British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Vic Gammon
Reviewed work(s):
The Heart of Cape Breton: Fiddle Music Recorded Live along the Ceilidh Trail by Burt
Feintuch ; Pete Reiniger
Brian Conway, First through the Gate by Mick Moloney ;Earl Hitchner; Don Meade
Round the House and Mind the Dresser: Irish Country House Dance Music by Reg Hall
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2002), pp. 151-154
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149908
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL. 11/ii 2002 151
CDs
The heart
of Cape
Breton:
fiddle
music
recorded live
along
the ceilidh trail.
Smithsonian
Folkways Recording
CD
40491,
2002. 71 minutes. Book-
let
(34pp.) by
Burt Feintuch and
Pete
Reiniger.
Brian
Conway,
First
through
the
gate.
Smithsonian
Folkways Recording
CD
40481,
2002. 71 minutes. Book-
let
(29 pp.) by
Mick
Moloney,
Earl
Hitchner and Don Meade.
Round the house and mind the dresser:
Irish
country
house dance music.
Edited
by Reg
Hall.
Topic
CD
TSCD606,
2001. 75 minutes. Book-
let
(20pp.).
Various
performers.
All musics have a
history.
All
genres
and
styles
of music and their
particular
articu-
lations are the results of
complex
and often
unknown social and cultural
processes.
Hearing
a
particular
music
may
tell us
little or
nothing
about the
struggles
and
contradictions that went into its
making.
But if it is
possible
to reconstruct some-
thing
of the
history
of the
particular type
of
music,
then this can
change
our
perception
and
appreciation
of it.
The first two CDs are of Irish and
Scottish fiddle music from North America.
The
Cape
Breton CD
gives
us live
performances
of Scottish dance music
recorded at concerts and dances in
Cape
Breton,
Nova Scotia. Various
performers
are featured at different locations. The
second CD
gives
us studio
recordings
of
Sligo-style fiddling
from Brian
Conway
of
New York. Both records feature instru-
mentalists of
extremely high
calibre. The
recording quality
of both these
offerings
is excellent.
The third CD is
Reg
Hall's
compilation
of Irish
country-house
dance music. It fea-
tures
recordings
of a number of different
performers,
ensembles and soloists. These
are commercial and field
recordings rang-
ing
in date from the
1920s
to the 1970s and
recorded in the
USA,
Ireland and
England
(in
one case recorded in the Park Lane
Hotel, London,
not the most obvious
place
for a field
recording
of Irish
music!).
The extensive and
interesting essay
on
Sligo fiddling by
Mick
Moloney
is careful
to
place
Brian
Conway
in a tradition that
stretches back to Ireland in the nineteenth
century. Moloney rightly places
an
empha-
sis on the
importance
of sound
recordings
by
such
people
as Michael Coleman and
James Morrison made in the inter-war
years
in
influencing
and
informing
sub-
sequent performers.
There is one 1927
track of Coleman and one 1926 track of
Morrison on the Hall
compilation.
Sound
recording
of
past performers
has
played
a
part
in
stabilizing
and
sustaining
the
Cape
Breton tradition.
What is
really striking
when one com-
pares
these three CDs is the
very
different
sound worlds
they represent.
The
Conway,
in
spite
of its
appeal
to the inheritance of
the
Sligo
tradition,
is modem Irish tradi-
tional music. It is
fluid,
even
virtuosic,
emphasizing
reels
(eight
of the 15
tracks)
with the other tune
types
in this case
put in,
one
feels,
to break
up
the
monotony
of reel
after reel - the norm in
many
"sessions"
where
players
contend in
unspoken
contest
for technical
supremacy. Conway's
music
represents
a modem take on Irish tradi-
tional
music,
the
repertory
honed down
and the
style
more suited to a contest or
concert rather than a dance.
It is hard to believe that the Hall com-
pilation belongs
to the same
universe,
let
alone the same nation's musical
tradition,
as the
Conway.
The
many
different
players
on the
anthology
make for a more dis-
jointed,
but I feel more
interesting,
listen-
ing experience
as different instruments and
rhythms
run
against
each other. This is first
and foremost dance music.
Virtuosity
is
there, for
example
in the
playing
of
Johnny
O'Leary,
but the central
point
of the music
152 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.1 1/ii 2002
is to
support
and stimulate
dance,
and one
can hear and feel that.
The
repertory
is a
very
different one
from that
played by Conway.
On the Hall
compilation
reels are notable
by
their
absence. Polkas and
flings
dominate. The
fling
is a dotted
hornpipe-type rhythm,
something
like a fast
strathspey,
used for
the
dancing
of the
highland
and described
by
Fintan
Vallely
as
"popular
in
dancing
in
the earlier
part
of the
[twentieth] century
but this use has now become redundant.
Roche's collection is a useful source of
these exotic
pieces" (Vallely 1999:134).
Conway plays
one
highland. Six-eight jigs
provide
the
only
common
ground.
He
plays
two sets
plus
a
very strangely
articulated
slip jig.
The Hall
compilation
has four six-
eight jigs.
Why
are these two records of Irish
music so
profoundly
different? The
characteristically forthright
notes on the
Hall
compilation go
a
long way
towards
explaining
and
answering
this
question.
He identifies the
country-house
dance
repertory
as
"essentially post-Famine"
(booklet p.
11),
one that flourished
between about 1870 and 1940. As a tradi-
tion it bears witness to the
ability
of
many
popular
musical traditions to absorb
materials and influences and assimilate
them while
maintaining
its
vigour
and
distinctiveness. He shows how
"country-
house
dancing
took a
two-pronged
assault
from outside the tradition". The first was
from the Gaelic
League:
The Gaelic
League, setting
out to
reconstruct Irish
popular
culture in
the
1890s,
despised
the
county-house
repertory
as
crude,
non-authentic and
British.
Fortunately they
have
very
little influence in the
country, though
they
did make inroads in small towns
and
coverage
of their ideas and activ-
ities was
over-representative
in the
local and national
press.
(Hall CD booklet
p.12)
The
priesthood
and the Gaelic
League
worked
together
to
provide approved
forms of dance
("Irish" dancing,
that
is)
in
parish
halls,
with the
profits going
to
parish
funds and all conducted under the
watchful
eye
of the
priest.
Irish cultural
nationalism and moral
regulation
addressed in one instance.
In
England
the Gaelic
League
had con-
siderable influence and
shaped
the nature
of much
public dancing.
In the USA the
country-house style
of
dancing
fared better
and continued to be
practised alongside
the forms
approved by
the Gaelic
League.
It was US commercial dance halls that
employed
musicians of the calibre of
Michael Coleman and James
Morrison,
and this
exposure
stimulated their record-
ing
careers.
The second assault on
dancing
in Ire-
land came in the form of The Public Dance
Halls
Act,
1935. This
put
the
regulation
of halls in the hands of local
justices
and
in some areas was used
against country-
house
dancing.
That,
together
with com-
petition
from modem mass-media forms
of
music,
led to the demise of the
country-
house tradition.
Recently,
set
dancing
has
been
recognized by
Comhaltun
Ceolt6iri
Eireann,
which in Hall's words is "an
organisation
that
promotes
traditional
music but retains some
bigotry
inherited
from the Gaelic revival"
(16).
Conway's style
of
playing,
rooted in
tradition as it
is,
is still the result of a
process
of historical mediation started
by
the Gaelic
League
and carried on
by
such
people
as Sean O'Riada and the Chieftans
and the
public
taste that followed such
leads. This
process
has had two
major
outcomes:
turning
a dance music into a
concert music and
ethnically cleansing
the
repertory
of what are seen as "exotic"
elements,
in
particular
what are
perceived
as
English
and Scottish elements.
One can understand the reasons for this.
For close on a millennium the
engagement
of
people
from mainland Britain in the
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETH NOM USICOLOGY VOL. 1 1/ii 2002 153
domestic affairs of Ireland has not led to
happy consequences.
In the
struggle
for
Irish
independence
the wish to
purify
and
to validate Irish culture has
played
its
part.
Yet this desire for cultural
independence,
to stress the difference of Irish
culture,
contains inherent
dangers.
It
can,
for
example,
lead to
building
cultural
practices
on
very
dubious foundations
(such
as the
insubstantial notion of "Celtic" music
-
see Malcolm
Chapman's
excellent
critique
in Stokes
1994:29-44)
and also in
denying
some of the elements of what we
might
call
popular
cultural
practice.
The
peoples
of Britain and Ireland have
regional
cultural differences that are
expressed
in their
musics,
their
language,
their manners and customs. Yet
they
also
share a
great
deal. I am not the
only
person
I know to have remarked on how
"English"
the Hall
compilation
sounds.
This would
probably
be
enough
to con-
demn it to the Gaelic
Leaguers
and their
latter-day
descendants and
justify
the acts
of inclusion and exclusion
they
have com-
mitted. Yet to me the record
points
to the
cultural common
ground
shared
by many
past practitioners
of the traditional music
of these islands. A bedrock of commonal-
ity supports
a
superstructure
of
variety
and
difference in the musics of the
peoples
of
Britain and Ireland.
Nineteenth-century
Sussex fiddlers
played
Scots and Irish as
well as
English
tunes in their
repertories
and
incorporated popular
material of the
day
into what
they played. Popular
culture
is like
that, making
use of whatever comes
its
way
- whatever its
origins
-
provided
that it is consonant
enough
with
prevailing
stylistic
norms to be
incorporated.
In the
middle of
Conway's very
Irish
(or
should
we
say Irish-American)
record we hear the
strains of a tune which I know as
"Lumps
of
plum pudding"
and which was
proba-
bly
old when John
Gay
included it in The
beggar's opera.
Is it a
question
of
any
relevance to ask whether this is an
English
or an Irish tune?
The
piano might
be "out of fashion in
Irish
music",
as
Reg
Hall remarks
(Hall
booklet
p.19),
but
Conway
makes
good
use of
it,
the tracks
accompanied by
the
guitar sounding insipid
and
inappropriate
in
comparison.
The
piano plays
a crucial
role in the
vigorous
Scottish dance music
of
Cape
Breton and the
pianists
have
developed
a
style
that I am sure is influ-
encing
and will influence
accompanists
of
British and Irish traditional dance music
over a much wider area.
Cape
Breton and Prince Edward Island
fiddling
is not without an
interesting
his-
tory.
Settled
by
Scots
(including
Gaelic
speakers)
and some Irish
people
in the
eighteenth
and nineteenth
centuries,
the
area became known for its tradition of
fiddling. By
the 1970s the tradition was
in decline: a 1971 film was entitled The
vanishing Cape
Breton
fiddler
This seems
to have
challenged
local sentiment and a
fiddlers' association was formed in 1973.
Things
went from
strength
to
strength. By
1999 one
writer,
Michael
Gurstein,
stated
that "Music and
particularly
Celtic Music
with the associated Gaelic culture and
tourism,
has now become the
primary
resource of
Cape
Breton Island and its
largest employment
sector"
(see Dunlay
2001 and the notes to this
recording).
There is a
history
of conflict between
supporters
of the local tradition of
per-
forming
Scots music and those who once
imported
Scots teachers and devalued local
tradition,
and the local
bagpiping
tradition
-
orally
transmitted and considered
by sig-
nificant
people
to be
technically
inferior
-
lost its
place
to the more formal Scottish
style.
Not so with the fiddle
music;
here
the
periphery
has
fought
back and now
seems to be
having
an influence on the
centre.
The
great thing
about the
Cape
Breton
record is that the
performances
are live.
Even when the musicians are not
playing
for
dancing they
still seem to be
playing
for
dancing.
The fiddlers drive the music
154 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL. 1 1/ii 2002
along
with
great energy
and the
piano
players
are
absolutely fascinating.
Some
people
used to the restrained
regularity
of
much
vamp accompaniment
to British and
Irish traditional music
might
find the
style
excessive.
Personally
I find it
exhilarating:
the
pianists syncopate, anticipate
and add
fills and flourishes without ever
losing
their essential role of
maintaining
a bed-
rock on which the fiddlers can weave their
patterns
in sound. This is
great
dance
music and I commend it. No wonder it is
popular
and a vital resource in the econ-
omy
of the area.
Reading through
this review I feel I
need to end on a reflective note. There is
a mixture of discourse in what I have
written. There is summarized
history,
and
there is aesthetic evaluation based on what
must be
personal
tastes and
preferences.
As someone interested in the
history
of
popular
musical
forms,
influenced
by
eth-
nomusicological thought,
and a
performer
of
English
traditional dance
music,
I can
see elements of these different influences
emerging
in the review. I do not
apologize
for this. Each of us is
positioned by
culture
and
by experience.
Music can
represent
many things.
To me these musics
represent
struggles
over
style,
content,
meaning
and
identity. They
also
represent
the exhilara-
tion of
well-played
music. The
develop-
ment of Irish traditional music into a form
of
concert,
contest and session music with
a
consequent
rise in esteem for the
music,
if restricted in its
range
of
rhythms,
involves losses as well as
gains.
Notable
and
significant
is the loss incurred when
dance music becomes dissociated from
dance. Shifts in the
purpose
and function
of
things
are
part
of
life;
we cannot be over
sentimental about such
things,
The music
of Irish
country-house dancing, however,
shows that it is
possible
to look
again
at
where one has come from and
perhaps
question
what one is
doing.
The music of
Cape
Breton shows that other routes of
development
are
possible.
References
Dunlay
Kate
(2001)
"The Celtic revival in
Cape
Breton." In Ellen Koskoff
(ed.)
Garland
encyclopedia of
world music
Vol. 3 United States and
Canada,
pp.
1127-31. New York: Garland.
Chapman,
Malcolm
(1994) "Thoughts
on
Celtic music." In Martin Stokes
(ed.)
Ethnicity, identity
and music. Oxford
and Providence:
Berg.
Vallely,
Fintan
(ed.) (1999)
The
compan-
ion to Irish traditional music. Cork:
Cork
University
Press.
VIC GAMMON
School
of
Music,
University of
Leeds
v.
a.fgammon
@ leeds.ac. uk
Pete
Seeger:
American
favourite
ballads
vol. 1. Smithsonian
Folkways
Recordings
LC
9628,
2002. 28
tracks,
73 minutes. Booklet
(32pp.).
Compiled by
Jeff Place and Dr
Guy
Logsdon.
There was a time when I would have
thought
this record was wonderful. As a
young teenager
I remember
going
to a Pete
Seeger
concert at the Albert Hall. It was
one of those
"get everybody singing",
"raise the roof'
type
events that
Seeger
was famous for.
Afterwards,
I waited with
some friends at the
stage door,
not for an
autograph
but
just
to see the man close
up.
He came out and
greeted
us
and,
as much
as members of his
entourage
were
trying
to
hurry
him
on,
he talked to us and
sang
a
song
for us in the street. It was a
magical
and memorable
experience
for a
youngster
with what his schoolmates
thought
were
really
aberrant tastes in music. It was both
the music and the
politics
that attracted me
to
Seeger;
in a sense the music was the
politics.
I knew that he and other members
of The Weavers had been
persecuted
under
the
McCarthy
witch-hunts.
To me
Seeger