money and irish music

Subject: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 03:55 PM

Junior Crehan once said that Irish music started to go downhill once money was involved.,Has the lure of money affected styles of irish musicin both playing and dancing.http://www.dickmiles.com

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: paddymac
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 07:32 PM

That can probably be said about a great many things. My own feel is that if performers can find a market niche, more power to them. Irish folk and trad has survived without the wide world knowing much about either. They both experienced a sort of rebirth born from the American folk revival after WW II. The wave will eventually fade, and both will return to a less visable stasis. But think of the millions of folk who would never had heard of it were it not for the commercial wave.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 08:23 PM

Agreed, Paddymac. Commercial success has benefitted Irish music--it's enabled lots of people to make a living from the music and opened the music to a huge world-wide audience.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Stewart
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 08:46 PM

I agree that the recordings and the American folk revival were responsible for bringing a wide audience for this music. I was first introduced to it by the Clancy Bros. in the '60s. Now when I listen to their recordings again, I realize that theirs was not really the type of Irish music I like today, but still I enjoy listening to them.

On the other side, the commercial success with many recordings, has tended to homogenize and reduce the regional styles that used to be there. This is particularly true in the Irish fiddle music I enjoy listening to. But then there are many very talented younger players emerging - and that is good.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 09:00 PM

Yes, individual regional playing and singing styles have been weakened, but this is a process that has been happening over the past hundred-odd years and is inevitable with modernisation. On the plus side, these styles have been recorded so are available for present and future musicians. But as Chris said there are so many new talents emerging--one of my favourites is Sharon Shannon, but there are so many more...

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 09:12 PM

and dancing True enough - Michael Flatley!

God help old Ireland...

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 09:16 PM

I'm sure there is some downside to a music industry getting involved. However, for many of us our musical heritage was completely lost under the steamroller of radio/records/big band/rock and roll/television, until commercial revivals of Irish music got our attention and let us know the stuff even existed and was good. I'm glad that happened rather than it staying lost.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 03:41 AM

In my own particular case,I started off as an unaccompanied singer.
Because I realised that I would not be commercial enough without accompaniments,I took up the challenge of learning to accompany myself on the concertina[it wasnt the only reason],
however my unaccompanied style of singing did not change.
   my tutors contains Bunclody and The Greenwood Laddie both irish songs,other irish accompanied songs in my repertoire include Raglan Road,BanksoftheLee,Boys of Killybegs,Barbara Allen
this last week I have sat down and worked out accompaniments to five different songs,with the idea of collating another concertina song book[one of my motives is commercial],but the accompaniments are not affected, in any way by the motive of making money,
I still work with the basic premise that the accompaniment should not overshadow the song.
of course if i had wanted to be truly commercial,I would not have become a folk singer ,but would have become a pop singer,like most professionals, I have made sacrifices because I love the music
http://www.dickmiles.com

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Scrump
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 05:27 AM

Yes, individual regional playing and singing styles have been weakened, but this is a process that has been happening over the past hundred-odd years and is inevitable with modernisation. On the plus side, these styles have been recorded so are available for present and future musicians. But as Chris said there are so many new talents emerging--one of my favourites is Sharon Shannon, but there are so many more...

Yes, this 'weakening' of regional styles seems inevitable in these days of easy communications and 'mass media', so styles are becoming homogenised. It's the same reason that local dialects and accents are gradually disappearing. But at least many recordings exist which people in future will be able to learn from, if they want to investigate and get back to the regional styles.

I agree that the new young talents emerging (and not just in Irish music by any means) is encouragning for the future.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 03:11 PM

There's an interesting article by Seán Laffey on the development of Irish music at www.iol.ie/~didly-didly/tradcent.html.

I'll just quote the summary:

Now at the end of the nineties Altan, De Dannan, Dervish, Clannad, Patrick Street and Coolfin are still around, new bands are emerging, Danu, Cian, Turas, North Cregg, Na Dorsa and Providence. Regional styles are being appreciated once more through the work of Hayes and Cahill, Paul O'Shaugnesy and Matt Cranitch. Irish America is providing talent as equally pure and inventive as the native stock, Solas and Cherish the Ladies being the first to come to mind. Song is going through a queer patch, with the ladies holding their own, Karan Casey and Niamh Parsons staying truest to their roots. Christy Moore has retired , probably for good this time, Andy Irvine is still ploughing his lonely furrow. In these less than troubled times we don't seem to have the stomach for radical men. There are more books and collections being written, Celtic music courses are coming on line. The quality of instruments is improving. Riverdance has extended the fan base. Celtic Music has opened up commercial possibilities. There are more sessions and ceilis and set dances than ever. The tradition is in good hands, fiddlers are fiddling and singers singing. In the age of the mobile phone and the cappuccino society it's strange and reassuring to note that there is still a place in urban cosmopolitan Ireland for the people's music.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 03:48 AM

The only way that commerce is going to benefit traditional music LONG TERM is if the musicians and singers play and sing commercially on their own terms - it hasn't happened so far and I doubt if it ever will.
One of the finest, and most well-known Irish fiddle players said in a television programme about 8 years ago (and repeated it lately in a private conversation) that the only way for a musician to make a living today, despite the boom in Irish music, is to join a band - suggesting to me that the old saying 'he who pays the piper calls the tune' is as valid as ever.
Commercial success has not benefited the music in any way - in fact the opposite is the case. Half the confusion around what is and is not traditional or folk can be traced directly back to 'the folk boom' when the music industry insisted on dressing up the performers in monkey suits and only presented the most bland, watered down version of the tradition.
When Shirley Ellis took the childrens' game-song 'The Clapping Song' into the hit parade we were told that folk music had come into its own and could look forward to a rosy future - does anybody really believe that happened?
Commercial bands like Pentangle, Steeley-Span, Moving Hearts, The Bothy Band came and went, and with their passing added to the confusion - hence the mess we are now left with.
Irish music is riding high at present, not because of commercial success but because of the hard work of individuals like Paddy Glackin, Nicholas Carolan, Tom Munnelly and all those who have worked to establish it in the long term. An Irish music boom could undo all that work in a very short time. The music industry wants as many bums on seats as possible with the least effort and expenditure - that's why they are an industry and not a society, archive, association or whatever.
I very much doubt if Sínead O'Connor drew one new person to Sean Nós singing with her 'Nua Sean Nós' album. The most well attended 'Ennystimon Traditional Singing Week-end' was the year Christy Moore appeared - the following year it returned to normal.
When Junior Crehan told me that he thought that the music started to go downhill when money became a factor, I didn't believe him, but he proved to be right.
Sure, I hope I live to see traditional music providing a living for as many singers and musicians as possible, but if it means the altering of one note for anything other than artistic reasons it will have only benefited the individuals concerned, not the music.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 05:12 AM

I would like to quote Packie Byrne from his book.as the years went by i became disillusioned with the folk movement.ive nothing against commercialism ,becauseyou cant live on fresh air.but people didnt consider money was the principal thing,I would never think of refusing to sing in a club because they had no money.Idid no end of them for nothing.
Iagree with you jim,the alteration should only be for artistic reasons.
furthermorewhen I listened by mistake to last weeks Folk on two,Iwas appalled,there was only one singer Damien Barber who sounded like hed ever listened to traditional singers.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 06:14 AM

however my partner,first became interested in folk music through listening to Fairport convention.,and graduated to playing with and listening to less commercial artists .

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 09:06 AM

Never been the same since Carolan started working for money.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Ferrara
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 10:05 AM

It's not just Irish music that has gone/is going through this transition.

Various comments....

Money gets its ugly face into this of course but it has more to do with the role music plays in people's lives. I'm not sure the commercialism injured anything that wasn't already moribund.

Commercialism isn't what has caused the deterioration in quality and dedication. Modern ways of life don't create the right kind of space -- a void that needs to be filled by making music, individually or with your friends. Modern life doesn't leave enough open space for people to get in touch with the part of them that needs to go into the music, either, so much of what people sing comes from outside them and stays on the surface.

Sheila Kaye Adams said the Appalachian ballad tradition in her home area, around Sodom Laurel North Carolina, began to change and deteriorate when the folks got radios. They started substituting what they heard on the radio for the older versions they had learned. For example, her aunt started singing The Cherry Tree Carol to the tune of "Searching for Lambs," and the old tune is now lost.

Sheila also said that the songs were disappearing entirely until people discovered they could make money from them. And of course the energy that goes into those songs is very different from the energy that comes from wanting and needing to express oneself in song.

The miracle is that there are young people searching for something less superficial. Jerry Epstein said to me that there are far more people learning to sing in traditional styles now than there were in the 60's. Those are the people who need and care about the music. As long as it speaks to people, and speaks deeply to some people, it's alive.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 01:05 PM

At the end of the day, money has been a factor in music for centuries. Do you think irish folk would even exist these days if it hadn't been for the itinerant fiddlers etc of the past or the old bands, who were all being payed and probably playing what they were payed for. I don't think you can blame money. You might be able to balme globalisation or the music industry or even the invention of sound recording, but I think these things have added to the tradition as well, and certainly made it more available. Personally I don't really understand where a lot of folk purists are coming from. The set-in-stone tradition they are trying to protect is the product of millions of inovative people and changes. Most of the instruments come from abroad. The whole reason I like folk music is because it's alive-different people have different versions of the same tune or different sets. Different people turn up to sessions with different instruments and styles and the sound changes completely. I love that fact, and I'm not going to stop vibratoing or harmonising just because it was less common seventy years ago or whatever.

Ok. Rant over. I'm ready for the burning scorn of all the traditionalists out there.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 01:09 PM

If anyone could point to an era when money wasn't involved in Irish music, I'd be highly surprised. I'm sure the day they first invented money they hired a fiddler for the celebration.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 01:19 PM

The time of the famine,greg,there was no money in IRELAND and probably no music,everyone ws too busy trying to survive undoubtedly.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 01:37 PM

And how many tunes/songs do you know that were definitely composed during the famine by poor starving people? Art is often a luxury enjoyed once things pick up again, or by the few people who really made it once they'd emigrated etc... its almost always tied to money one way or the other.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 01:52 PM

I agree with Bardon (I've made the same points before in other threads). The only constant in life is change. Customs change, music changes, economies come and go. We're not living in a peasant society these days. Young people are not going to keep playing the exact same music all their lives that their grandparents played, and to expect this to happen is utopic. Like it or not this is progress and if it wasn't like that we'd all have remained living in the stone age (wonder what kind of music they had then...?).

If I understand correctly, the whole folk-boom thing of the late fifties and early sixties was enabled because "folkies" were able to make a living from their music, whether it was Dylan & Co. playing to tourists in Greenwich Village, Joan Baez playing to students in Cambridge or the Clancy Brothers and Dubliners earning their way by reviving the old songs. Of course I gather from Jim's post above that this boom only led to "the mess we are now left with" (whatever that means) and that we'd be better off without it. I beg to disagree.

I know lots of folks in Dublin who are earning money playing various kinds of folk and traditional music (well, I would call it traditional, purists might not!)--not a lot, but enough to keep them going and involved in the music.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Stewart
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 02:52 PM

First honor the tradition , then you can let it grow and change if necessary.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 09:54 PM

just woke up...I think I fell asleep reading the above-mentioned thread...

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gypsy
Date: 01 Mar 07 - 10:09 PM

Yep. better that people be able to afford playing the music, than to scorn the ducats involved, and lose it entirely. Haven't turned me nose up at a paying gig yet LOL!

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: mg
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 12:36 AM

How do we know there was no music in Ireland during the famine? I bet there was and I have often wondered what it was. Certainly at some point of starvation you would stop singing but I bet as long as some could talk they would sing something..lullabies perhaps...hymns asking for help...

And as for not affording music...I heard on a very good Irish Rovers special years ago that they would put fiddlers on the ships so that fewer people would die.

Speaking of which, it is getting to be St. Patrick's Day again and every year we go through people ridiculing Irish-American tunes, which are mostly only song on St. Patrick's Day...the old tunes were lost, out of trauma I believe, as the Chinook Indians are said to have lost their real language, not the trading language, when the plague hit them. So what is left in the Irish-American culture is a few songs that people love to make fun of, Danny Boy being the foremost, but others, like MacNamara's Band etc. Leave us alone. Go away. It is one day a year. You don't have to sing them, you don't have to participate in anything that offends your music senses. Do not feel obliged to take a paying gig that day if you hate the music the people at least used to come to hear. They have by and large died now or given up. Not nice to have done that to them. It is what is left of a great heritage, a diaspora, and I have just begun to realize, a saga. If we get together once a year, and I wish to heaven I knew some people I could do this with (even my own brothers and sisters are not too keen on this) let us be. I would no sooner think of going to an Italian celebration and snootily saying "that's not what they sing in Italy. That is not how they celebrate St. Petunia's day in Italy.." Or go to a Jewish holiday and say that is not how they sing it in Warsaw or Israel.....yikes. mg

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 03:56 AM

Of course money has always featured in the playing and singing of Irish music and song - house dances to raise money (for drink or for political objectives), Travellers selling song-sheets at the fairs, or itinerant musicians playing for a few pennies and a bed for the night. All this is a far cry from placing traditional music in the hands of a cynical industry whose objective is a quick buck and a short-term involvement.
As I said, there is nothing wrong with making money out of music, as long as it doesn't affect the playing - The Cap'n's original question. When Jazz and 'folk' and 'the ballad boom' were flavour of the month, the music went through changes which had nothing whatever to do with artistic choice;
Irish music at present is healthy enough to stand on its own two feet - it doesn't need, and can well do without a 'boom'.
The powers-that-be are only too well aware of the manipulative and destructive powers of money; in 1935 they introduced The Dance Halls Act in order to destroy house and crossroads dancing - in other words, to control Irish culture. The act taxed unauthorised dancing and music, the aim being to drive the people into the newly erected dance halls. It was supported enthusiastically (and often with a vicious brutality) by both police and clergy. There is an comprehensive account of this period in Fintan Vallely's 'Companion To Irish Music', also an excellent article by Breandán Breathnach in the Clare magazine Dal cGais (now on line on the OaC website).
Carolan was playing his own music for the landed gentry - meanwhile back in the cabins.........
His namesake, Nicholas Carolan, once gave a radio talk on songs about (rather than from) the Famine - he entitled it 'A Terrible Silence' which says it all really. Only Mute Swans are reputed to sing when they're dying.
Jim Carroll
PS For anybody who isn't familiar with Junior Crehan and his playing; he was the veteran fiddle player who died in 1998 aged 90 and who virtually kept traditional music alive in this part of West Clare when poverty had driven most of the other musicians to the emigration boats. Tom Munnelly's extended interviews with him are to be found in the 1998-9 Journals of the Folklore of Ireland Society, 'Beoloideas' and a double CD of his music was issued last year.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 11:41 AM

junior crehan. wrote the wonderful tune The Mist Covered Mountain,and also The Stack of Wheat.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Scoville
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 12:13 PM

Never mind blind musicians in every country (U.S. as well) who were musicians so they wouldn't be on someone else's nickel, whether they were street musicians or playing for patrons.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 02:33 PM

Money kept Irish music going, and destroyed some of it was well. Much the same as nationalism, which both used the music, and tried(quite successfully sometimes) to change it for political purposes. Another very interesting historical topic.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Declan
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 03:06 PM

Like many others who play Irish Music, I have a day job and play the music for fun - probably a good thing, I don't think I'd make much of a living as a professional musician.

I know a lot of traditional musicians who would be professional, not many can do this through playing alone. A lot of household names are basically ekeing out a living.

As far as I'm concerned the labourer is worthy of his hire. There's many an Irish musician who made "A rich man of the publican, and a poor man of himself" But that's the way ...

I'm sure Junior got a few bob for his trouble over the years, but he wouldn't have had a lavish lifestyle out of it.

Commercial considerations have always had some influence on the music, more on some than others. But over all I don't think too much damage has been done.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Gulliver
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 04:16 PM

Mg, as regards Irish music during the famine, you might look up the Petrie collection.
As far as I can remember Petrie travelled through the country in the early 1850s, when the country was still in trauma,
collecting songs and tunes. His Ancient Music of Ireland was published in 1855
and re-published in the 1970's so should be available from libraries.

Subject: RE: money and irish music
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Mar 07 - 01:38 PM

Interesting thread, which in some ways cuts to the heart of the folk music phenomenon.

I think for some people - folk music is an entity which only truly exists in a pure state. Touch it with modern civilisation and its values, and it shrivels and dies.

For most of us musicians - folkmusic is just another bag of tricks we can blag a few bits and pieces from, as we go on our merry way. we're just as likely to nick a riff from Eric Clapton as Michael Coleman.

For me, something valid comes from that cross fertilisation. Paul Brady for example is always talking about his debt to American blues players. A more stunning example is the late Eric Roche's wondrous way of playing a guitar like a bodhran.

That music that emerges with all its nods to its antecedents, is contemporary folk music.

Surely the best way we can honour the original creators of this music is to continue using it as a creative opportunity for people everywhere.

Who wouldn't have been proud to have been some part in the genesis of a great artist like Eric Roche?