One of them, the sønderhoning (named for the town of Sønderho, on the small island of Fanø in Denmark) retains the dance form, but not the tunes.  A few of the traditional sønderhoning tunes are, in fact, variants of Playford (17th-century English) dance tunes.

 

There's another traditional Swedish dance known as the engelska, a word that means "English", and the dance resembles certain English reels.  Other common dance forms in Sweden -- and in fact, throughout the western world -- are the waltz, polka, and schottische... all foreign "intrusions".  But today, they are not only "traditional", there don't seem to be any surviving Swedish dances from pre-polska local traditions.  Is this bad?  Few Swedes would think so.  It's not a matter of principle, just history.

Few Swedes today would object because ultimately none of them remember what (if anything) came before. These new dances constitute a newer tradition to whatever it was they replaced; to any who knew and loved the older tradition the loss of that tradition would in fact constitute a tragedy.

 

If change were to occur in any tradition at too rapid a pace the tradition gets lost in all the innovation. The tradition becomes something else and the tradition is lost.

 

Examples of 4b would be jazz evolving from earlier traditions, and the hybrid known as "folk rock".

 

Jazz and folk rock aren't really traditions though, they are genres (Though Jazz does come close to being a tradition in its own right).

 

I think the dust has yet to settle regarding the introduction of non-"simple" Balkan rhythms into Irish music by the likes of Kevin Burke and Andy Irvine.  Might become a 3, or maybe a small parallel 4.  At least one of these tunes has become popular among some local "Irish" players.

 

I said there were four possible results, but it now occurs to me that I've seen a fifth.  The early Chieftains (recordings 1-4) combined Irish traditional music with chamber music-lilke arrangements.  (After that they developed a more orchestral style that I don't like nearly as much.)  Their playing had a major impact on both Irish traditional music and its popularity, yet you find little of that sort of arrangement today even in the groups that got their start listening to The Chieftains.  So I think their innovations significantly influenced the tradition without becoming a significant part of it.

 

The Chieftans opened the door to the popular consumption of Irish Music and it certainly did inspire a number of people to learn how to play the music. I would suggest that there limited success in perpetuating a style is that they are mainly performers, their touring schedule limits how much they can really teach. Newer players learned from the people who had been playing long before the Chieftans broke out into stardom. Players from smaller bands of the period and from the old Celi bands of the 30s-50s were the ones who really passed it on to most of the big name players of the 1970s and 1980s, well them along with individual players who never played in a band at all.

 

I have been playing Button Accordion for about 2 years now (and fooling around with the Concertina for about a year). My first teacher was a man by the name of Tony Zeiselberger who learned how to play from Billy McComiskey; I have also taken lessons from Billy McComiskey. Billy in turn learned from Sean McGlynn and Sean had come over from East Galway (Who Sean learned from I don't know). To me that is what traditional music is all about; it is the music passed down from generation to generation. Even if I had started when I was a kid, I would never be able to play exactly like Billy just as Billy doesn't play like Sean. But the tradition grows naturally.

 

Little would be served if blue grass was played like Irish and Irish like Danish music.

I wonder how you can be so sure. I know that Cape Breton fiddler Jerry Holland and the musicians from Fanø (the Danish island I mentioned above) really enjoy playing each others' music. How much of an impact that will have on either tradition is yet to be seen, but I don't see any of them trying to enforce a rigid separation.

I never said there was anything wrong in being proficient in more than one tradition and I am sure there is some cross over that occurs, but IMHO one needs to be careful to keep the genres distinct. If the styles merge too greatly you end up with something that is neither Fanø nor Cape Breton. Essentially destroying two traditions to possibly gain a new one.

 

And this is ultimately my point. I love Irish Traditional Music, I love its rythems, its style, its unique musical language. It provides a link to my past the way no other music on the face of the earth can or ever will be able to. I grew up listening to it; my parents are both from Ireland so I heard it all the time at many of the social activities my parents brought me too when I was young. It helps me feel connected to those roots.

 

From this perspective I could care less about the emergence of new genres or even new Traditions; none of them would be able to bring me what Irish Music has, and of course what I hope one day to pass on to any children if I should be lucky enough to be blessed with them.

 

On the other hand tunes can be liberally swiped between traditions and rearranged and reset to fit within a new tradition .

Some can; some can't. I've heard tunes I know to be American played as traditional Danish or Norwegian dance tunes, and I haven't found anyone who can say which came first. But there's a whole body of Swedish tunes that would require major surgery -- on either the tune or the adopting tradition -- to "fit" into either bluegrass or Irish. But that doesn't mean it can't/won't happen. E.g., there's the group SWÅP.

Yeah I am sure that there are some tunes that are so unique to every tradition that it would be difficult if not impossible to fit them within another tradition. That being said there are probably a ton of reels, jigs and polkas that could easily be transplanted from one tradition to another (I know Cape Breton Fiddle Tunes have been borrowed rather liberally by Irish Fiddle Players).

 

Personally, I think innovation and change are great.  They shouldn't be forced, but neither should they be forced out.

 

Jim I am curious, did you grow up with a particular Traditional Music Genre or did you discover it as an adult? If the latter is there any particular Tradition that you love more than all the rest? The reason I am asking is that I suspect that the more emotionally rooted you are to a particular tradition the less likely you are to want to see that tradition be significantly changed. Heck you notice it even outside Traditional Music; how many 50-60 year olds do you know who listen to rap and modern punk as opposed to the old rock standards of the 60s and early 70s.

 

--

Bill

[Henk van Aalten]

Apparently Henk understands me, but then I am 1/8 Dutch, so maybe that helps...

Hmm. I'm supposedly 1/4 Dutch. I wonder if he understands me?

Jim

 

I cover the whole range from zero-Dutch to double-Dutch

[JimLucas]

I cover the whole range from zero-Dutch to double-Dutch 

Henk, have you ever taken part in a Dutch concert, perhaps fortified against stage fright by a bit of Dutch courage?

 

But "Dutch" used to mean, at least in America, also the "deutsch", and in fact any Germanic people, including the German-Swiss. Hence the bit in the drinking song,

Oh, the Souse family is the best family

That ever came over from old Germany.

There's the Highland Dutch, and the Lowland Dutch,

The Rotterdam Dutch, and the ***dam Dutch.

No, the censorship isn't mine. Though everybody knows how to pronounce those stars, that's the way it's normally published here in the US, since long before Howard Stern was forced off the radio for talking like an average 12-year-old. But that snippet is especially pertinent in this thread, since in the version reportedly sung at the University of Calfornia "the ***dam Dutch" has been replace by... You guessed it! "The Irish!"