Dance tunes, tradition vs. inovation?

[Guest Peter Laban]

Who would remember 'The Maids of Mitchelstown' as a fast reel as opposed to the Bothy Band version?

 

Personally I find Joe Ryan's version(s, including the one with Eddie Clarke) more memorable than the Bothy Band one.

[Mark Evans]

Yes, as long as we remember that in playing for dancers, the dancers come first, our own musical egos a very distant second.

 

I hear you Jim. But that is when one holds the tunes only within the context of dance. In the case of Irish Trad (I know that's not your favorite) hasn't it moved towards what a classical music buff might term "pure music" or music that does not require dance to justify its space on the planet?

 

Key relationships within set of tunes: Don't most trad players take advantage of agreeable relationships based on the circle of 5ths and relative minor/modal associations? When did that become common place? It most certainly is outside the ancient tradition.

 

The two Jimmys (flute and fiddle) at our session have a set, nice key relationshpis and an ear to the rhythmic diversity between the tunes: Man of the house/Cup of tea/Cooley's. Over the years they've begun playing Man of the house slow with cannon thrown in a bit of rubato and then bam!, into Cup of tea smart and crisp as you please with backers and other leads so inclined coming in building to a hell bent for leather Cooleys with all the stops pulled out. Stands the hair on the back of your head. Not trad dance anymore? I don't know. But my gut tells me it stands on it's own and has become something...different.

Edited March 12, 2009 by Mark Evans

[Guest Peter Laban]

It''s been long accepted among Irish musicians that you can play for listening to or you can play for dancers. They're not the same thing and obviously don't serve the same purpose but both are equally valid.

[Anglo-Irishman]

There must be many variations of a tune that could claim to be traditional rather than a narrow, one truth, version.

 

(light the fuse and retire to a safe distance)

 

Wally, I hope you laid your fuse to the right powder keg ...

 

Because there are four different kegs. The problem that many Listers don't realise this, being intellectually confined betweeen the ends of their concertinas ...

 

(Is that inflammatory enough for this thread?)

 

The four kegs labelled "Traditional" are: traditional dance music, traditional song, traditional material and traditional performance.

 

Just to keep it imflammatory, let's forget dance music. This is not really music, or at best it is an inferior genre of music. Stands to reason - if it were not inferior, people would stop dancing and listen to it, so it wouldn't be dance music.

 

That leaves traditional song. This is what tradition is all about, because song has verbal content, and it is through traditional song that we gain access to the ideals, opinions, emotions and politics of the generations before us. We can use them to calibrate ourselves - what attitudes have we inherited, how have we improved, and what can we learn from similar situations in the past? And what other good reason could there be for neglecting the music of our own time to dwell in trad.?

Some traditions also have instrumental pieces for listening, e.g. airs, pibrochs. I would class these as "songs without words", because they have a strong emotional and aesthetic content that is missing in dance music.

 

Then there's traditional material. This consists of tunes (i.e. fixed sequences of intervals in a fixed rhythmic framework) and lyrics. Both tunes and lyrics can be "ethnic" in that certain scales and rhythms on which the tunes are based are more predominant in one country than in another, and that the content and language of the lyrics reflect the history and dialect of the region involved.

 

And, finally, traditional performance. This includes the instruments used, the style of playing or singing (e.g. plain or decorated, accompanied or unaccompanied), and the relative importance of melody and harmony. This can go down to quite a deep level of detail, e.g. how you should execute a cran on a concertina, or whether you should harmonise with dominant major or dominant seventh chords.

 

To me, as a musician who derives personal pleasure from playing and singing, and who tries to entertain paying audiences, the most important aspect of traditional music is the material - the lyrics and tunes. My main object is to get those words across - with all the content blessed by generations of passing on that which was good - and to present the tunes - blessed in the same way - in such a way that they can exert their charm on real people today. Not ITM or OTM fans, just people. I am not my grandfather, so I do not sing or play like my grandfather. But I sing the same words to the same tunes. I do what Irish musicians before me did, be they harpers, farmers or middle-class amateurs at the piano - I render the songs to the best of my ability.

 

That's how to honour the tradition - render the material to the best of your ability with the means (e.g. instruments) available today. That's how it's always been done.

 

Was that inflammatory enough?

Cheers,

Jonn

[Anglo-Irishman]

Tell me that in 5 years time LDT

Innovation begins with tradition and tradition begins with innovation.

Now, that's what I call a "bon mot"! Dead on!

 

Cheers,

John

[tamborileru]

I think innovation is necessary. All traditional tunes were new songs before. They were innovation many years ago.

[Alan Day]

I remember well trying to dance to a very well known band,their record sales outstripped all for their type of music.Exciting new sound featuring unusual instruments and music from many countries.Fantastic to listen to, but for dancing some of their tunes were impossible to dance to.There can be a big difference between playing for listening and playing for dancing. To play well for dancing you have to have danced the dance,or study carefully the dancers to understand what is required.That is the basics for dance music,it is then you can move on like Big Nick and be more inventive.

Al

[Steve Mansfield]

Just to keep it imflammatory, let's forget dance music. This is not really music, or at best it is an inferior genre of music. Stands to reason - if it were not inferior, people would stop dancing and listen to it, so it wouldn't be dance music.

 

Grrr ... I hope that was written with tongue in cheek, otherwise I think I need to borrow some of Mark's beta-blockers ....

[Anglo-Irishman]

Just to keep it imflammatory, let's forget dance music. This is not really music, or at best it is an inferior genre of music. Stands to reason - if it were not inferior, people would stop dancing and listen to it, so it wouldn't be dance music.

 

Grrr ... I hope that was written with tongue in cheek, otherwise I think I need to borrow some of Mark's beta-blockers ....

 

Well ...

Some years ago, my wife and I were into ballroom dancing. One evening a week, we were subjected to brash, steady-tempo, dance-band recordings with no variance in loudness and no musical nicities. After a while, I got into the nack of leaving my musician's hat on the peg and putting on my dancer's hat when we went out for our practice evening. Much as I enjoyed gliding across the dance-floor to that metronomic, clearly structured music, I would never dream of actually listening to it.

Actually, this is praise for those dance-band leaders - they are focussed on the needs of dancers, although they are musician enough to play differently if they had the opportunity. Glen Miller was an outstanding example of a dance-band leader who could write very listenable arrangements - some of them even danceable, too!

 

If you think about it, you can strip songs of their words, and still have a listenable air; or strip them of their music, and you still have a good poem. It is part of many traditions to play the same tune differently for dancers and for listeners. The baroque orchestral suites had movements entitled "Bourré or "Sarabande" or "Gigue", but traditionally they are played "listening-style" - stripped of their dancing. Dance material is just as musical as song material, but the traditional performance conventions allow more musicality and creativity when there are no dancers present. If you don't recognise this freedom, and play your hornpipes exactly the same for dancers and listeners, one audience is going to be dissatisfied!

 

Cheers,

John

[Mayofiddler]

I think innovation is necessary. All traditional tunes were new songs before. They were innovation many years ago.

 

Not at all, composition is different to innovation, at least in the context of this discussion.

 

There is a vast body of tunes out there all within one tradition or another, and then there are tamperings with those tunes that are blatantly outside of the tradition to anyone that has immersed themselves in it. I can only speak for the thing I love which is Irish trad dance music ("dance" just to distinguish it from folk) I wouldn't presume to know enough about any other trad genre. If you look at some of the Stuff McGoldrick does or Hayes does nowadays, nobody in their right mind would consider it trad. I always wonder whether Hayes left the great music he played when he was a teenager because he genuinely thought his "innovations" added something to the music, or whether he just did it to get money out of the Americans during the "celtic music" boom. Whatever, he seems stuck with it now. However to my mind, accidentally or not, he has misled a generation or more of gullible foreigners into believing what he does is trad. They in turn "innovate" and more people get further from the original truth of the music.

 

There must be a reason that people who hear that stuff come to Ireland to hear the pool of original material that still exists here in the west, and the majority go away raving about the "old guys" and their music.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Mayofiddler

[Robin Madge]

Surely if you play a "traditional" tune on our "Johnny come lately" intrument the concertina you are being inovative?

 

Robin Madge

[Guest Peter Laban]

I always wonder whether Hayes left the great music he played when he was a teenager because he genuinely thought his "innovations" added something to the music, or whether he just did it to get money out of the Americans during the "celtic music" boom.

 

Do you mean stuff like this or this ?

 

While I don't fancy all the turns and twists Hayes' style has taken over time, I do think he, like any traditional player, incorporates and builds onto the influences of the people he heard along the way. Most of what I hear him do I can trace back to the people he heard in the area.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Peter Laban

[Mayofiddler]

I always wonder whether Hayes left the great music he played when he was a teenager because he genuinely thought his "innovations" added something to the music, or whether he just did it to get money out of the Americans during the "celtic music" boom.

 

Do you mean stuff like this or this ?

 

While I don't fancy all the turns and twists Hayes' style has taken over time, I do think he, like any traditional player, incorporates and builds onto the influences of the people he heard along the way. Most of what I hear him do I can trace back to the people he heard in the area.

 

You're quite right, he couldn't have grown up in the family he did without learning the old Clare stuff. As I mentioned he played good stuff when he was young. It's the strange "My music is from the rocks of the Burren and reflects the soul of Ireland wafting through the universe" and the dreadful arrangements and over-exaggerated slides onto notes, coupled with a speed that would put even Clare musicians to sleep over their pints. As in the other thread, nobody in Clare does that semi-classical romantic and tediously slow playing, other than the MH clones. He might still be fine live but I stopped listening to him when all those celtic albums started appearing (around about the time he took up with the barefoot Aussie). Maybe it's the speed that makes his style seem over-exaggerated? Is there a reverse affliction to the speed-merchant syndrome?

 

Anyhow, this isn't a bash MH thread, it was just an example of how things can wind out along another road when people start innovating. Fine as long as it's sold as what it, is and not trad

IM not-so HO.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Mayofiddler

[Guest Peter Laban]

Did you listen to the clips I posted? Those were from I recorded at Martin Rochford's house in Bodyke in 1989. He was one of the people Hayes used to go out to when young. And you can easily what Hayes picked up from Rochford. The slides are there although Vincent Griffin for example would use them much more extensive. The only thing Martin Hayes did initially was putting all sorts of elements from East Clare together poured a good dose of Tommy Potts over it and off he went.

 

I like the spirit and the thought he puts into it, even if he gets a bit too new agey for me in his wording of it. And even if I don't like some elements of his performance style I appreciate his integrity and respect for the musicians he learned from and for the music itself. I do think that as he moved through different stages he tended to put things on a bit thick, the sliding for one. I agree with how you feel about his music on a lot of points but I don't think he deserves every thing you said there.

 

I have some tapes by the way of P Joe Hayes playing with John Naughton and Martin's music still echos that.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Peter Laban

[Mayofiddler]

Did you listen to the clips I posted? Those were from I recorded at Martin Rochford's house in Bodyke in 1989. He was one of the people Hayes used to go out to when young. The slides are there and Vincent Griffin for example would use them much more extensive. The only thing Martin Hayes did initially was putting all sorts of elements from East Clare together poured a good dose of Tommy Potts over it and off he went.

 

I like the spirit and the thought he puts into it, even if he gets a bit too new agey for me in his wording of it. And even if I don't like some elements of his performance style I appreciate his integrity and respect for the musicians he learned from and for the music itself. I do think that as he moved through different stages he tended to put things on a bit thick, the sliding for one. I agree with how you feel about his music on a lot of points but I don't think he deserves every thing you said there.

 

I have some tapes by the way of P Joe Hayes playing with John Naughton and Martin's music still echos that.

 

Peter, thanks for the thoughtful post. Yes, I'm laying it on a bit thick, it's my way of trying to get what I mean across and I know it's contentious. Of course he doesn't always play incredibly slowly and of course his style comes from the locality. You mention Vince Griffin and funnily enough I love his playing. Yes, it's mad and individual and scrapes close to some boundaries but I think he holds it in. Whereas Martin Hayes albeit having all the stylistic and technical abilities has tripped over the edge and remained there. There was a thing on TG4 I think where they were doing a piece on MH and interviewing other musicians that had worked with him. There was a young lad who said something along the lines of "He's fantastic, when you work with him he's..he's...outside the genre." That's a paraphrase but it's always stayed in my mind. It was obviously meant to be praise and the lad was obviously awestruck. So even some of the people who work with him realise he's not trad, however many others don't.

 

It's the sort of thing that I think innovation leads to, a dilution and gradual change towards chart music. Someone else here mentioned how music should accommodate modern listeners, and that's the crux I suppose. Do we want a beautiful music to be held for future generations or do we want it chipped away, innovation by tiny innovation until it becomes something else and is lost? There are those of us who try to hold the fort and others who think we're eejits.

 

In the long run we are trying to save something that can't be saved. It's bound to go, but I'd feel bad if I didn't try to do something about it. In a practical sense when there are young lads in a session I might (for example) teach them Coleman's "wavy bowing" technique because nobody uses it any more and it gives a different sound and better bowing when you might need it. Mostly they look at me like I'm nuts but it might take with some of them, or the light might come on in the future when they are listening to old recordings. Other than that I bluster forcefully against innovation to anyone who will listen (or won't listen) and probably do my own cause more harm than good

[chris]

Hi

all this leads me to wonder at what point in history would you like to 'freeze' the music. This sort of debate has gone on for years in 'folk song' and nobody has a definitive answer. I believe music has to change to survive but the question is- at what speed and in what manner?

chris

[Guest Peter Laban]

I know what you mean and again I will go along with you a long way.

 

I have seen Martin Hayes in different contexts, he invited us to play at the Masters of Tradition in Bantry House two years ago. He kept Kitty on for the weekend and played a concert with her and she loved it, he wasn't doing the Martin Hayes thing but just carried her along. I also saw him play with Mark Donnellan last year, emulating the P Joe and Francie duets of the past, and that was mighty too. He can wear many hats.

 

I am also old enough to remember the early eighties when every second fiddle player seemed to be a Frankie Gavin clone and every third session a De Dannan rip off. Worries were expressed about what would be lost. And then it all passed, some elements stayed on the bad ones mostly disappeared. As far as I can see Martin Hayes had that peak of influence during the second half of the nineties and the easily impressed have moved on to Caoimhin O Raghallaigh for their inspiration. So it goes. During the fifties and sixties Sean Maguire was big and his influence has mostly gone again.

 

But I know what you mean, I teach the pipes and meet complete blankness when I talk about Seamus Ennis, Willie Clancy or Tommy Reck. Cillian Vallely and Paddy Keenan, those are the REAL pipers these days. I trust it will all come right in the end.

 

In response to the previous post (which was posted as I was writing this one);

 

Why does this sort of debate always brings out people who ask the 'freeze in time' question? Nobody is suggesting anything of the sort, the essence of traditional music is continuity, the old 'footsteps of those who went before' thing, the tie to people and places. Nothing in this suggests stagnancy but forward movement informed by the aesthetics that were formed and upheld by the community of the past and handed on into the care of the present generation to keep safe for the next.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Peter Laban

[Mayofiddler]

I know what you mean and again I will go along with you a long way.

 

I have seen Martin Hayes in different contexts, he invited us to play at the Masters of Tradition in Bantry House two years ago. He kept Kitty on for the weekend and played a concert with her and she loved it, he wasn't doing the Martin Hayes thing but just carried her along. I also saw him play with Mark Donnellan last year, emulating the P Joe and Francie duets of the past, and that was mighty too. He can wear many hats.

 

I am also old enough to remember the early eighties when every second fiddle player seemed to be a Frankie Gavin clone and every third session a De Dannan rip off. Worries were expressed about what would be lost. And then it all passed, some elements stayed on the bad ones mostly disappeared. As far as I can see Martin Hayes had that peak of influence during the second half of the nineties and the easily impressed have moved on to Caoimhin O Raghallaigh for their inspiration. So it goes. During the fifties and sixties Sean Maguire was big and his influence has mostly gone again.

 

But I know what you mean, I teach the pipes and meet complete blankness when I talk about Seamus Ennis, Willie Clancy or Tommy Reck. Cillian Vallely and Paddy Keenan, those are the REAL pipers these days. I trust it will all come right in the end.

 

In response to the previous post (which was posted as I was writing this one);

 

Why does this sort of debate always brings out people who ask the 'freeze in time' question? Nobody is suggesting anything of the sort, the essence of traditional music is continuity, the old 'footsteps of those who went before' thing, the tie to people and places. Nothing in this suggests stagnancy but forward movement informed by the aesthetics that were formed and upheld by the community of the past and handed on into the care of the present generation to keep safe for the next.

 

Ah now, that last sentence says it all just about perfectly to my mind. Why did I never think of it?? I'm going to keep that and paste it into any future discussion, attributed to you of course :-) That's a great way to think about it, it's the aesthetics embodied in the music rather than the music itself that makes it traditional. That's why there can be so many forms of one tune and so many ornamental variations yet they are all traditional. And it's why an out of place note or run makes us jump when it happens, because our aesthetics are being assaulted. Good man Peter, I think I'll sleep soundly tonight.

 

Yes, don't remind me of the Frankie Gavin Era or the Sean McGuire Era. Nowadays it's Des Donnelly, Mike McGoldrick and the others of the three or four times innovated generation.

 

I can't believe aspiring pipers don't know about Seamus Ennis or Clancy, that seems impossible. I hope you are right and these are just trends, but it's scary those giants are being lost. It's a funny world, because if you go to the internet archive and search the audio collections you can find tracks by Tom Ennis and other pipers, plus Coleman, Killoran, Paddy Cronin and many more that are not all on the recordings released in the last decade or so. So things are being lost in real life but preserved on new technology! Maybe there will be another revival some time in the future for the old styles.