The conventional assumption is that once upon a time, if you learned it at all, you learned it in a sod farmhouse, behind the parish priest’s back, in between reaping and milking duties, on an instrument that smelled like Woodbines and your great uncle’s Republican angst. But these days, there are a whole helluva lot of us out there who learn this traditional Irish stuff down the side hall of a suburban four-bedroom, in between trips to Target and the taqueria, off a playlist where Frankie Gavin comes right after Fort Minor and right before Frankie J. We play a pretty mean pipes or fiddle or box or flute – hell, we’ve even won a championship or two – but chances are we’ve never cut turf or dug praties next to the bog. If we did, we probably paid 15 bucks to do it at a stop on the bus tour. Céad Míle Fáilte, Americans who play traditional Irish music.
Now, I’m not talking about a familiar crowd of O’s and Mc’s and -ley’s from Chicago, Boston, and New York. They’re a talented bunch, for damn certain, and I highly recommend their albums – but calling them out as Americans who play Irish music (AWPIM? Too soon for an acronym?) is like giving a mensch from Brooklyn credit for making mean brisket. I’m talking about us guys and girls from LA and Dallas and Baltimore and Seattle and Jackson Hole; we who caught the bug after skeptical parents bought us secondhand Chieftains albums or the Titanic soundtrack, crashed our first session with a Generation tin whistle or a pizza-box bodhran, and somehow wound up playing mean tunes in the end. You know who you are, and so do I, and only because I'm one of you – i.e., don’t even try to act like the theme to Braveheart wasn’t one of the first “slow airs” you ever taught yourself
That brings me around to a bit of ground I'd like to cover: let’s have a look at what it’s all about to be an AWPIM (there, I took the plunge), from our first discovery of how parallel fifths somehow felt like tiny orgasms, to outgrowing our first attempts to put on an Irish accent, to learning to love soapy warm overpriced beer for what we’ve convinced ourselves it means to drink it. Let the voyage of self-explanatory navel-gazing begin: start thinking about what color you want the sweater made out of all the lint you collect to be.
Mine will be blue.
That brings me around to a bit of ground I'd like to cover: let’s have a look at what it’s all about to be an AWPIM (there, I took the plunge), from our first discovery of how parallel fifths somehow felt like tiny orgasms, to outgrowing our first attempts to put on an Irish accent, to learning to love soapy warm overpriced beer for what we’ve convinced ourselves it means to drink it. Let the voyage of self-explanatory navel-gazing begin: start thinking about what color you want the sweater made out of all the lint you collect to be.
Mine will be blue.
No comments:
Post a Comment