Occasionally, I've seen reference to one musician or another* being out of touch with the current music scene, and it completely baffled me that this could happen. How could a person who loved music enough to take it on as a career despite the dismal odds of "making it", a person willing to dedicate the copious time required to master their craft, let themselves get out of touch? I've come to realize that it's a loaded question.
The fact is, being a music fan takes a lot of time - it may not seem like it, but I think that's because the activities that comprise being a fan, even a serious devotee, are easy to do in small chunks, and may not seem like "doing anything" at all. Pressing play on a Pandora or Grooveshark station, reading Facebook or Twitter feeds, browsing Rolling Stone or Pitchfork, these are the type of things you can do with a few spare minutes between serious tasks.
But, as a pure fan, you can listen to something new every time you hit that play button, if that's your preference. When you have music you need to learn, or mixes to evaluate, every time you want to listen to something it's a choice between listening to something productive...perhaps for the 17th time...or listening to something new and fun. If you keep this up over a period of years, and with an intense workload, I've no doubt you could become out of touch, if not completely disillusioned with music.
Though it feels like a second career, the truth is that I'm an amateur musician in a busy spell...I started playing Irish Traditional Music a couple of years ago, and have recently had a number of opportunities to perform in public, which I've jumped on (opportunity being notoriously fickle, and all that)...and I'm desperately trying to wrap up a Longing for Orpheus album in the remaining three months before there's a newborn in the house. It seems as though the only music I've listened to in the past six months have been items on a todo list (in truth, I've done some recreational listening, but it's all been old favorites - no exploration). Soon, though, the pressure will be off,** and I'll be able to catch up on the scenes and genres I typically follow. I suspect the pros that make it in the long run figure out that they have to do this, too, and find a way to make it happen.
*Speaking of professional musicians here, and predominantly those in popular music...classical musicians have the upper hand here due to the comparatively slow pace of change in that arena.
**Yes, I get that the newborn thing will replace my current concerns and then some...but that's my current, individual situation, and I'm trying to make a general point, so just play along, k?
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Gender and Singers
When songs are written in first person, they are always sung someone of the same gender as the "speaking" character. I only noticed this a few years ago when I heard a counter-example by a relatively obscure synthpop band (G.L.M. by Thou Shalt Not). At the time, it seemed like a clever, experimental thing to do, but I forgot about it fairly quickly.
Recently, my interest and pursuits in Irish Traditional Music (which have been overwhelmingly directed toward instrumental dance music) have brought me into contact with the Irish ballad community...which, in striking contrast to every musical community I've encountered thus far, seems to attach no significance to whether the gender of the song's singer matches that of its character. When I was searching for different versions of The Maid of Culmore, a romantic lament told from a male perspective*, I found it performed by a slew of both male and female performers, the most popular at present being a version by Cara Dillon. This gender ambivalence appears to be the rule rather than the exception.
In addition to making me aware that a spectrum exists of how tightly coupled singers and characters are, this really highlights how ingrained we are, as a culture, at one end of that spectrum. Katy Perry's career, I daresay, exists because when she sang that she "kissed a girl and liked it", people interpreted it as a song about lesbian experimentation. If it weren't assumed that the singer and character were the same person, this lyric wouldn't be nearly as evocative. Imagine if this song had been released by a male singer...it would be a very odd understatement of sexuality, wouldn't it? Unless, of course, the male singer was openly gay...but if, like me, you see how that would completely change the context, that only further demonstrates how closely you associate the identities of singers with characters.
This all suggests a number of questions, to which I have no answers. Why is singer-character gender matching the current standard? Why is it different in the Irish ballad community? What's the standard in other folk song communities? Has the standard changed over time, and if so when, how and why? Is the current expectation empowering or restrictive?
*I've only done cursory research into this, but based on the history of gay rights and related attitudes in Ireland, I think it's a safe bet that all traditional ballads involve straight characters.
Recently, my interest and pursuits in Irish Traditional Music (which have been overwhelmingly directed toward instrumental dance music) have brought me into contact with the Irish ballad community...which, in striking contrast to every musical community I've encountered thus far, seems to attach no significance to whether the gender of the song's singer matches that of its character. When I was searching for different versions of The Maid of Culmore, a romantic lament told from a male perspective*, I found it performed by a slew of both male and female performers, the most popular at present being a version by Cara Dillon. This gender ambivalence appears to be the rule rather than the exception.
In addition to making me aware that a spectrum exists of how tightly coupled singers and characters are, this really highlights how ingrained we are, as a culture, at one end of that spectrum. Katy Perry's career, I daresay, exists because when she sang that she "kissed a girl and liked it", people interpreted it as a song about lesbian experimentation. If it weren't assumed that the singer and character were the same person, this lyric wouldn't be nearly as evocative. Imagine if this song had been released by a male singer...it would be a very odd understatement of sexuality, wouldn't it? Unless, of course, the male singer was openly gay...but if, like me, you see how that would completely change the context, that only further demonstrates how closely you associate the identities of singers with characters.
This all suggests a number of questions, to which I have no answers. Why is singer-character gender matching the current standard? Why is it different in the Irish ballad community? What's the standard in other folk song communities? Has the standard changed over time, and if so when, how and why? Is the current expectation empowering or restrictive?
*I've only done cursory research into this, but based on the history of gay rights and related attitudes in Ireland, I think it's a safe bet that all traditional ballads involve straight characters.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Holiday Expectations
I don't think I'm alone in anticipating that my vacations are going to be awesome. I acknowledged, in advance, that there would be some downsides...the six hour plane ride across the Atlantic in this case. But, now that I'm in the thick of my Irish holiday, I find the awesome stuff:lame stuff ratio is skewed the wrong way. I know, abstractly, that I don't sleep as well in beds that aren't my own, but now that's an omnipresent reality...I haven't slept a full night in a week, and it takes me hours, every single night, to fall asleep in the first place. We've spent the past few days in the urban centers of Cork and Dublin, walking everywhere...my calves are in constant pain. We've taken a couple of bus tours (Newgrange/Hill of Tara, and to the Bantry Bay area), which have consisted primarily of sitting and waiting...in the case of Newgrange, not even waiting while driving, but waiting in the visitor center since they limit the number of people at the actual site at any given time. The route and bus combination to Bantry was so bumpy we had to to take anti-naseua meds half an hour in, then could hardly stay awake for the rest of the day. Frankly, we're spending a lot of our time hoping the next destination will be better.
And yet...we stood in a 5,000-year-old tomb, made of stacked rocks, that has never leaked. (where I received a compliment on my Zelda hoodie while in said tomb...world first?) We heard a pair of Leo Rowsome pipes played in unison by father and son. I've made peace with the combination of milk and tea. We've walked in astoundingly beautiful places.
Taken moment by moment, this whole vacation thing is wildly overrated, but annoyance is ephemeral...I wonder, in a few years, if I'll remember why I was complaining at all. Even if it's 90% chore, I'm thinking the 10% awesome is probably worth it.
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| Neolithic art at Newgrange |
Taken moment by moment, this whole vacation thing is wildly overrated, but annoyance is ephemeral...I wonder, in a few years, if I'll remember why I was complaining at all. Even if it's 90% chore, I'm thinking the 10% awesome is probably worth it.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Changing (Historical) Perspectives
If you look back to this blog's archives in late 2009, you'll see that I got into Irish Traditional Music (ITM) in October of that year, at the O'Flaherty retreat. The focus of the retreat is a series of classes focused on your instrument of choice, but each instructor also teaches an "enrichment" class sometime during the weekend - these generally focus on stylistic or historic topics. I distinctly remember expressing surprise to my friend Lisa that the instructors were universally knowledgeable about this sort of thing, and that I didn't generally think of musical performers as the same sort of people as musical historians. Lisa seemed a bit surprised, and informed me that, in this corner of the music world, there was quite a bit of overlap.
I now find myself, on the eve of two-week vacation in Ireland, knee deep in a complete history of the European flute (specifically Ardal Powell's "The Flute"), which is now my Irish instrument of choice. I find myself wondering about the links between the heavily ornamented style of Baroque Art Music and ITM, and I frequently have to stop myself, when meeting new people, from launching into a detailed explanation of how the modern Irish flute derives from the early years of Rudall and Carte and their peers, including digressions into the introduction of the Boehm system and it's relationship to the Irish peasantry's contemporary financial situation, etc., etc., etc.
I now find myself, on the eve of two-week vacation in Ireland, knee deep in a complete history of the European flute (specifically Ardal Powell's "The Flute"), which is now my Irish instrument of choice. I find myself wondering about the links between the heavily ornamented style of Baroque Art Music and ITM, and I frequently have to stop myself, when meeting new people, from launching into a detailed explanation of how the modern Irish flute derives from the early years of Rudall and Carte and their peers, including digressions into the introduction of the Boehm system and it's relationship to the Irish peasantry's contemporary financial situation, etc., etc., etc.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
On Snobbery
(The following outburst brought to you by: The Backbone Project)
I'm tired of musical snobbery. I think it's wrong...and I don't mean in the sense of, "I disagree with your opinion", I think musical snobbery is objectively flawed, and I have a theory (okay, a hypothesis) stating precisely why and how.
First, let's get a little definition out of the way. By "snobbery," I don't mean people asserting that they don't care for Rock, or Zydeco, or Gregorian Chant, or Elvis Costello. I do mean, when people assert that only one, or a few types of music, constitute "real" music, and anything is a waste of time. The "real" music is often Classical (meaning Western Art Music, but I'll continue to use the colloquial term), but sometimes it's Jazz (I've met a guy who insisted everything is directly derivative of Jazz), or something else...it doesn't really matter what. Few people will make a claim of this sort outright, though I have encountered some, particularly as a music minor in college. I think a majority of people will subtly imply it, though, or otherwise betray it as their underlying attitude (consciously held or not), sometimes dismissing styles they actually like as guilty pleasures. I don't exclude myself - for a long time, that's how I mentally framed my attitude toward Metal, Hip Hop, Punk, House, Country, etc. (some of which I've grown to like, others I haven't...).
More specifically yet, I'm addressing snobbery that dismisses music by asserting that it lacks complexity. In my experience, nearly all slights toward musical styles can be reduced to variations on, "It's all the same," "It has no content," "It takes no or skill or effort to make that kind of music," and more succinctly, "It's boring". These all imply that complexity equals value, and I think that's close enough to true for the purposes of this discussion. That said, i can finally come around to my point:
Any musical style that is sufficiently popular, and sufficiently long-lived, has complexity.
If a style fundamentally lacks complexity, listeners (fans and critics) will get bored and move onto something else. The obvious retort is, the masses tend to be tasteless idiots who wouldn't know complexity if it slapped them in the face. And, I agree that a whole lot of people...the great majority of people...don't care that deeply or think analytically about music, and given a good media blitz, great swathes of the population may become temporarily enchanted by pretty much anything. The mitigating factor is that, for the past few decades at the least, there has been a constant and intense steam of marketing activity pulling those masses on to ever-newer things. So, when a significant number of people are still listening to something over time, in spite of all the hype and advertising attempting to pull them away, I think that's evidence that there's something to the music that's keeping their attention...and that something, whatever it is, is what I'd call complexity.
If you have large sample of people interested in a type of music, a subset of them will try making that type of music themselves. If you have enough of them, some are bound to be relatively talented at it (maybe the distribution is a bell curve, maybe some other shape...but they're going to be distributed, and some will be at the more talented end). Given the incentive to keep at it over time, some of them are bound to take the style as far as it can go, or "master" it. So, assuming that a given style has some complexity, a large number of participants dictate that it's extremely likely that someone will be there with the talent and skill to explore it.
Tangentially, musical complexity can come in many different forms, and I think a lot of snobbery results from people trying to judge all unfamiliar styles of music by the rules of their preferred style. As an example from my experience, Classically trained musicians frequently drop into the world of Irish Traditional Music expecting an amusing diversion. At the risk of overstating my own knowledge, the complexity in Irish music lies primarily in improvised melodic variation, and to a lesser degree variation of ornamentation, rhythm and phrasing. But, all this variation is hung on relatively short melodies, frequently with no harmony whatsoever, and arranged in only a handful of structures (with AABB, repeated a few times, being overwhelmingly dominant). Most of the nuance is invisible to someone new to the style, even a trained musician. Consequently, there's a steady stream of naive Classically-trained musicians (mostly violinists, since they're instrument is phycially the same as an Irish player's fiddle) dropping into the Irish music world, who upon observing the lack of complex harmonies and varied musical structures they're accustomed to, assume the music lacks any sort of complexity. They plunge in and sound absurdly stilted and metronomic to all the established Irish players, who of course are focused on entirely different aspects of the music.
In the big picture, Classical music and Irish Traditional music are actually pretty similar. It's no surprise, then, that Classically-immersed musicians don't tend to appreciate Trance, or House - electronic styles that don't even require live performers, and whose complexity is found in the studio...
The reasonable conclusion, it seems to me, is that Rock, Rap, Country, Metal, Indian Classical, Motown, and yes, even Zydeco, are all "valid" musical styles...they're all complex, even if I, or you, don't understand how. That certainly doesn't mean that everyone should like them, just that no one should dismiss them.
I'm tired of musical snobbery. I think it's wrong...and I don't mean in the sense of, "I disagree with your opinion", I think musical snobbery is objectively flawed, and I have a theory (okay, a hypothesis) stating precisely why and how.
First, let's get a little definition out of the way. By "snobbery," I don't mean people asserting that they don't care for Rock, or Zydeco, or Gregorian Chant, or Elvis Costello. I do mean, when people assert that only one, or a few types of music, constitute "real" music, and anything is a waste of time. The "real" music is often Classical (meaning Western Art Music, but I'll continue to use the colloquial term), but sometimes it's Jazz (I've met a guy who insisted everything is directly derivative of Jazz), or something else...it doesn't really matter what. Few people will make a claim of this sort outright, though I have encountered some, particularly as a music minor in college. I think a majority of people will subtly imply it, though, or otherwise betray it as their underlying attitude (consciously held or not), sometimes dismissing styles they actually like as guilty pleasures. I don't exclude myself - for a long time, that's how I mentally framed my attitude toward Metal, Hip Hop, Punk, House, Country, etc. (some of which I've grown to like, others I haven't...).
More specifically yet, I'm addressing snobbery that dismisses music by asserting that it lacks complexity. In my experience, nearly all slights toward musical styles can be reduced to variations on, "It's all the same," "It has no content," "It takes no or skill or effort to make that kind of music," and more succinctly, "It's boring". These all imply that complexity equals value, and I think that's close enough to true for the purposes of this discussion. That said, i can finally come around to my point:
Any musical style that is sufficiently popular, and sufficiently long-lived, has complexity.
If a style fundamentally lacks complexity, listeners (fans and critics) will get bored and move onto something else. The obvious retort is, the masses tend to be tasteless idiots who wouldn't know complexity if it slapped them in the face. And, I agree that a whole lot of people...the great majority of people...don't care that deeply or think analytically about music, and given a good media blitz, great swathes of the population may become temporarily enchanted by pretty much anything. The mitigating factor is that, for the past few decades at the least, there has been a constant and intense steam of marketing activity pulling those masses on to ever-newer things. So, when a significant number of people are still listening to something over time, in spite of all the hype and advertising attempting to pull them away, I think that's evidence that there's something to the music that's keeping their attention...and that something, whatever it is, is what I'd call complexity.
If you have large sample of people interested in a type of music, a subset of them will try making that type of music themselves. If you have enough of them, some are bound to be relatively talented at it (maybe the distribution is a bell curve, maybe some other shape...but they're going to be distributed, and some will be at the more talented end). Given the incentive to keep at it over time, some of them are bound to take the style as far as it can go, or "master" it. So, assuming that a given style has some complexity, a large number of participants dictate that it's extremely likely that someone will be there with the talent and skill to explore it.
Tangentially, musical complexity can come in many different forms, and I think a lot of snobbery results from people trying to judge all unfamiliar styles of music by the rules of their preferred style. As an example from my experience, Classically trained musicians frequently drop into the world of Irish Traditional Music expecting an amusing diversion. At the risk of overstating my own knowledge, the complexity in Irish music lies primarily in improvised melodic variation, and to a lesser degree variation of ornamentation, rhythm and phrasing. But, all this variation is hung on relatively short melodies, frequently with no harmony whatsoever, and arranged in only a handful of structures (with AABB, repeated a few times, being overwhelmingly dominant). Most of the nuance is invisible to someone new to the style, even a trained musician. Consequently, there's a steady stream of naive Classically-trained musicians (mostly violinists, since they're instrument is phycially the same as an Irish player's fiddle) dropping into the Irish music world, who upon observing the lack of complex harmonies and varied musical structures they're accustomed to, assume the music lacks any sort of complexity. They plunge in and sound absurdly stilted and metronomic to all the established Irish players, who of course are focused on entirely different aspects of the music.
The reasonable conclusion, it seems to me, is that Rock, Rap, Country, Metal, Indian Classical, Motown, and yes, even Zydeco, are all "valid" musical styles...they're all complex, even if I, or you, don't understand how. That certainly doesn't mean that everyone should like them, just that no one should dismiss them.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
On Finishing
I feel neurotic when I'm publishing new music. For a day or two before and after I hit the final "submit" button, I'm preoccupied with worries that I need to polish it more, or I missed some glaring technical flaw, or the music just doesn't say anything emotionally. Within a week, I've generally moved on to the next project, the recently published music gets mentally grouped with everything else I've released, and I can return to a state of general optimism about all the music I have yet to write.
I remember a visual artist I knew back in high school expressing a related sentiment...people would offer to buy her work, but she usually couldn't bring herself to sell it, because she never felt finished, and she didn't want to give up the chance to keep working on anything.
Lately, I've shifted to releasing single songs rather than albums, and that seems to help a bit...it's easier to be confident about an artistic judgement call when you've only had to focus your attention on four or five minutes of music, rather than forty-five. Still, it's not my favorite part of the process.
I remember a visual artist I knew back in high school expressing a related sentiment...people would offer to buy her work, but she usually couldn't bring herself to sell it, because she never felt finished, and she didn't want to give up the chance to keep working on anything.
Lately, I've shifted to releasing single songs rather than albums, and that seems to help a bit...it's easier to be confident about an artistic judgement call when you've only had to focus your attention on four or five minutes of music, rather than forty-five. Still, it's not my favorite part of the process.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Austin Celtic Festival 2010
I feel like I've wasted my life. Well, not really, but I kind of did when I got home from the second late night session, having been surrounded by a disproportionate number of extremely talented and skilled Irish Trad musicians. It's amazing how little time you have to spend immersed in an environment like that for it to become your whole world. With some mental effort I have reoriented myself, regaining the perspective that I have been successful in the pursuits I've been at for many years, and Irish music is still very new for me.
That whole "immersive" experience was similar to the O'Flaherty retreat I attended a year ago, but at that time I was starting from scratch, and hadn't built up any expectations. Now that I'm in a position to appreciate what the Festival performers can do, I'm humbled and inspired. I could go on with the florid impressionism, but I want to write all this down while it's fresh in my mind, so let's just start at the beginning...
I arrived at Fiesta Gardens around 9am, when my volunteer shift started. The Festival didn't properly open until 11am, so there was some sound checking going on, and all the vendors were in unpacking and fixing up their tents. I did a couple of odd jobs - primarily cleaning up the workshop trailer and rearranging the fences for the herding demonstration's sheep and geese. Not much came up after that, so for the second half of my shift I mostly wandered the grounds and chatted with early arrivals. The starting time for the uilleann pipe workshop was coming up, so I headed to my car to grab my David Daye starter set, and then back to workshop trailer.
Uilleann Pipe Workshop
I spotted a tall guy wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long dark coat walking around near the trailer - basically what you get when you run a google image search on "gunslinger" - if you already know who Paddy Keenan is, you too would probably recognize him based on the hat alone - I never saw him without it. A few minutes later, the volunteer running the workshops kicked out the bodhrán group that was meeting before us, as that workshop's leader (who I'd later learn was Paddy League) was pulled off to go perform on one of the stages.
Though some of the later workshops were oversold to the point they had to move outdoors (the trailer was just too small), our group had just three student pipers (myself included) and two prospective pipers who audited the class. I suppose that's the advantage of learning to play an obscure, fantastically difficult instrument.
The fact that there were only three of us playing was a tremendous advantage, in that Paddy's attention wasn't being pulled in too many directions. It was a tremendous liability in that you couldn't slack off lest you get a gentle ribbing from the master piper. On that note, I'd like to dispel a couple of rumors I've read around the internet. First, I've read assertions that Paddy doesn't make his own reeds, but he said during the workshop,"I make my own reeds", in so many words. It's quite possible that in the past he didn't, but in the present tense, he's self-sufficient in the reed department. If you're not familiar with the inner world of uilleann piping, this distinction may seem irrelevant to you, but given how sensitive reeds are (needing constant adjustment when the weather changes), and how time consuming they are to make, it's expected that any piper worth his or her salt will be able to make and tweak their own. Those who don't learn the skill seem to be seen as sort of mooching on the community. I'm not asserting that this is the way it should be, but it seems to be the prevailing attitude, at least here in the online community.
The other rumor I've seen around the web is that Paddy doesn't really have any interest in teaching workshops, and so the best you can expect is to hear him play a few tunes up close. My experience was just the opposite. As we filed into the workshop trailer, I told him I'd only been at it for a couple of months, and that I'd be more than happy to just sit and listen - he said inexperience was fine, and that he's still learning, too. I was the weakest player in the workshop, and after we each played a bit of a tune for him to show where we were, he told me I was basically "doing it all wrong", but he did so in a very good-natured way, and gave me feedback then and throughout the workshop that has led to a major breakthrough in my piping (though it didn't happen until I got home and was able to take my time to synthesize all that he told us). The majority of the workshop was spent learning a tune - Paddy would play a phrase or two over and over while we picked up the melody, and then go into the potential ornamentation and melodic variations. There was far more happening than I could absorb, but he encouraged us to use our audio recorders, so I came away with something to continue working from. He also tried out my chanter at one point, to see if some of my difficulty stemmed from defective equipment - it didn't. In any case, he raised no objections to my Daye chanter, and indicated the reed was quite easy to play (and it was clear in context he meant "easy" in the piping jargon sense, which has a different nuance than in plain language), which seems to me to be a good thing.
I also learned something during this workshop that has little to do with the pipes in particular, and everything to do with the mindset and perspective of good Irish Trad musicians. The tune Paddy taught us includes an F natural (which a standard, keyless chanter like mine is not really designed play - you have to cover half of a hole), and he went out of his way to point this and out and discuss it's importance and execution. He didn't use terms like "key signature" or "accidental" - he talked about "coloring" the note. Elsewhere in the tune, he mentioned how you could hold a single note in place of a short melodic sequence (standard tune variation stuff within the ITM idiom), but that you'd have to "color" it, too, and from the context of the conversation, I think that could have involved any number of articulations, slides/bends, etc. I was already aware that there was a difference in the way the classical music and trad music worlds thought about the music, but this was great insight into exactly how they differed. I'm used to thinking of ornamentation in addition to the notes, and any pitch not in the predetermined key signature as changing the harmonic context of the music - I think I'm a little closer to being able to see these things from the Trad perspective now, as nuanced variations on a musical thought. For the past year, I've been working on freeing myself from dependence on written notes (i.e., learning by ear), and this sort of experience furthers my resolve - it's not just the rhythms of Irish music that you can't get off the page (as is often told to aspiring converts from the classical idiom), but the whole feel of the melodic line - you can break off elements like "ornamentation" and discuss them, but there is absolutely no substitute for listening. And, really, why should there be?
(Sometime in the next week or so, I'll be posting a video in the YouTube series where I'm chronicling my learning process - if you're interested in the gritty, technical details I got out of the workshop, I plan to go into more detail there.)
Concerts, Concerts, Concerts
The Festival technically has four stages - two of them are used primarily for workshops, lectures, and dancing, but two are exclusively for bands to perform on. The larger of the two is, ironically, terribly suited to this purpose in some respects. When the sun is out, everyone on stage is backlit, often to the point of being nothing be silhouettes from the audience. More critically, if you get decent seats (I'd guess there are 500 or so set up, and none really bad), the sound reinforcement is painfully loud. I've stood in the back, near the sound desk, and of course it sounds great from there - the awful conditions in the middle of the audience certainly owe something to proximity to the speakers, but may be exacerbated by the cavernous bare metal roof over the stage. The festival grounds stretch a fair distance East-West, but the bulk of the action really takes place here at the West end, where the grounds widen out, and the stage is ringed by vendors of all types. You don't have to be a dedicated listener to catch the acts that play here - you can hear quite clearly while you're shopping or grabbing a bite.
A few minutes' walk over a wooden footbridge to the East lie the remaining three stages, a couple of permanent buildings (housing a temporary bakery and the Gaelic League), and various demonstrations are strung out across a finger of Ladybird Lake (which is in reality a dammed up stretch of the Colorado river). In the middle of these is the "Pooka" stage, which I'd guess seats a modest 150 or so. I vastly prefer it's more intimate dimensions for fundamentally acoustic music like this.
The problem with the Festival is that there are too many good acts. I spent the majority of both days bouncing back and forth between these two stages trying to catch the majority of the sets. There's always someone playing on one of the two, most of the time there's someone playing on both. As a result, I continuously left midway through one show to catch part of another. I saw roughly ten partial sets over the weekend, missing at least part of the shows by 5 Second Rule, Fingal, John Doyle/Oisin McAuley/Paddy Leauge, John Williams/Jeff Moore, Beyond the Pale and Raising Jane. I only made it through the entirety of four sets. Of course, Paddy Keenan/Tommy O'Sullivan were my top priority, so I made time to catch all of the first, and their Sunday set was the "Dimming of the Day," the closing set of the festival, and no one else was playing at the time. Paddy was constantly tweaking his reeds, and mentioned the dry weather was wreaking havoc on them. I also managed to catch an entire set by the Tea Merchants, a local group I've heard great things about for a long time, but didn't actually see until this festival. Unbeknownst to me, I met the group's bodhrán player at last year's O'Flaherty retreat, and have run into her a couple of times since. Now starstruck at having been pre-acquainted with a famous person, I had to make time for their whole second set (this is, of course, silly - I've been on stage in front of roughly this many people before, and a fair number of my friends do so regularly - nevertheless, I spent the whole weekend in a state of giddiness you'd expect from 14-year-old girl at being able actually talk, person to person, with all these big stars).
Though I hardly had any downtime at all, I missed a ton of the festival. There was a Celtic Rock group, the Prodigals, who played three sets, and I sort of overheard one song from a distance - but, I was in Trad mode the whole weekend, so I wasn't really interested (in a different context, I think I would be). There are a number of sporting events and demonstrations - archery, hurling, and the always-pleasing Highland Games, but I didn't catch more than five minutes of any of these. I saw perhaps ten minutes of the herding demonstration that I helped set up pens for. I stopped in and greeted some acquaintances from the Gaelic League, but just for a minute, and I caught just a glimpse of the Viking Invasion. I'd have liked to see the Irish step dancing, but there just wasn't time. There were quite a few intro-level music workshops that were free to attend and would have been enlightening (most based on instruments I don't play, but it's good to know what everyone else is up to), but again, I couldn't work it into my schedule. I can't say I regret the scheduling decisions I made, but there's just so much going on, I really could have used a clone or time machine.
Role Models
If you were keeping count (you were, right?), you may have noticed that I saw four complete sets, but only listed three of them. The fourth was the second set by flute player Hanz Araki (with fiddler Kathryn Claire and guitarist Cary Novotny), who has provided me with something critical to a student of an instrument - a specific goal. I'm coming to appreciate the importance of this more and more - you can pick up a lot of technique from the general, aggregate pool of traditional music and knowledge, but having a very specific sound in mind as a goal is invaluable. It provides you with motivation, a way to prioritize your practice time, and if recordings are available, examples you can study in detail (luckily for me, Hanz has released three CDs, the most recent of which I'm listening to as I type - plus, there are a number of videos on YouTube to serve as visual references).
When I started out on whistle a year ago, I already had a target sound in mind - it was Joanie Madden's CD that introduced me to Irish Trad over a decade ago (albeit, couched in the New Age sound I was very much into then, but it still served it's purpose as a gateway), and by sheer coincidence, she was at last year's Festival. Now, I have make a confession - a big part of my motivation in taking up the flute was not that I loved it's sound - I certainly didn't have a problem with it, but what I really wanted was a way to get away from the shrill, uncontrollable volume of the whistle's top notes. Since taking up the flute, I've listened to a number of players, and if pressed to pick a role model, I would have named Matt Molloy, but that's really because of his historical significance. I have some of his recordings, and I like them, but I haven't developed a preference for his playing above anyone else's. When I came out of the pipes workshop and I heard Hanz Araki on the main stage, his flute playing spoke to me the way Joanie Madden's whistle did years ago. His tone is focused, his articulation clean and precise, supporting rather than interrupting the flow of the melody. It's awesome, it's emotive, and I want to be able to do it too. I realize that I'll probably never get around to putting in the requisite time, and I may not have the natural talent to get to that level, but if I work toward that end, I think I'll be happy with wherever I end up.
Festival Nights
Most of the out of town performers stay in the same hotel near the Festival site. In the evenings, most of them (along with savvy locals) find their way down to the hotel bar and have a session. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of the Irish session, it resembles what most people would call a jam session, but it has some additional, unwritten rules. You play Irish music, in an Irish style, on an instrument that's part of the Irish tradition, and you only play if you can keep up. Each session has it's own personality, based on the skill level and goals of it's participants, but there are common themes. In some sessions (as was the case here), there's an occasional song.
*more triva: "tunes" are instrumental; "songs" have words - this is a pretty old, established terminology - the notion of an instrumental album track being a "song" is a recent development.
I, along with a few friends (including fiddle and whistle players who are at about the same place as I am in this Irish music journey), spent Saturday and Sunday evening on the outskirts of these sessions, playing along when we knew the tunes and could keep up. All told, I probably totaled about five to minutes of playing time over the eight hours or so we were there - roughly nine o'clock to one in the morning each night - and I'm pushing my luck to claim I could keep up even then. I flubbed a few notes, but I couldn't pass up the chance to play with the pros. The communal nature of the session is largely what drew me into this music in the first place, and the experience was transcendent. On Saturday, Paddy Keenan came down for a bit, and played a few tunes on the banjo, saying it was the first time he'd ever played it in public. This was doubly reassuring, as evidence that the best of the best are as addicted to trying new instruments as I am, and that they do indeed have to go through the same learning process as the rest of us - I was even able to play along (quietly) on Willie Coleman's jig. On Sunday, he brought his pipes down, and I got to hear a full set in a session context for the first time. As I'd expect in the climate controlled environment of the hotel, there was a much less reed tweaking involved than in the outdoor performances.
Fortunately for me, Hanz Araki and his bandmates were at both sessions, pretty much the whole time that I was there. On Saturday, we arrived before the music started, and I got the opportunity to talk to Hanz - later in the evening, he played a tune on my flute (which, serendipitously, is of the same make as his primary instrument), and verified that it is in good working order. I had brief conversations with Hanz's bandmates, Kathryn and Cary, at other times during the weekend, and they were just as sociable. By watching Hanz play during the sessions, I was able pick up some improvments for my own technique - specifically, to keep my fingers closer to the flute when resting, and to reduce flute waggling - Hanz keeps his instrument amazingly still, moving it only when his entire head moves. Of course, these things are intutive and I've read about them before, but there's no substitute for seeing how it should be done.
So, all told, it was a great time, and I'm still recovering. I can't wait until next year. Oh, and a certain drum maker told me they have one of these festivals up in Dallas every March...
That whole "immersive" experience was similar to the O'Flaherty retreat I attended a year ago, but at that time I was starting from scratch, and hadn't built up any expectations. Now that I'm in a position to appreciate what the Festival performers can do, I'm humbled and inspired. I could go on with the florid impressionism, but I want to write all this down while it's fresh in my mind, so let's just start at the beginning...
I arrived at Fiesta Gardens around 9am, when my volunteer shift started. The Festival didn't properly open until 11am, so there was some sound checking going on, and all the vendors were in unpacking and fixing up their tents. I did a couple of odd jobs - primarily cleaning up the workshop trailer and rearranging the fences for the herding demonstration's sheep and geese. Not much came up after that, so for the second half of my shift I mostly wandered the grounds and chatted with early arrivals. The starting time for the uilleann pipe workshop was coming up, so I headed to my car to grab my David Daye starter set, and then back to workshop trailer.
Uilleann Pipe Workshop
I spotted a tall guy wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long dark coat walking around near the trailer - basically what you get when you run a google image search on "gunslinger" - if you already know who Paddy Keenan is, you too would probably recognize him based on the hat alone - I never saw him without it. A few minutes later, the volunteer running the workshops kicked out the bodhrán group that was meeting before us, as that workshop's leader (who I'd later learn was Paddy League) was pulled off to go perform on one of the stages.
Though some of the later workshops were oversold to the point they had to move outdoors (the trailer was just too small), our group had just three student pipers (myself included) and two prospective pipers who audited the class. I suppose that's the advantage of learning to play an obscure, fantastically difficult instrument.
The fact that there were only three of us playing was a tremendous advantage, in that Paddy's attention wasn't being pulled in too many directions. It was a tremendous liability in that you couldn't slack off lest you get a gentle ribbing from the master piper. On that note, I'd like to dispel a couple of rumors I've read around the internet. First, I've read assertions that Paddy doesn't make his own reeds, but he said during the workshop,"I make my own reeds", in so many words. It's quite possible that in the past he didn't, but in the present tense, he's self-sufficient in the reed department. If you're not familiar with the inner world of uilleann piping, this distinction may seem irrelevant to you, but given how sensitive reeds are (needing constant adjustment when the weather changes), and how time consuming they are to make, it's expected that any piper worth his or her salt will be able to make and tweak their own. Those who don't learn the skill seem to be seen as sort of mooching on the community. I'm not asserting that this is the way it should be, but it seems to be the prevailing attitude, at least here in the online community.
The other rumor I've seen around the web is that Paddy doesn't really have any interest in teaching workshops, and so the best you can expect is to hear him play a few tunes up close. My experience was just the opposite. As we filed into the workshop trailer, I told him I'd only been at it for a couple of months, and that I'd be more than happy to just sit and listen - he said inexperience was fine, and that he's still learning, too. I was the weakest player in the workshop, and after we each played a bit of a tune for him to show where we were, he told me I was basically "doing it all wrong", but he did so in a very good-natured way, and gave me feedback then and throughout the workshop that has led to a major breakthrough in my piping (though it didn't happen until I got home and was able to take my time to synthesize all that he told us). The majority of the workshop was spent learning a tune - Paddy would play a phrase or two over and over while we picked up the melody, and then go into the potential ornamentation and melodic variations. There was far more happening than I could absorb, but he encouraged us to use our audio recorders, so I came away with something to continue working from. He also tried out my chanter at one point, to see if some of my difficulty stemmed from defective equipment - it didn't. In any case, he raised no objections to my Daye chanter, and indicated the reed was quite easy to play (and it was clear in context he meant "easy" in the piping jargon sense, which has a different nuance than in plain language), which seems to me to be a good thing.
I also learned something during this workshop that has little to do with the pipes in particular, and everything to do with the mindset and perspective of good Irish Trad musicians. The tune Paddy taught us includes an F natural (which a standard, keyless chanter like mine is not really designed play - you have to cover half of a hole), and he went out of his way to point this and out and discuss it's importance and execution. He didn't use terms like "key signature" or "accidental" - he talked about "coloring" the note. Elsewhere in the tune, he mentioned how you could hold a single note in place of a short melodic sequence (standard tune variation stuff within the ITM idiom), but that you'd have to "color" it, too, and from the context of the conversation, I think that could have involved any number of articulations, slides/bends, etc. I was already aware that there was a difference in the way the classical music and trad music worlds thought about the music, but this was great insight into exactly how they differed. I'm used to thinking of ornamentation in addition to the notes, and any pitch not in the predetermined key signature as changing the harmonic context of the music - I think I'm a little closer to being able to see these things from the Trad perspective now, as nuanced variations on a musical thought. For the past year, I've been working on freeing myself from dependence on written notes (i.e., learning by ear), and this sort of experience furthers my resolve - it's not just the rhythms of Irish music that you can't get off the page (as is often told to aspiring converts from the classical idiom), but the whole feel of the melodic line - you can break off elements like "ornamentation" and discuss them, but there is absolutely no substitute for listening. And, really, why should there be?
(Sometime in the next week or so, I'll be posting a video in the YouTube series where I'm chronicling my learning process - if you're interested in the gritty, technical details I got out of the workshop, I plan to go into more detail there.)
Concerts, Concerts, Concerts
A few minutes' walk over a wooden footbridge to the East lie the remaining three stages, a couple of permanent buildings (housing a temporary bakery and the Gaelic League), and various demonstrations are strung out across a finger of Ladybird Lake (which is in reality a dammed up stretch of the Colorado river). In the middle of these is the "Pooka" stage, which I'd guess seats a modest 150 or so. I vastly prefer it's more intimate dimensions for fundamentally acoustic music like this.The problem with the Festival is that there are too many good acts. I spent the majority of both days bouncing back and forth between these two stages trying to catch the majority of the sets. There's always someone playing on one of the two, most of the time there's someone playing on both. As a result, I continuously left midway through one show to catch part of another. I saw roughly ten partial sets over the weekend, missing at least part of the shows by 5 Second Rule, Fingal, John Doyle/Oisin McAuley/Paddy Leauge, John Williams/Jeff Moore, Beyond the Pale and Raising Jane. I only made it through the entirety of four sets. Of course, Paddy Keenan/Tommy O'Sullivan were my top priority, so I made time to catch all of the first, and their Sunday set was the "Dimming of the Day," the closing set of the festival, and no one else was playing at the time. Paddy was constantly tweaking his reeds, and mentioned the dry weather was wreaking havoc on them. I also managed to catch an entire set by the Tea Merchants, a local group I've heard great things about for a long time, but didn't actually see until this festival. Unbeknownst to me, I met the group's bodhrán player at last year's O'Flaherty retreat, and have run into her a couple of times since. Now starstruck at having been pre-acquainted with a famous person, I had to make time for their whole second set (this is, of course, silly - I've been on stage in front of roughly this many people before, and a fair number of my friends do so regularly - nevertheless, I spent the whole weekend in a state of giddiness you'd expect from 14-year-old girl at being able actually talk, person to person, with all these big stars).
Though I hardly had any downtime at all, I missed a ton of the festival. There was a Celtic Rock group, the Prodigals, who played three sets, and I sort of overheard one song from a distance - but, I was in Trad mode the whole weekend, so I wasn't really interested (in a different context, I think I would be). There are a number of sporting events and demonstrations - archery, hurling, and the always-pleasing Highland Games, but I didn't catch more than five minutes of any of these. I saw perhaps ten minutes of the herding demonstration that I helped set up pens for. I stopped in and greeted some acquaintances from the Gaelic League, but just for a minute, and I caught just a glimpse of the Viking Invasion. I'd have liked to see the Irish step dancing, but there just wasn't time. There were quite a few intro-level music workshops that were free to attend and would have been enlightening (most based on instruments I don't play, but it's good to know what everyone else is up to), but again, I couldn't work it into my schedule. I can't say I regret the scheduling decisions I made, but there's just so much going on, I really could have used a clone or time machine.
Role Models
If you were keeping count (you were, right?), you may have noticed that I saw four complete sets, but only listed three of them. The fourth was the second set by flute player Hanz Araki (with fiddler Kathryn Claire and guitarist Cary Novotny), who has provided me with something critical to a student of an instrument - a specific goal. I'm coming to appreciate the importance of this more and more - you can pick up a lot of technique from the general, aggregate pool of traditional music and knowledge, but having a very specific sound in mind as a goal is invaluable. It provides you with motivation, a way to prioritize your practice time, and if recordings are available, examples you can study in detail (luckily for me, Hanz has released three CDs, the most recent of which I'm listening to as I type - plus, there are a number of videos on YouTube to serve as visual references).
When I started out on whistle a year ago, I already had a target sound in mind - it was Joanie Madden's CD that introduced me to Irish Trad over a decade ago (albeit, couched in the New Age sound I was very much into then, but it still served it's purpose as a gateway), and by sheer coincidence, she was at last year's Festival. Now, I have make a confession - a big part of my motivation in taking up the flute was not that I loved it's sound - I certainly didn't have a problem with it, but what I really wanted was a way to get away from the shrill, uncontrollable volume of the whistle's top notes. Since taking up the flute, I've listened to a number of players, and if pressed to pick a role model, I would have named Matt Molloy, but that's really because of his historical significance. I have some of his recordings, and I like them, but I haven't developed a preference for his playing above anyone else's. When I came out of the pipes workshop and I heard Hanz Araki on the main stage, his flute playing spoke to me the way Joanie Madden's whistle did years ago. His tone is focused, his articulation clean and precise, supporting rather than interrupting the flow of the melody. It's awesome, it's emotive, and I want to be able to do it too. I realize that I'll probably never get around to putting in the requisite time, and I may not have the natural talent to get to that level, but if I work toward that end, I think I'll be happy with wherever I end up. Festival Nights
Most of the out of town performers stay in the same hotel near the Festival site. In the evenings, most of them (along with savvy locals) find their way down to the hotel bar and have a session. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of the Irish session, it resembles what most people would call a jam session, but it has some additional, unwritten rules. You play Irish music, in an Irish style, on an instrument that's part of the Irish tradition, and you only play if you can keep up. Each session has it's own personality, based on the skill level and goals of it's participants, but there are common themes. In some sessions (as was the case here), there's an occasional song.
*more triva: "tunes" are instrumental; "songs" have words - this is a pretty old, established terminology - the notion of an instrumental album track being a "song" is a recent development.
I, along with a few friends (including fiddle and whistle players who are at about the same place as I am in this Irish music journey), spent Saturday and Sunday evening on the outskirts of these sessions, playing along when we knew the tunes and could keep up. All told, I probably totaled about five to minutes of playing time over the eight hours or so we were there - roughly nine o'clock to one in the morning each night - and I'm pushing my luck to claim I could keep up even then. I flubbed a few notes, but I couldn't pass up the chance to play with the pros. The communal nature of the session is largely what drew me into this music in the first place, and the experience was transcendent. On Saturday, Paddy Keenan came down for a bit, and played a few tunes on the banjo, saying it was the first time he'd ever played it in public. This was doubly reassuring, as evidence that the best of the best are as addicted to trying new instruments as I am, and that they do indeed have to go through the same learning process as the rest of us - I was even able to play along (quietly) on Willie Coleman's jig. On Sunday, he brought his pipes down, and I got to hear a full set in a session context for the first time. As I'd expect in the climate controlled environment of the hotel, there was a much less reed tweaking involved than in the outdoor performances. 
Fortunately for me, Hanz Araki and his bandmates were at both sessions, pretty much the whole time that I was there. On Saturday, we arrived before the music started, and I got the opportunity to talk to Hanz - later in the evening, he played a tune on my flute (which, serendipitously, is of the same make as his primary instrument), and verified that it is in good working order. I had brief conversations with Hanz's bandmates, Kathryn and Cary, at other times during the weekend, and they were just as sociable. By watching Hanz play during the sessions, I was able pick up some improvments for my own technique - specifically, to keep my fingers closer to the flute when resting, and to reduce flute waggling - Hanz keeps his instrument amazingly still, moving it only when his entire head moves. Of course, these things are intutive and I've read about them before, but there's no substitute for seeing how it should be done. So, all told, it was a great time, and I'm still recovering. I can't wait until next year. Oh, and a certain drum maker told me they have one of these festivals up in Dallas every March...
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