CROSBHEALACH AN CHEOIL- 1996 - THE CROSSROADS CONFERENCE
Tradition and Change in Irish Traditional music
Crosbhealach an Cheoil book addenda
For the attention of those who have purchased the book.
Omissions
Regrettably, due to computer memory lapse, this book suffers from two omissions.
Please read on, at the bottom of P 16:
... interesting question, again for a different platform: Is it our music and
ours alone, or .....
A full page has been skipped after p. 32. This is as follows:
... history, but in previous generations it was usually connected with fishing,
trade, the army or emigration.
The post-war generation to which I belong is probably the first to regard travel
as offering many more options than before, and the "will-ye-no-come-back-again"
which had usually meant "good-bye forever", could, in my generation,
indicate next week, month, or year. And so it was in our family. One went to
East Africa, one to the South Pacific, I emigrated to Canada, and only one stayed
in Scotland-she "emigrated" to Glasgow. Thus, our children, the fifth
generation, were all surrounded by entirely different influences from those
that shaped the music-making of their parents. Although we all returned to Scotland,
only one child out of the ten (the one who was born in Newfoundland) continued
any aspect of the traditional music that characterised previous generations.
, Since this "child", Martyn Bennett, is now part of the established
music "scene" in Scotland and beyond,1 and has already attracted media
attention and commentary that attempts to analyse the musician and his music,
this may be a timely opportunity to outline some of the influences upon him.
Born in Newfoundland, he spent his first four years between two communities
where the importance of traditional music and song was as vital as it had been
in my mother's youth in Skye: with both parents at graduate school, university
terms were in St. John's where we were surrounded by many enthusiastic musicians-local
fiddlers and button-box accordionists, playing "Newfoundland-style"2,
alongside a number of emigrants, many Irish, who added various styles of music,
including whistle and bodhrán, to the local sounds. Established groups
were part of the scene, such as the Sons of Erin, Figgy Duff, and Ryan's Fancy,
who had one of Ireland's champion whistle-players from the sixties, Denis Ryan-
several people at this conference remember him. Listen to Denis's Swallowtail
Reel recorded in Newfoundland in the early seventies-the same tune will feature
later in this paper. , Away from home I sang at some of the bigger Canadian
festivals, such as Mariposa in Toronto, there was every imaginable "minority"
culture to be found. Martyn came with me and was fascinated by the music of
the Indian and Eskimo (or Inuit) groups, with whom he spent endless time, dancing
in their dances, listening to the Inuit throat singers and trying to figure
out the sound they made. As a Gaelic singer, I was one of the "minority"
groups housed in the same hotel, and in the evening all our children played
together while the parents sang or played music. Most of us went to sleep to
the incessant beat of the Indian drums though I was totally unaware at the time
that any of these experiences were to influence the music, far less the career,
of a small child who participated as naturally as one born into a multicultural
society. Festivals aside, probably the strongest childhood influence of all
was during several months every year, when Martyn came with me to the Corduroy
Valley on the west coast, where I was researching the surviving traditions of
Scottish Gaelic emigrants. 3 .
Our apologies for these errata, particularly so to Pat Ahern and Margaret Bennett.
1 Appearances include RTÉ's The Pure Drop (Tony MacMahon had him play
traditional sets), Channel 4 TV's Transatlantic Sessions, Edinburgh's Hogmanay
Party (to an audience of 100,000), two tours of the U.S.A. with Scottish band,
Wolfstone, the Edinburgh International Festival and numerous festivals in Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, America, the launch of the film Braveheart,
piper (and composer) in the Drambuie whisky TV commercial, etc.
2 The style is strongly influenced by three centuries of Irish settlers.
3 My book, THE LAST STRONGHOLD: Scottish Gaelic Traditions of Newfoundland ,
was published in St. John's, Newfoundland and Edinburgh in l989. Articles about
Gaelic song and music traditions include: "The Pipers' Curiosity"
in The Piping Times, Vol. 43, July l991, "Gaelic Song in Eastern Canada:
Twentieth Century Reflections", in Folksongs: Chansons, a special edition
of Canadian Folklore Canadian, Vol. 14, 2, Ottawa, Canada, Dec.. 1992, and "Musical
Traditions of the Scots in Newfoundland" The London Journal of Canadian
Studies, 1994.