Becoming an Irish Traditional Musician

Learning and Embodying Musical Culture

Jessica Cawley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000174373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicologie

Coupling the narratives of twenty-two Irish traditional musicians alongside intensive field research, Becoming an Irish Traditional Musician explores the rich and diverse ways traditional musicians hone their craft. It details the educational benefits and challenges associated with each learning practice, outlining the motivations and obstacles learners experience during musical development. By exploring learning from the point of view of the learners themselves, the author provides new insights into modern Irish traditional music culture and how people begin to embody a musical tradition. This book charts the journey of becoming an Irish traditional musician and explores how musicality is learned, developed, and embodied.

1 Passing it on

Connecting with a community of practitioners

Generations ago, the only way to become an Irish traditional musician was through direct transmission from other practitioners.¹ Music learning was ‘decentralised, an integral part of social development’ as youngsters learned their culture, traditions, and shared repertoire in the community (McCarthy 1999a:187). To this day, many still consider face-to-face interactions one of the most meaningful and effective ways of learning. A flute player turns to his younger compatriot and says, ‘Have you got Paul McGrattan’s album Keelwest? You would love it’; a teenager buys a banjo after a boy in his class started learning at the local Comhaltas branch; a daughter sits across the kitchen table from her father, imitating his fiddle playing. Such meaningful learning experiences can easily be idealized and romanticized because they carry positive connotations of community, unity, intimacy, and a strong connection to the past. However, relationships and exchanges within any community of practice are complex, ranging from the positive to mundane to overtly negative.

This chapter explores the situated learning resulting from traditional musicians playing and talking with one another in kitchens, sitting rooms, and other private spaces. In the 19th century, traditional musicking mainly occurred outdoors, but the musical culture moved inside during the early 20th century due to the zealous surveillance and socially controlling policies of the Catholic Church (Dowling 2014:140). Traditional music re-emerges into the public domain later in the 20th century as music became popular in pubs, lounge bars, and dance halls led by céilí bands (Ó hAllmhuráin 2016:111–113). The home remains a ‘frequent venue for Irish traditional music playing. In a kitchen or living room the setting is informal, there are fewer listeners and more participants’ (Williams 2010:21). The relationships and memories forged between traditional musicians described in this chapter form the backbone of musical development. Every musician has a story about how they first became involved with traditional music. The narratives that lie ahead illustrate how newcomers enter the community of practice – how they are initiated into the musical community. Every learner needs an access point, and musical mentors, peers, or family members often plant the initial seeds of interest. For some, commercial recordings may be this spark, but people within the musical network tend to guide novices through key developmental milestones.

Music-making – rather than learning or practising – lies at the heart of many experiences discussed in this chapter. The grá (Irish for love) of playing traditional music is usually the primary goal, as friends and family come together to share music, inadvertently transferring repertoire, skills, attitudes, and behaviours. Informal learning can be both conscious and unconscious, involving ‘unsought learning experiences through enculturation in the musical environment’ (Green 2002:16). Indeed, this ‘lack of self-conscious effort and a lack of explicit instruction’ is a defining characteristic of enculturation (Sloboda 1985:196).

For enculturation to be possible in the first place, Irish traditional music must be ‘socially available’ to a learner. They must have access – at least in a small way – to a community of practitioners. No matter how hard we try, ‘we can only learn what is around to be learned. If a particular kind of learning is not made socially available to us, there will be no learning to do’ (McDermott 1993:277). In this way, a network of musicians provides the necessary foundation for musical enculturation. Becoming a traditional musician involves significant and prolonged engagement with other practitioners. It takes several years of listening, absorbing, imitating, and playing to understand and embody cultural and musical norms. Music-making with a community of practitioners enables and inspires this work.

According to social learning theory, engaging with a network of practitioners is essential for learning and becoming assimilated into any community of practice (CoP). Significantly, this is supported by the narratives of Irish traditional musicians. Several of the interviewees said being surrounded by a network of musicians is vital to develop as a traditional musician. Aoife Granville (b. 1979) – a scholar and flute and fiddle player from Dingle, County Kerry-states, ‘a lot of us have people we learned from that without them we probably wouldn’t have taken the steps in becoming musicians. I think it’s really important to have someone or to have a network of people’ (Granville, interview). Lave and Wenger refer to this ‘network of people’ as a ‘community of practitioners’ (1991). Even musicians who learn from a single teacher or family member are still influenced by other musicians. Interacting with a community of practitioners enables newcomers to absorb cultural, social, and musical meaning simultaneously through discussions and active music-making.

Of all the social exchanges between traditional musicians, listening is undoubtedly the most important to musical development. This is perhaps unsurprising considering Irish traditional music is an oral culture. But from an educational point of view, listening to others’ music-making provides an essential model for imitation. Traditional musicians frequently emphasize the importance of listening and aural learning. I had the privilege of interviewing the uilleann piper and scholar from Derry, Tomás Ó Canainn (1930–2013), and he shares his thoughts on how his musical style developed:

Obviously, it makes it a lot easier if you associate with traditional musicians, and you make somebody or some people your model. It certainly has a lot to do with the surrounding and what sort of music is normal around there.

(Ó Canainn, interview)

To Tomás, listening to other practitioners provides a natural opportunity to absorb stylistic nuances; it is the conduit for enculturation to take place.

Experienced traditional musicians can learn and remember hundreds of tunes.² Players have their own ways of recalling repertoire, including thinking of a tune’s name, commonly played sets, or favourite commercial recordings. Some musicians (including myself ) feel it is easier to remember tunes learned directly from another musician. Seamus Sands (b. 1963), a fiddle player from Newry, County Down, for example, says that associating tunes to a place or person often triggers his memory (Sands, interview). John Reid (b. 1970), an uilleann piper from Inch, County Clare, also links tunes with his friends, as he explains:

Any tune I learn off Liam, I think of him when I’m playing it. If I’m trying to remember it again later, I think of him and I end up actually remembering it.

(Reid, interview)

In addition to listening to music, listening to others’ musical views, beliefs, stories, and suggestions is also important to musical enculturation. Many of the contexts in which Irish traditional music is played are also social events. During informal events, musicians talk about traditional music and life in general in between music-making, and many interviewees emphasized the educational importance of such casual conversations. Geraldine O’Callaghan (b. 1982), a fiddle player from Freemount, County Cork, learned about the musical, cultural, and historical aspects of traditional music in this way:

By sitting down and listening to a musician, learning by ear and imitation, you’re aspiring to their music. As well as absorbing a tune, you’re absorbing their love of it and their respect for it. You might be learning where they learnt it from, you learn a story that went with it, how they learned it, or the person that the tune is named after.

(O’Callaghan, interview)

Talking with knowledgeable practitioners can provide newcomers with broad historical and cultural information. Embodying this cultural information is at the core of musical enculturation; more than the acquisition of repertoire and techniques, becoming a traditional musician involves understanding the socio-cultural context of the music. This understanding is cultivated by frequently playing and relating with other musicians. To Connie O’Connell (b. 1943) – a fiddle player and composer from Cill na Martra, County Cork – chatting and playing with other musicians is critical:

Traditional Irish music, to my mind, is handed down orally generation to generation, and that’s the only way you can really do it. I think the only way that you really find out about music and its source is - there is nothing like meeting the musicians themselves, talking to them. You could be talking to them about the weather, but you are finding out their personality.

(O’Connell, interview)

To Connie, conversing with musicians facilitates a deeper understanding of the music; even non-musical topics are an important, but subtle, part of musical enculturation.

Connecting with a community of practitioners transmits musical, historical, and cultural information and plays a crucial role in the construction of musical identity. All definitions of ‘learning’ involve a change to the self, and learning traditional music is no exception. Novices begin their developmental journey on the periphery of the tradition, but learning tunes and techniques allows further and deeper engagement with the musical practice. It gradually feels less socially awkward to sit at session tables, as newcomers become accustomed to playing alongside better players. Musical ability grows alongside additional opportunities to play and socialize – musical doors begin to open – confidence begins to rise. Correspondingly, identities shift from outsiders to partial musical insiders. For some, this change of identity occurs so slowly it can go unnoticed for a time. During their journey, newcomers absorb music and socially accepted norms through discourse and engagement in the practice itself. Cultural understanding is not theoretical, but a lived experience which ultimately becomes embodied as musical identity. In every community of practice, different characters impact and facilitate situated learning in various ways. Mentors, peers, family members, and enthusiasts all play slightly different roles during the enculturation process.

Mentors

Mentor, a character in Homer’s Odyssey, was the family retainer to whom Odysseus, when he set off for the Trojan War, entrusted the care of his son and heir, Telemachus. With those origins, the term mentor carries the connotations not only of a teacher but also of a parental stand-in or life adviser.

(Booth 2009:118)

Experienced members of a community of practice informally or formally mentor newcomers, inadvertently or purposefully schooling them in social etiquette and essential skills related to the practice (Lave and Wenger 1991). Within Irish traditional music culture, mentors can be teachers, family members, recording artists, an...