Irish accent right or wrong?

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: paddymac
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 01:24 PM

Some people respectfully emulate, while others disrespectfully imitate, but in both cases, it is usually a conscious, deliberate choice. Then there are those who are blessed (or cursed) with an unconscious penchant for absorbing distinctive dialect "markers" from where ever we happen to be, or from whomever we happen to be with. Sincerety seems to me the paramount virtue.

GeorgeH: Will wonders never cease? Here I was suspecting that you and I would likely never agree on anything, and then you go and say something I agree with. Maggie T is my "most unfavorite" resident of the Celtic Isles :) and I also concur in SteveP's "take" and contribution on this thread. I'll have to ponder this twist of fate over a pint. I'll have one for you as well.

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 04:57 PM

A good actor can sound convincing. But it takes the study of dialects which is laborious.

If you don't have the time, I believe it's OK to sing in your own accent if the performance is "there".

There are also musical accents which keep the spirit of the song happening. These may be just as important.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 08:48 AM

j0 77: Folk singing ISN'T "just" music, it's musical communication. The words can sound as "nice" and as "musical" as you like, if you're not singing it to communicate your message to your audience then you're not singing Folk song.

To my mind and ears (and I sure can't prove this) this quality is a large part of why folk song in a language you don't understand at all can still be a very powerfully moving experience . . you may not understand WHAT's being said, but you still get the emotional content.

Which all comes back to why I reckon that, above all, you must sing in a voice with which you feel comfortable.

G.

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 10:22 AM

I had skipped this thread because I seldom sing Irish songs. But the concept seems to have broadened beyond Irish songs so I will step in with my own accent.

I think some songs require an accent. The accent helps to "place" the songs in their context. Someone mentioned Robert Burns without any Scottish inflections. It won't "sound right".

I sing songs of the common people and my pronunciation is less "proper American English" when I sing. It is possible to go overboard with this and truly become a parody when the object is to serve the song.

When I sing the blues I frequently drop my "g's" and may use the incorrect grammar that is in the song. I am trying to be faithful to the music. When I sing Stephen Foster, though, I "clean" up his writing because it was not "his" accent he was writing, but his own interpretation of an accent. I don't sing "oughta been on the river nineteen and te." Notice it is not "ribber" (and doesn't sound like "ribber" on Lomax's tapes. Notice also it is not "Ought to have been on the river in nineteen and ten".

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 03:00 PM

Oops, that should be I do sing "Oughta been on the river nineteen and ten".

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: Terry
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 07:12 PM

I'll preface my comments with the admission that I know I'm touchy about the issue of fake accents, especially Irish. To someone familiar with many of the Irish accents, I can always detect a fake and it puts my teeth on edge. Although I'm sure that all of the singers posting on this site would affect an accent only in a sincere attempt to evoke a mood or capture the spirit of a character in a song, there are an awful lot of people who put on an accent -- usually Cockney, Irish or American Southern -- to indicate that the people they're talking about are dumb or drunk. (Or simply unfamiliar with computers. Just yesterday, one of my coworkers launched into a Gomer Pyle-like "well, golly!" accent when recounting a service call he'd received.) For this reason, I don't much like Bert's idea of using an Irish accent only for comic songs since that could be misconstrued as perpetuating a stereotype.

I recently went to a reunion concert of the group Touchstone which has female vocalists from Canada and Ireland. They each used their own accents when singing traditional Irish songs together, even though their pronunciations differed on the rhyming words. I thought it was infinitely preferable to either of them faking an accent, but my friend found it detracted from the songs. Since she is the very knowledgeable DJ of a Celtic music program, perhaps she is right and I am simply oversensitive.

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 09:57 AM

Terry: Clearly it's a matter of taste but I'm with you 120% . . (though I'm not at all sure Bet was suggesting adopting a 'comic' accent is a potentially offensive way; I've seen the sort of performance he seems to be alluding to, AND I've seen the offensive stereotypes you talk of; I'm damned if I can find words to differentiate between them, but they are "chalk and cheese".)

G.

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: jon a
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 08:23 PM

I find that some songs I sing seem to lead into an accent on their own accord, perhaps this is because as an amature who sings purely for pleasure, and learns songs by listening to others, I am prone to lapseing into someone elses accent. But if it feels right I believe it will sound right, and that surely is as good a measure as any?

Jon

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 28 Aug 99 - 04:58 PM

One of the most important aspects of this thread in my view is whether or not you and I have done enough research into the style of singing. Do we really know about this music, who sang it, where and why? Then it seems the "how" comes into focus.

I believe that you can hang out in Ireland for a few years (maybe requires more time) and pick up some convincing speech patterns that can translate into a creditable dialect. If you really study the recordings or better yet live with the people who know the sean nos, then it can become convincing. But to me the key is knowing the material, not just memorizing it but truly absorbing it and this is not something that you or I will be able to do easilly unless we were born or raised in that tradition.

If I wanted to sing Irish songs convincingly I would go and hang out at the Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann in Dublin and do some mighty research. Or cruise up to the Gaeltacht for a while.

This being said, I don't have the luxury of this time and so I avoid dialects as much as possible when doing an Irish song. If I attempt Gaelic, I try to get the pronounciation down as close as I can to the region where the song comes from. As a result, I don't sing Gaelic very much.

For Americans, it's easier to assimilate the traditions of our own country because the speech patterns are more in our ears. But it's really offensive when a caucasion tries to sing in an African-American style and doesn't quite make it. But I think that an American can sing the blues regardless if they sing in their own voice without affecting a dialect and make it credible because the traditional music is in our ears. For Americans, maybe not so much for the Irish song.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Irish accent right or wrong?
From: WyoWoman
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 01:29 PM

When you grow up in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma, it's pretty near impossible to sound like anything except a Southern gal. I love the blues, but every time I sing 'em, I end up doing country-blues. I'm even a TRAINED singer and thespian, for heaven's sake, and aced all my diction classes in college. But as soon as I start relaxing or get excited, I get sooo down home.

I can just see me heading off into an Irish song and meandering into South-speak about halfway through. It'd be a little sad -- as Alison mentioned about people starting a song in Irish, wandering into Scots and ending up in Belgian or something by song's end. Only do what you can actually pull off -- and rely on someone else's opinion on whether or not you're doing so. We're all multi-linguals in our own heads!

ww