When did the term 'session' begin?

Subject: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 06:06 PM

I've read the older discussions from IRTRAD regarding the history of "Irish sessions". Michael Robinson also put some of that info on his Standing Stones web site. My question is sparked by a discussion on another forum regarding the beginning of Irish sessions in the US. I relied on the info that pub sessions are relatively a new development, as noted in the IRTRAD threads, but since people did get together in their homes (not pubs) to play music both in Ireland and the US, my question is, when did people start calling this type of gathering of musicians an "Irish session"?


Alice

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Stewart
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:05 PM

Very interesting. I was also just thinking about this and considering posting a similar question. Michael Robinson's discussion is here IRISH SESSIONS. A couple of comments from his discussion follow:

Hammy Hamilton, a well-known Irish flute maker, comments about the session and non-solo playing: "I've been working in this area for some time and I believe that there is a strong connection between the improvement in social and economic conditions in Ireland at the end of the 19th century and the rise of amateur playing of traditional music. It seems that previously the vast majority of players were professional. Non-solo playing doesn't really appear until the early recordings of the 78 rpm period in the States. The session as we know it today is a much later development, in the majority of cases not being common until the 1950s! The earliest date that I can establish for a pub session is in the late 1930s and I think this would have been very unusual at the time."

Margaret Steiner at Indiana University also comments: "Traditionally, playing was a solo activity, around the hearth, and perhaps taking place in conjunction with other expressive arts - singing, storytelling, etc., among neighbors who gathered together at a céilí house. The céilí band, and later the session, were recent innovations. I can tell you about my experience in Newtownbutler, Co. Fermanagh. In 1978 virtually no instrumental music was heard in the pubs, although sometimes someone would get out his fiddle, or maybe there would be a fiddle and an accordion, but this was generally at Mrs. Connolly's, a well-known céilí house - i.e., a home where folk would spontaneously gather to socialize and sometimes to play music or sing or tell stories. When I returned to Newtownbutler, in 1992, sessions had made their appearance. For most people it was background music. The session music, brought in through radio and records, while pleasant to listen to, did not bear the same meaning for the community."

And Caoimhín MacAoidh writes (Between the Jigs & the Reels): "The decade of the 1960s saw a strengthening revival in traditional music. During the period the format changed radically. The primary venue changed from what had been the cottage to the new one of the pub. The music was now solely for listening purposes rather than dancing."

My question was, when did the pub session begin? It appears from the above that it was a recent development, and may have begun in America by Irish immigrants, rather than in Ireland. A related question, which I hesitate to post so as not to get into the endless PEL controversy, is when did the pub session begin in England?

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Nerd
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:11 PM

Good question, Alice. Too bad I don't know the answer, but I can add to the question for our other Mudcatters to answer:

It's also pretty common among Irish American musicians to spell the word in Irish: Seisiun (with an accent on the u). So MY question is: is this a loan word from Irish, or is it an English word that Irish folks have adopted? It could be both--originally borrowed from English into Irish, applied to this type of event by Irish-speakers, and then re-translated into English. What do you good Catters think?

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:22 PM

It is that well-known English word "session", recently transliterated into Irish spelling. A usage I find extremely pretentious when employed by people writing in English, though its use in a Gaelic piece would be perfectly reasonable.

The use of "session" for a gathering of musicians may be quite recent, and may indeed have originated in the States, though I would think in relation to jazz rather than traditional music. The informal gathering of singers and instrumentalists in pubs is quite an old custom in the UK, where social life typically revolved more around such places than it did in Ireland until quite recently.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: curmudgeon
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:35 PM

The Oxford American Dictionary defines "jam session" as: improvised playing by a group of jazz musicians.

All we need now is the roots of the term "to jam."

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:37 PM

The original IRTRAD discussion that Michael Robinson put on his website regarding the session history is at http://www.standingstones.com/session.html.

A more recent IRTRAD discussion focused more on the development in London after WWII
http://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0207&L=irtrad-l&P=R16942&I=-3

I posed this question here because of a thread we are discussing on www.thesession.org titled "How long have "Irish" sessions existed in the US?"

As some people were relating early immigrants playing music to that being a "session",
my responses included the comment...could it be there was a conscious change in the development of what is called a "session" compared to people getting together in their homes to make
music? If the question is how long have small groups of people playing Irish music existed in the US, that is different than how long have Irish sessions (regular pub gatherings, not ceili bands) existed in the US.
The difference may be as simple as when people started using the term "session" and how the regular meeting in a pub was set up rather than playing at home or for a dance. There is also the diffenence that a session can be open to different musicians each time it meets.

To my mind, setting up a regular time for amateur players to meet in a pub rather than playing for dancers or at home is part of the "birth" of the Irish sessions. I'm just guessing. The recent IRTRAD discussion talked about how that happened among young Irish laborers in London in the 1940's. Anyone have info about the US development?

Subject: RE: When did the term 'Irish session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:39 PM

I should have titled this thread, when did the term "Irish session" begin?

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:55 PM

I'm sure that the term is derived from the American term "jam session" used by jazz and blues musicians. Within those genres you'll often hear the "session" dropped and it will just be called a "jam". Why Irish musicians decided to keep "session" and drop "jam" is the unknown. Perhaps because "jam" implies an emphasis on improvization and exploration whereas Irish sessions lean more toward tradition? It's not really a "jam" session if everybody is playing tunes they already know and they're all playing them the pretty much the same way.

Bruce

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 01:26 PM

The "Irish Session" as we know it today seems to have begun in postwar London; where it occurs to me that "session" has long been used as a general term for time spent drinking (the word originally meaning a period during which people sat, of course). A confluence, perhaps, of meanings in this case. I've mentioned in other discussions Hazel Fairburn's paper Changing Contexts for Traditional Dance Music in Ireland: The Rise of Group Performance Practice, which appeared in the Folk Music Journal (vol. 6 no. 5, 1994), and provides a useful summary and analysis. She doesn't discuss the use of the term, though she may have touched on it in the doctoral thesis on which the piece was based.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Nerd
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 03:56 PM

Also, we have the recording session, which is a musical term in use I believe since the 1920s, which may also have contributed to the confluence of terms Malcolm talks about. So people who were accustomed to thinking of time in the pub as a session, of time musicians spent playing music as a jam session, of Michael Coleman's dates in the RCA studio as sessions, etc, may have felt it was a logical word to use for this relatively new form of group performance.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 04:02 PM

Malcolm, I am intrigued by the "Changing Context" - the paper by Hazel Fairburn. Where can one get a copy of the Folk Music Journal?

Alice

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 04:04 PM

Found the Journal... http://www.efdss.org/journal.htm

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 04:15 PM

You can buy a copy from EFDSS (you already know the address) or perhaps borrow it through a library, though only the more specialised ones subscribe. The piece is a good general overview (33 pages, I think) with some interesting musical examples as well. I think the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library will photocopy articles for you, but it probably isn't a lot more expensive to buy a copy of the Journal; they still have a fair stock of the more recent numbers.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: smallpiper
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 07:15 PM

I'm with Malcolm Douglas on this one. My Dad told me that him and his mates (along with lots of other imegrants) started meeting in pubs in London for drinking "sessions" and played traditional music while they were about it in the 1940's . (perhaps yanks stationed there heard the music and took the term back to the states with them - just a thought)

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 10:29 PM

This brings up more questions, as others in thesession.org discussion consider sharing tunes at home a session, even if it is not a regularly scheduled event, which means in the early days of the USA, if people got together to play Irish music to share tunes, they were having an Irish session. My impression is that there are some definite criteria for using the term "session" rather than house party, ceili, playing with my friends, etc. So, can we define "session" criteria? Does a session have to be in a place where people meet at a regular time to play tunes together (not for a dance)? Any other thoughts on other criteria that makes the event an "Irish session" to establish the earliest time of Irish sessions in the USA?

Alice

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Allan Dennehy
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 10:53 PM

This is only speculation now, but I wonder if places like Killarney which have been tourist spots or traps (depending on your point of view) might have spawned sessions for the tourists long before the forties.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 11:53 PM

I doubt if the term "session" was used in Ireland of any musical gathering (except perhaps jazz) until the 1950s; later, mostly, I'd guess; and pretty much contemporaneously with the use of the term in the UK for similar events. Everybody I know who grew up in areas where house dances and so on still took place (pretty much extinct by the '60s in most places, it seems; though of course there are exceptions) had never heard the term before moving to England. It's perfectly possible that traditional music was being laid on as a tourist attraction in some places earlier than that, but on the whole I doubt it; most foreign visitors (including Americans hunting for "Irish Roots") will probably have expected the "stage Irish" repertoire rather than the real thing; and it almost certainly wouldn't have been called a "session" at that time.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 01:27 AM

Probably of little help, but a couple of notes from the OED Supplement of 1987.
Jam- first appeared in print, with regard to musicians getting together and extemporizing, in 1923. Jam Session appeared in 1933.

In 1944, the term appeared in a British journal, "Theology." "This contemporary jam session gives enormous pleasure to the participants. But we [Church of England] have had little enough success in charming the ear of the nation to the extent of persuading it to come and join the band." From this statement, I would guess that "jam session" was a well-established term in Britain by that date. By 1967, a Spanish dancer was speaking of a "flamenco jam session."
It has come to mean any get-together where people throw around ideas; it is used for company meetings in which people actively participate.

I am sure that all musicians with even marginal interest in jazz would have picked up the term very early, and it rapidly would become used with reference to any group getting together to play, improvisational or not, Irish or whatever.

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 02:07 AM

From the 1930's through to the 1950's the Dudley Street area of Roxbury (Boston) was home to Irish music. See Rounder "The Boston Fiddle/The Dudley Street Tradition". Localy I believe it was refered to as the Dudley Street Sessions. If I find any more info on this I'll post it. Barry

Subject: RE: When did the term 'session' begin?
From: Alice
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 02:22 PM