The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123076 Message #2707944
Posted By: Jim Carroll
25-Aug-09 - 06:28 AM
Thread Name: A thread about Bodhrans and Bodhran play
Subject: RE: A thread about Bodhrans and Bodhran play
"Isn't most of the music played in Sessions essentially dance music?"
Thereby hangs the problem. It was at one time; it no longer is.
People who choose to go to sessions now do so to listen not to dance and the music that gets the most attention (around here) is invariably the unnaccompanied playing.
According to the long article on the bodhran in Fintan Vallely's 'Companion To Irish Traditional Music' it "has become a phenomenal irish music icon since the 1960s.
"The bodhran was played artistically in Irish music only in certain areas prior to the 1960s. As Micheal O Suilleabhain said in his address to the 1996 Crossroads Conference: 'If you just go back a small bit, the bodhran was played one day a year. All the old lads I talked to around 1970/71 told me "you take out the bodhran any day of the year other tlian 26 December and you're mad. Its like wearing shamrock on the First of June"."
Jim Carroll