Listen to It, Analyze It: The Pub Session

Objectives:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the general evolution of Irish music from the country house dance to the world stage.
• Observe (via a You Tube video) a typical modern day session of Irish traditional folk music at a pub in Ireland and demonstrate an understanding of those components, both musical and social, that contribute to the event.

Music is transformative, as you probably already know. It can take one different places in the mind, spark emotions, and trigger an I-want-to-dance response. Irish traditional music is one of those musics that do this for me. In other words, when I visit a good music session of Irish folk music at a pub, I walk out feeling entirely different about the world than when I walked in.

Here we will take a look at what goes on at a typical music session in an Irish pub. The band featured in the video clip is Dervish, one of the better exponents of traditional Irish music that has been around since 1991. During my last visit to Ireland I hung out for an entire day with the accordion player, Shane Mitchell. We drove out to where his father's farm used to be. We talked in-depth about the farming tradition in Ireland and how closely connected it is with the roots of traditional Irish music.


A Little History about the Contexts for the Performance of Traditional Music in Ireland

Going back about 100 years and more, Ireland was a predominantly agricultural country; much like it is still today, but to a lesser degree. Transportation was meager. Modes of communication were very basic. In other words, the folk lived and worked their farms. They did not often travel to other villages. Everything remained very local and communal, including the music. There would be a farmer or dancer a few miles down the road who played fiddle. Someone else may be a dancer. So the only musicians around were farmers who on their days off would take out the fiddle and play. Or perhaps word spread that a country house dance was scheduled.

Country house dances back in the day, were social gatherings of local farmers and families who would meet at someone's house for a little get-together. Musicians brought their instruments, poitin makers brought their homemade distilled liquor, and even the local matchmaker showed up, hoping to make a few singles into couples. It was basically a day devoted to music, dance, drinking, and socializing, all of which reinforce the bonds between members of the local community.

Check out this short video clip from the 1950s, which chronicles a crossroads dance. Crossroad dances function much in the same was, as did the country house dances. The main difference was that the locals met at a crossroads rather than inside someone's house. I would have preferred to show you a historical clip of a country house dance, but I have yet to find one.

Drumshanbo - Dance At Cross Roads (1953)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNm5NK8eFRI Links to an external site.

By the way, even to this day, a local sense of pride exists throughout Ireland. Counties in Ireland pride themselves on those things that make them different from other counties. In the case of music, regional fiddle styles differed often dramatically from one region or county to another. A hundred years ago, if one listened to a fiddle player from Co. Sligo and one from the south of Ireland, the differences would be noticeable immediately. It is because there were not many opportunities for musicians to travel and absorb new musical influences from other parts of the country. That would all come later.

However, local musicians did get some exposure to outside influences via traveling bards or tinkers (tinsmiths) who traveled from village, playing music for food and shelter. Tinsmiths would sell or make custom wares as they went along. Some played musical instruments, which helped to up their status in the community.

In the latter part of the 20th Century, things dramatically began to change. Urbanization, Ireland's entry into the European Union in 1973, and the growth of large farms (some corporate owned) were some of the factors that drove small country farmers away from the farming tradition. Consequently, country houses died out, but not the Irish love for music. The music moved into local pubs and into the urban areas, all of which mark the transition away from local farming communities to a more industrial and postindustrial economy.

Irish traditional music has even gone one step further and tapped its way onto the world stage with groups, such as Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and Celtic Woman. These are mostly stylized theatrical versions of traditional Irish dance meant to satisfy and excite large audiences outside the country.

Riverdance

Riverdance is a highly successful theatrical group that performs Irish music and dance. Have a look at the video clip from one of their performances. It is fairly easy to note the differences between the grand theatrical performance of Riverdance as opposed to the video clip you saw earlier of the old and now defunct crossroad's dance. What are some of the differences? The Riverdance approach is theatrical, flashy, and intended to entertain large audiences. Note some of the pop influences, such as the trap drums (not a traditional Irish musical instrument), elaborate costuming, lighting, and so forth. Basically, Riverdance is one of the more successful groups to bring Irish music from the pubs to the world stage.

The Pub Scene

No doubt about it, groups like Riverdance put on exciting shows. However, tapping into the true roots of Irish traditional music means visiting a pub, even bringing the kids especially if it's a Sunday, bellying up to the bar or table, ordering a Guinness, and listening to a lively session of Irish folk music.

Basically, countryside pubs have taken over the role once served by country house dances and crossroads dances. Locals meet at the pub, exchange local news or gossip, barter livestock, renew the bonds of friendships, and enjoy the music. Singles meet too, more often now without the help of a traditional matchmaker.

The music also moved into urban pubs, where musicians from different parts of the country meet and gain exposure to other influences. Consequently, though distinct regional styles of fiddle playing still exist, the tendency is that they are blending together.

Now, watch the video and note the particular events I outline below. You may have to go back and listen a few times to get all the information. Yet, it is almost like you are inside my head as if I were there listening to the band and observing everything around me. You also have the benefit of rewinding the clip, which you would not have in a real time situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_jjcL2QTsc Links to an external site.

Things to Note in the Video Clip of Dervish:

:01  The violin starts the tune. It is a reel in a meter of 4, but I am not sure of title. The tempo for a reel is generally fast. The old timers will say they are played too fast today. The "proper" way to play them is slower.

Note that reels follow a form that is AABB. In other words, the tune is composed of two parts, an A and B part. The A is repeated before it moves to the B, which is also repeated. Then they repeat the AABB cycle. So, the entire tune is played twice. Afterwards, they switch to a different reel.

:09  The A section repeats here.

:17  The B section begins.

:24  The B section repeats.

:33  They are back to the A section.

:39  The A repeats

:48  Back to the B section.

1:03  They switched to a new reel. Did you catch it? You can hear that during a typical pub session the band will string together one reel after another in the manner outlined above. Good listeners will catch this and also hear the shifts from the A to B sections of a tune.

INSTRUMENTS: focus now on some of the instruments:

2:51: Flute solo. This is a wooden flute (ebony wood, the densest wood in the world), not a modern metal type flute. Wooden flutes go back to the early 19th Century and were used in classical orchestras. They used a simple fingering system. Look at the instrument and note there are not as many key mechanisms as on a modern day flute. As music evolved so did technology and music instrument making. These simple system wooden flutes work nicely in Irish folk music; so most players prefer them today. Interestingly, the resurgence of Irish folk music has driven up the prices of these instruments, especially those dating back to the 1800s.

Acoustic Guitar: This is a relatively more recent addition to Irish folk music. It came into the tradition around the 1960s and 1970s as rock was gaining popularity around the world. The guitar plays chords or a harmonic accompaniment behind the melody. The use of harmonic instruments in the music is a relatively recent addition.

A Note about Musical Texture in Irish Traditional Music: Irish traditional music is performed using a texture (how the different parts of the performance fit together) unison heterophony. This is the idea that the melody instruments all play the melody together at the same time. This is the idea of unison. However, each of the melody instruments embellishes and ornaments the melody a bit differently: hence, this is the idea of heterophony.

Mandolin: Basically, it serves the same function as the guitar and adds chordal harmony to the melody instruments--the flute, fiddle and accordion.

Fiddle: This is one of the mainstays of Irish traditional music dating back hundreds of years.

3:24: Bodran. This is the bodran (translates into "dull" in Gaelic) or frame drum. It is a relatively new addition to Irish music, dating back to about the 1950s or earlier. Some, including myself, believe it has indigenous origins rather than being borrowed from outside the country. There is some evidence to suggest that the origins of the bodhran came from wights, which farmers used to winnow grain. These early wights were made with coarse goat or cow skins that were stretched across a wood frame. Probably, at some point, farmers looked twice at these wights and thought, "wouldn't they make a fine drum as well?" (This is also a pretty good example of how music reflects subsistence or the agricultural lifestyle). So they introduced them into music sessions. At first, musicians often hated the sound they made. Eventually, the bodhran gained acceptance and became the first percussion instrument used in the music.

Cathy Jordan is playing the bodran with a stick. The older and more traditional way is with the knuckle of the first or second finger.

Accordion: My buddy Shane is playing a button accordion. All types of accordions show up in Irish music. Accordions are also a relatively recent new comer to the family of traditional Irish instruments. They are a European invention and a fixed pitch instrument, which means the tuning is set, and there is no way to re-tune or make minor tuning adjustments to the instrument, as one can do with a fiddle or flute.

4:17  Cathy sings a ballad in the sean nos style. She sings it in Gaelic, the traditional language of Ireland. She has a beautiful voice.

7:37  If other musicians are in the audience, and often they are, they can offer up a tune as does this gentleman singing in the sean-nos style.

11:43  Cathy sings another ballad, this time in English.

15:03  In walks Seamus Tansey. If you thought the flute player you heard earlier was pretty good, wait until you hear Seamus. I met Seamus way back when he was a postman in Gurteen, Co. Sligo. I got the scoop on the local music scene from him and learned about the Co. Sligo music tradition, which produced perhaps the greatest Irish fiddler, Michael Coleman.

20:52  Nice soloing by Shane on the button accordion.

33:09  Another sean nos singer.

38:04  This is an instrumental tune called a jig. Unlike a reel, this song form is in a meter of three (which you do not need to know for the quiz) and is played slower than a reel. Notice when it ends, the band picks up the tempo and plays a reel. These shifts in tempo help make the music come alive.

47:34  A traditional Irish step dance. Some old timers might say the correct way to dance is with the arms straight down, not moving around as with this dancer.