English Or Irish Style?

[LDT]

Hmm, I would qualify this by saying that really you should try and play music in your own tradition. It's about the culture and traditions of that in which you were brought up and/or now live in.

I'm English but I have Irish, Dutch and Spanish gypsy ancestory (apparently) somewhere in the distant past.

So does that count to?

[Chris Timson]

good points Chris,but becauseI live in ireland,I rarely play English tunes[i do still sing english songs] but Irish tunes,because I get paid for doing it,now that doesnt mean I dont like them,Iactually like both,But being a professional musician, demand, determines what I play.

Also a good point.

 

Chris

[tombilly]

I'm English but I have Irish, Dutch and Spanish gypsy ancestory (apparently) somewhere in the distant past.

So does that count to?

 

I dunno - I'd guess you have to decide that for yourself. But surely music is a community thing - so you live in England and presumably there are other people playing English folk not too far away. So you choose to play in that style and learn that repetoire because that's part of what makes you English. On a practical level, you have people to play and socialise with. OTOH, if you have Irish connections and live in or near an Irish community, maybe Irish trad. is a good choice. What I can't quite figure is why people in the Appalachian Mtns or some city in Japan choose to immerse themselves in music from distant parts of the world when they have a ready made local culture of music making. I suppose because they like it but does it not lack a certain relevance? I live in Ireland and enjoy playing Irish trad. - in it's own small way, it's part of the fabric from which society is woven - I couldn't imagine myself wanting to play Chinese folk, though I enjoyed several of the featured pieces in the Beijing coverage.

[Brian Peters]

What I can't quite figure is why people in the Appalachian Mtns or some city in Japan choose to immerse themselves in music from distant parts of the world when they have a ready made local culture of music making.

I spent a little time in West Virginia this summer and was encouraged to see a whole lot of hot young musicians playing the old fiddle/banjo tunes of that locality - in fact you'd be much more likely to find English people playing Appalachian music than the other way round! As for Japan, I once met a Japanese box player at Chippenham Folk Festival, who explained that some of the tunes on one of my CDs were played regularly in his local music session back home. Bizarre to think of 200-year-old dance music from Lancashire getting a new lease of life in 21st-century Tokyo.

 

Personally I think it's good to be grounded in the musical culture of the place where you live, but good musicians generally possess sufficient curiosity and relish for a challenge that they experiment with other kinds of music, too. Concertina players are particularly up for this kind of thing, as you can hear from the wonderful and occasionally bizarre range of things played at concertina weekends (anyone for ragtime and blues? see you at Witney!). It can be fun to adapt a 'foreign' kind of music both to the limitations of your instrument, and to your own playing style.

 

On the specific Irish / English issue that LDT was asking about, David Levine was right to mention that there are tunes that feature in in both English and Irish (also Scots and Welsh) traditional repertoire - in fact there's more common ground than many people realise - but it's in the playing style that the difference lies. It's perfectly possible to play many tunes from Irish repertoire on Anglo in the 'English' style (i.e. with chordal accompaniment), but they come out sounding very different. Sometimes the chords slow you down or get in the way of the melody, particularly in the case of an Irish reel. Equally, to play Walter Bulwer's No. 2 very fast and with loads of ornaments would be to miss out on the chunky swing of that kind of tune. Dick is quite right to point out that there isn't just one style in either England or Ireland, but certain broad generalisations apply. It boils down to how important the concept of 'authenticity' is to you. The specific tricks of regional styles may be worth learning, even if you don't intend to become a slavish adherent of that style. It would be a sad day if English and Irish styles became so diluted that you couldn't tell the difference between them, but that's a long way from happening.

[Chris Timson]

It would be a sad day if English and Irish styles became so diluted that you couldn't tell the difference between them, but that's a long way from happening.

Amen to that!

 

Chris

 

PS on the subject of English music being played in Tokyo, check out Koizumi Maki's page on Myspace here for some very nice playing of English music on melodeon and concertina from the land of the rising sun.

Edited September 8, 2008 by Chris Timson

[catty]

The Japanese seem to have a special affinity for bluegrass, lately. It always strikes me as a bit odd to see a group of Japanese kids performing the "high, lonesome sound."

 

One benefit of a music becoming ubiquitous is that it makes the instruments more widely avaiable: good-sounding, well-made, made-in-Aisa bluegrass instruments are readily available.

[Dave Rogers]

Another factor in the whole "playing music from one's own culture" (or not) thing is the embarrassment felt by a lot of older folkies in the UK about the policy that Ewan MacColl was said to have enforced at The Ballads & Blues Club in the 60s. The full story is here if you're interested:

 

http://www.folkmusic.net/htmfiles/edtxt39.htm

 

I suppose fashion comes into it as well - when I was going to regular roots music sessions in the early 90s, French, Italian and Galician tunes were the ones to play. Eastern European stuff later came into vogue. Playing anything Irish (or English) at that time was guaranteed to provoke theatrical yawns from the assembled company.

[PeterT]

If you can "mix and match" between the left and right hands playing melody, with the chords going in the opposite direction, then I think it will take the Anglo into seldom-charted waters (at least in recent years!).

Thanks for the info. Wish I could get good enough to mix n match. I'm surprised no ones tried it before.

 

I think that of the current players, John Kirkpatrick gets closest to this. On Anglo International, my ears tell me that the late Andrew Blakeney-Edwards probably played in this style, and who knows what he might have achieved ...... quite possibly he would have been the best Anglo player of all time.

[fidjit]

Are you left-handed?

no I write right handed, but I eat left handed, sew left handed and, tend to play instruments left handed. Weird huh?

 

Melody on the left and chords/counter-melody on the right certainly goes against the "norm", but would overcome certain problems which plague all concertina players.

 

Full "low" chords overpower a "high" melody line, which is one reason why many of us advise against playing full chords. However, if you put the chord above the melody line, the problem will almost certainly vanish. I remember having a similar debate in Dave Townsend's workshop at Witney 2006. We were discussing it with reference to the English keyboard, but it should apply equally to Anglos and Duets.

 

If you can "mix and match" between the left and right hands playing melody, with the chords going in the opposite direction, then I think it will take the Anglo into seldom-charted waters (at least in recent years!).

Thanks for the info. Wish I could get good enough to mix n match. I'm surprised no ones tried it before.

 

So; LDT, a good question.

thanks.

 

Yes I basically too, start my tunes with the left hand. The right hand octave is too high.

Sounds sweeter and I can sing along.

But then I mix and match too. Left hand. Right hand.

You're doing nothing wrong. Enjoy.

 

Chas

[Anglo-Irishman]

I guess what I'm saying is that you don't choose a style in isolation. You decide what music you want to play and work out the best way to play it. You may do that by learning the style of musicians you respect, or you may strike out in a new direction, or some combination of the two. But it's the music that drives the choices, not the other way round.

I like all the traditional stuff...but I also like modern music (well modernish...popular stuff like the beatles etc.) which people around me would know better than the trad stuff and I would love to try and play some of that. But I'm not sure how to.

 

Hi, LTD,

 

I think you and Chris between you have got to the heart of the matter.

 

I see it like Chris: the music's there, and then the instrument comes along, and adopts you, and you have to work out how to use the instrument to let the music out. There are things you'd like to do, but the instrument can't. There are things that the instrument would like to do, and you've got to find them.

 

This is both historically true - the English, Irish and other traditional musics were there before the concertina came along - and personally true - there was a lot of music in my head before I was big enough to play a concetina.

 

And when you, LDT, write about "modern music (well modernish...popular stuff like the beatles etc.) which people around me would know better than the trad stuff" - well what is traditional music if it's not the music that the people around you know well?

 

When we mention "traditional music" we often think of the music that the people around the Appalachians, or West Clare, or Devon, or the Hebrides knew well - back in the early 20th century, when there was no way of hearing music other than the music that your older neighbours played. That's certainly NOT the music that the people around me made when I was growing up. My "tradition" is nursery rhymes, then Gospel songs, then Moore's Irish ballads, then Comeallyes, 1960s urban folk, and a lot more. That's what's in me, and that's what has to come out when I pick up an instrument. I'm not a hillbilly or a Co.Clare peasant. I'm me, and there are a lot of people like me - if there hadn't been, I wouldn't be like I am.

 

Some have said you should play the traditional music of your country. They meant "Irish music" or "American Old Time Music" (which they'd probably abbreviate to ITM and OTM )

But these are nowadays not traditions - they're genres with rules, like Baroque music or Blues. I don't find MY music in ITM, although I'm Irish. ITM is one small corner of Irish music. (Like a picturesque village preserved for our American cousins to admire )

 

Of course everyone is free to play any musical genre they fancy. But we're also free not to do so. It's when we play the songs we know in the way that we find appropriate that listeners will know where we really come from.

 

Sorry, this was a bit of a rant - hope there's something usable in it:)

 

Cheers,

John

[asdormire]

You know, this topic is driving me a bit crazy. What is the traditional music of an area like where and when I grew up? The polkas we listened to while we milked that the country station out of Saginaw broadcast in the evenings? The bluegrass and oldtime music that the neighbors who had moved north to work in the auto plants would play? The conjunta that same Saginaw station played Sunday Mornings (yes, more polkas, just in spanish, not german or polish)? The Motown from just south in Detroit, not to mention blues? The country my folks listened to the rest of the time or the rock my peers were listening to? What about the old lumbering songs and the songs off the Lakes? Or all the old folk songs that we taught out of our music books in public school? And that doesn't even take into account ethnic heritage. The folks spent the weekends dancing to local German polka bands, but I never heard Norwegian or Native music until I moved away. And yes their is some English and French heritage as well.

 

I like to listen to Irish music, but it doesn't speak to me as something I want to play, even with a strong North American Irish community nearby, though I try to support the folks who play it locally or bring in outside bands. I haven't been doing any bluegrass sessions in a while (dobro mostly) though that community is strong here, especially with Appalachia only a county away. And face it the concertina just isn't a bluegrass instrument.

 

Ultimately, I like playing the concertina. I like older music, and occasionally I hear it played. So I play old songs, some oldtime, some cowboy, some off the Lakes and from the lumber camps. And mostly I play by myself. I guess mostly what I play would be called the english style, a melody on my right hand, and I keep trying to add some accompaniment on the left (trying being the operative word here). I'm hoping another trip to New England will help me find some folks to help me with that.

 

So I sit here in my 19th century schoolhouse or outside under a tree next to the cemetery, and play what I like. A tradition and style of one, knowing that it is likely someone else may have sat nearby playing a concertina doing old german songs or irish songs or whatever was popular at the end of the nineteenth century playing on an old concertina or maybe a mandolin or a banjo, doing the same.

 

Alan

[catty]

The Motown from just south in Detroit, not to mention blues?

 

Being a Michigander myself, I used to listen to "WLBS" (heavy soul, brother) from Mt. Clemens...but that's surely not part of my culture .

[Boney]

I think one value of traditional music (and one of the most important to me) is the process of the perspective of time, and the "vetting" of music. Yes, a new tune can be written in a traditional style, and people may like it and respond to it as if it were older, but will it stand the test of time? Will it become subtly altered? What speeds, settings, and style work well with it? What we like initially is often later forgotten, the appeal having been more in novelty, where and when you heard it, current fads, or any number of reasons. Merging my own tastes and likes with the wisdom and experiments of centuries is a very fruitful but difficult task. I feel to ignore the perspective of decades and centuries as well as the style and achievements of past masters is to throw away a huge gift. What this gift is replaced with is often indulgent, formulaic, flashy, commercial, shallow, or attention-seeking.

 

At the same time, you cannot distill a "tradition" into a set of rules, slavishly follow it, and consider yourself "authentic." If it does not resonate with you, if you do not bring some of your genuine self into it, it is just monkey-see-monkey-do.

[CaryK]

I'm English but I have Irish, Dutch and Spanish gypsy ancestory (apparently) somewhere in the distant past.

So does that count to?

 

I What I can't quite figure is why people in the Appalachian Mtns or some city in Japan choose to immerse themselves in music from distant parts of the world when they have a ready made local culture of music making.

 

Perhaps because there is something in the "music from distant parts" which evokes an emotional response, so much so, that one wants to reproduce and interpret that music themself. There must be something basic in ITM (and other many other styles of music) that universally resonates. Instead of being perplexed by this, celebrate the fact that ITM is appreciated in many cultures quite different than Irish. I grew up in a Polish-Hungarian-American factory worker's household. Heard lots of live and recorded music from Poland and Hungary as I grew up. Like it, still, but don't feel any desire to explore it musically. My heart and interest have for a long time been in Irish music. Its what I appreciate. Its what resonates with me and that is what gives it relevance for me.

 

I'm sure I can't relate to ITM in the same way as someone who grew up in the culture, but that doesn't mean that the way I do appreciate it is wrong. Someone from County Clare, may have little appreciation for the song "Who stole the kishka?" It brings back fond memories from many Polish weddings and parties I attended in the midwest, but I don't have any desire to play it or other more traditional Polish polkas. So I guess I disagree with you. Why should I have to immerse myself in the "ready made local culture of music making" when its another tradition that calls me? I think that is a very narrow view of how music tradition should propagate.

[Simon H]

Traditional music, in my opinion, harks back to a time when communities were a horse ride away from each other and styles were localised. Tunes would be played at celebrations and would be known tunes within a particular community or group of communities. At weddings and other celebrations, dances would be a form of community bonding. Knowing the steps would be a form of cohesion, of belonging. New dances and styles would be slowly absorbed from the periphery, variations from the next village etc. Occasionally a newcomer would bring something new – a new instrument, a new dance a, new tempo, a new variation. This would be absorbed into the culture and molded into the repertoire. The industrial revolution started to distort traditional music, through mass migration, and the opening up of even the most isolated communities to the world. At the same time collectors with wonderful foresight started to gather tunes from areas, preserving in aspic many of the old traditional tunes, before they were lost. Mass communications, firstly radio, then TV, allowed music traditions to be both preserved, and diluted and distorted and marketed. New tunes in the tradition, so to speak, were composed in their thousands.

Lastly, the Internet has allowed musicians to communicate directly with each other, and express their own views on the traditional music, they can hear tunes from around the world. On the one hand all these modern innovations (from transport, through mass communications to the internet) have diluted traditional music and spread it to the four winds to be played by any musician with a whim to play it. Here in Scotland I can happily collect Appalachian music, Northumbrian music or Japanese music and add them to my repertoire of local tunes. Some I meet will only play local tunes, others have their specialities, cajun, bluegrass, shanties etc etc etc.

 

The important thing to me is that these tools have also allowed people who care about the traditional music of a locality to study and preserve it too. There will always be people who believe that the music should be preserved at all costs while others are open to any and all influences. One day, with the passing of oil, and mankind being thrown back onto the resources of the local community, the time may come again when a style of music and dance will identify us with a particular locality. Meantime we live in a time of unbounded richness of music, and I for one will play anything if it is a good tune and stirs some emotion in me and those who will listen to me.

[Chris Timson]

I'm English but I have Irish, Dutch and Spanish gypsy ancestory (apparently) somewhere in the distant past.

So does that count to?

 

I What I can't quite figure is why people in the Appalachian Mtns or some city in Japan choose to immerse themselves in music from distant parts of the world when they have a ready made local culture of music making.

 

Perhaps because there is something in the "music from distant parts" which evokes an emotional response, so much so, that one wants to reproduce and interpret that music themself. There must be something basic in ITM (and other many other styles of music) that universally resonates.

Well said, sir. Although my background and love affair is with English traditional music (thank God no one has ever started saying ETM) I agree with every word you say. Furthermore, when I meet poeple from othr countries who equally like English dance music (like Anne the German fiddler or Maki the Japanese anglo player) their enthusiasm is so infectious it is an unqualified delight. How can you disapprove of such people? This love affair with music is not entirely rational, nor should it be.

 

Personally speaking, if I let myself I'm pretty sure I could get almost as obsessed with French dance music as with English!

 

Chris

[LDT]

If were talking local traditions.....I'd say a song like 'Baggy Trousers' by Madness (You play that song and every member of my extended family in the vicinity will join in dancing) represents my community more than the Trad songs. Does that make it a new tradition?

[Chris Timson]

Incidentally Anne (the English concertina player) and I are off on the ferry to the island of Fanø tomorrow, just off the coast of Denmark, for the folk festival this weekend. The music of Fanø is rather remarkable in that at some time in the past there has been a lot of coming and going between Fanø and England. The result is that Fanø dance music is uncannily like English dance music in its rhythms, style and frequently even melodies. It's a lot like English music with an overlay of Scandinavian fiddle style. I'm very much looking forward to the chance to sit down with some Fanøese musicians and exchange tunes.

 

That somehow seems very relevant to the current drift of this conversation. Why is that? I know, because interaction between musicians of different traditions, it seems to me, is almost always enrichening to all concerned. You don't lose, you don't water down your own tradition, but you do widen your horizons.

 

Chris