I stumbled apon a great video of Irish music going down somewhere far away (I think). Search 'Kilrush polka set' on u tube and you should find it. Apart from being a great video, with a concertina player, what are the tunes? What makes up the set?

Later, Alan.

Hm. Aside from it happening somewhere in Thailand (can't imagine it been in Viet Nam), what makes it spectacular?
That Asians play Irish music?

Ummm, they call them the Kilrush Polka no.1 & the Kilrush Polka no.2, followed by the Concertina Reel - it's a set from the "Paddy & Bridget & Their Great Friends" album.

Yes... that Asians play Irish music and have so much fun doing it. I found the video pretty astounding. They were having a great time. Banjo, pipes, guitar, PA, mando, Anglo concertina. I was grinning from ear to ear. The power of the music and the community it creates cuts across all boundaries and gathers us in to the party. Play on!

Link here.

Then you haven't seen clips from Japan.
Asians have been enjoying European folk music for decades it seems.
Many are playing Irish music.
As Jody sais, let's party on, Come on, you Irish, play some English, Russian, French, German, Swedish. Show how interested you are in the Word's music, just as the World seems to show it's interest in your music.

Thanks for the info on the tunes - it is a great clip - and it was a surprize for me, like stumbling into a cafe thousands of miles away from home and finding the music going on. Wonderful!


Alan.

A great friend of mine is a brilliant uilleann piper & irish flute player. He was born in Dublin and his father is irish; and his mother... chinese. So, is sort of bizarre to see him playing and hear him speak in english with a very strong irish accent. I mean, his looking doesn't seem to match at all with all his other features.

But indeed, the funniest story he told me was when he was playing in a festival in the Glenties - Donegal - and fiddler Vincent Campbell asked him:

- Wich part of Japan are you from?

The answer:

- Blackrock

Cheers

I feel their albums ( and this set ) are quite popular here in Japan of course.
These two Kilrush polkas ( interestingly they are named polkas but played as reels ) are also found in the book two of
"Irish Traditional Music" published by the Craobh Naithí branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, compiled by Michael Tubridy.
JFYI
--
Taka

[/quote]
I feel their albums ( and this set ) are quite popular here in Japan of course.
These two Kilrush polkas ( interestingly they are named polkas but played as reels ) are also found in the book two of
"Irish Traditional Music" published by the Craobh Naithí branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, compiled by Michael Tubridy.
JFYI
--
Taka
[/quote]

Those are two great books for starting off with.
I remember seeing "Paddy and Bridget" - in Drumshanbo, I think, but I didn't realise they'd recorded. Great stuff!

The two "Kilrush Polka" tunes are of course reels, the first one is otherwise known as the "Kilfenora Reel" and the second one as "Vincent Broderick's", or "Donnie Nolan's". But to me that first "Kilrush Polka" on the clip is played more in polka time, and then they change into proper reel time for the second "Polka" and the "Concertina Reel".

The "Kilrush Polka" names probably arose for them because the playing of such tunes as polkas was not unusual in Kilrush and this part of Clare, along the Shannon Estuary and as far north as Cree, especially for the Plain Set, it's a subject I was talking to Michael Tubridy about only a few months ago.

Indeed, I used to get very frustrated trying to play reels with the concertina player Gerald Haugh, until I found out about this and realised that that is what he does...

If you saw them was during Joe Mooney Summer School 2002 , I have also been there


Well suited for the Plain Polka Set ( or polka vesion of the Plain Set ), I suppose.

I cannot hear a difference the way the first and second tunes are played. What makes a 4/4 tune 'polka time' as opposed to 'reel time'?

I went on a tour of Japan once with Dale Russ and Junji Shirota. During the 10 days we met many of the musicians living there and played tunes with them. One time the session was in a temple and there were no chair and everyone was in their stockings. I also got a taste for how well sushi and sake go with tunes. Great enthusiasm for the music over there.

I have some photos here from that tour that happened in 1996. This gallery will only be up for a month longer because I'm in the process of changing my ISP. You can see photos from the session in the temple there.

http://pweb.jps.net/~jgilder/gallery.html

Reel time = 1 2, 1 2, 1 2 3

Polka time = 1 2 3, 1 2 3

Edited to add

But listening to it again, even the second "Kilrush Polka" seems to be hovering between polka and reel time, so that only the Concertina Reel is played in "proper" reel time.

1 2 3, 1 2 3 is not a polka rhythm as I understand it. Both polkas and reels are generally written in either 2/4 or 4/4 time with a 'two' feel. I'm interested in anyone's definition of the difference between the two.

Maybe I should have written it as 1 2 3 & 1 2 3, at least that's how it is taught to Irish set dancers...


But I'm not saying that is how anybody outside Ireland sees it.

Irish Polkas are in 2/4 with an emphasis on the off beat.
reels are in 4/4,in some areas they are plated slightly dotted,and some areas they are not.anyone that says anything else is talking boloney.
I live in an area where Irish polkas are played a lot,that is how they are played in Sliabh Luchra in 2/4 with an emphasis on the of beat.
I am sorry I have not encountered this 123 stuff with polkas,perhaps you mean one crotchet and two quavers,which is 2/4 time.

it is[irish polka] to be precise,quaver quaver crotchet,thats three steps that takes up two beats,so youare in 2/4.

You might be Dick, but not everybody else is.


Whether they are written out in (conventional) 2/4 or (more accurate) 4/4, Irish polkas are played in 4/4. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the experts (even if they are from Kerry ):

QUOTE (Feargal Mac Amhlaoibh & Con Durham - An Pota Stóir)

... the polka is international and purists would say the correct meter for a polka is 2/4. However in the Irish case 4/4 is a more suitable meter for dancing the polka set with the emphasis on the first of four beats and it is in that meter that the polkas are published here.

I guess you've never learnt any Irish dancing then? I have (indeed two of my girlfriends have been Irish dancers, one of them a teacher of set dancing and sean nos step-dancer from Mayo, the other a champion hornpipe dancer whose Kerry parents danced a polka set for one of the Chieftains LPs), and the "123 stuff" (as you call it) is how reel and polka (etc.) time are commonly counted out, especially by dancers and dance teachers, in Ireland (you might notice that I was quoting from the Set Dance Glossary).

Did you never hear an Irish person talk of "learning your 123s" - i.e. learning Irish dancing?

"Boloney" - would you like some mustard on that?

Reply rewritten with more quotes

Indeed it was not unusual, in former times, for set dancers/musicians from Kerry to cross the Shannon Estuary by boat (when it was the easiest way of getting around) for dances, especially on Scattery Island.

And then there was also the influence of the travelling Kerry fiddle master George Whelan (who taught in the area in the 1880s) on the music of West Clare.

Edited to add brackets

Matt Cranitch in his irish fiddle book notates his Irish polkas in 2/4,as does Paul Mcnevin in the Irish fiddle book,likewise Paul DeGrae Irish Guitar book,David Lyth munster fiddle bowing styles,Padraig Carroll Irish Mandolin,JulieHenigan dadgad Guitar tuning book.
if they are notated in2/4that is how they are expected to be played.
English polkas which are more like the original mid european dance,are different they still have a hop on the fourth beat and are quite different in sound and are often notated in 4/4.
irish polkas have mutated,and are quite different in feel.
I regularly play for dancers and have danced polka sets myself,however I play the tunes by memory and fit my playing for the dancers .when Iam playing, I rarely think about whether it is in 2/4 or 4/4,I just watch the dancers and play.
Stephen,surely its reasonable to assume that if knowledgeable people like Cranitch,Mcnevin etc,notate them in2/4,that this is the nearest correct time signature.Dick Miles

Dick,

Time signatures in Irish music can be elusive, and musical notation is inadequate for writing down all the nuances. There are similar problems in writing out slides, for example:

QUOTE (irishtune.info - Rhythm (Tune Type) Definitions)

Over the course of the 20th century the customary notation for slides shifted from 6/8 to 12/8, which I think is an improvement in accuracy. However, I have given bar counts for slides here according to the 6/8 notation, for the very practical reason that the set dancers count them that way!

Whilst, like I said, 4/4 is closer to the way they generally count out polkas!

Irish polkas have often been notated in 2/4 time simply because it is conventional "polka time", but if they were played strictly that way, they wouldn't sound "right", and that is instinctively understood by those who play them in Sliabh Luachra and West Kerry (and maybe why lots of other players have difficulty playing them properly). Hence the statement I quoted about the polkas being written out in 4/4 in Feargal Mac Amhlaoibh & Con Durham's 1994 collection "An Pota Stóir".

So you see, it ain't a Polish sausage (="boloney"), like you said...

well, we will have to beg to differ.I am going with Cranitch and Mcnevin and the others
incidentally,I have no difficulty playing them,neither do any dancers have any difficulty dancing to my polka playing.,because I have listened to [as well as on occassions played with] Julia Clifford and others from Sliabh Luchra.
that is the crucial point listening.

Stephen,according to Chambers dictionary,Boloney is an Italian sausage,from Bologna,a town in Italy,so it aint a Polish sausage but an Italian sausage.
.furthermore any musical notation is not exact,hornpipes are a case in point ,they are not played exactly as written,in fact even classical music,is open to interpretation and is not played exactly as written.
listening to recordings and live musicians is so important as you rightly say

No, you will have to beg to differ, unless you're using the Royal "we"?


That's the conventional wisdom, even though most Irish polkas are very "different", as you know yourself - whilst only a handful (like "I'll tell me ma...") are "proper" polkas in coventional (international) polka rhythm.


Coming back to topic and what I wrote about the old polka tradition in West Clare (which very few people are even aware of these days), I see that not only Michael Tubridy (who I believe "Paddy & Bridget" got them from originally), but also the Kilfenora Ceili Band (on their album "Live in Lisdoonvarna"), regard the 4/4 "Kilrush Polka" tunes that started this thread as "Clare polkas" - but I guess that must be boloney too...

Shall I tell them you said so?


Indeed so. In fact I often used to meet up with both Julia and her husband John Clifford at the Irish Centre in Camden Town on a Sunday lunchtime, back in the mid-'70s. They regularly used to sit at a table and play in the side bar, when the McCarthys were performing on stage next door. I learnt a lot from them, both musically and (from talking to them) historically - indeed John very interestingly told me that he'd had dealings with "some people called Jeffries in Kilburn", who'd replaced reeds in his piano accordion.


Tarnation, I'd forgotten I wrote that!

The family dictionary is (of course) right about the origins of the word in that context, and I meant to say Italian. I guess I was in too much of a hurry to get up to Miltown Malbay when I called it Polish, and thinking of the Polish bologna/boloney I had at Chicago O'Hare Airport only a few weeks ago, on my way home from the 'States. Mea culpa!

Though there are those who believe that boloney/baloney, meaning "nonsense", derives from Blarney - which, living in Co. Cork, you might know more about...

Edited for clarification