Looking ahead

I had a quick check for Magersfontein. As I thought it was a battle during the Boer War  and the cheerful, upbeat tune commemorates the brigade that suffered the heaviest losses. The phantom piper who can be heard playing “mournful notes” at the battle field must be playing some other tune. Presumably these endless upbeat tunes attached to terrible events celebrate the life and bravery of the troops rather than their deaths. I’m learning rather a lot about British military history as I go through these tunes names. A far cry from my usual fields of interest.

I do need to move my new tunes to dotlessness. I think with Troy, Alick and the Fiddler I should probably break them up into sections and learn a bit at a time. I know I just about had the A part of Troy a while back, and occasionally I get bits of the B part of the Fiddler, which is most unusual – its normally the A part that comes first. I must be nearly there with Somme and Dragon and perhaps not far off already with Magersfontein. I just need to try them really: I've been sticking to dots ever since I started these.

My plan now is to try to record more often, and to cut back on blogging to make time for piping. Perhaps I'll aim to post once a week with a tune. I'd like to try keep track of hours of play, too. I'm not intending to do this forever: maybe to 100 hours, that seems like a nice goal. Somehow  I feel as though I've passed a milestone this month. I'm celebrating by not playing at all this evening!

My life in folk tunes

The fan mentioned over dinner the other evening that he was curious as to why I am now so very much into traditional music. I've always been aware of traditional music, I think. I'm old enough to have done "music and movement" in school, which involved English folk dance, which I assume we did to English folk tunes, although I don't remember the music. My grandfather - who rather enjoyed teasing other people - had a record of Scottish pipe bands, which he mostly played to annoy. My father is fond of light opera and the tenor voice, and often listened to records as he was cooking Sunday lunch. This is where I first came across John McCormack and Robert White singing polite drawing-room version of Irish traditional songs: The Wearing of the Green, She Moved Through The Fair, The Mountains of Mourne, The Rose of Tralee, Danny Boy...

We had penny whistles for a while, and they all came with Irish tunes - the Minstrel Boy I remember the most. Then I bought (why?) a set of English, Scottish and Irish tune books for my recorder and had those for years. At University I did some musical exploration. Nothing a fan of real traditional music would accept, I think, but I lurked around the edges in many ways: Bob Dylan, the Furies (which I think I came to via the recommendation of a folk-loving aunt), the soundtrack to Cal (the book was on my reading list) which was probably my first introduction to  Irish pipes. Eventually I found the Pogues.

When I met the fan he handed me a pile of vinyl and I listened to the Bothy Band (I liked the songs best), De Dannan (The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba in Galway one of my all time favourites), some Ossian (which I didn't entirely take to).

And then we were busy setting up home and the fan sang in a choral society and I listened to a lot of opera and baroque, and we both occasionally twanged on the mandolin and sometimes went to the local folk club, but folk music wasn't a big part of our lives. I think it came back when the fan found a fellow mandolin player busking in our village. That chance encounter has led to going to various sessions, signing up to the Session and Trad Connect, meeting people, visits to Scotland and Ireland, discovering Foot Stompin, All Celtic Records, Coda Music, Custys', and a rapidly growing CD collection. It has also led to the spare room being home to the mandolin, a mandola, a bouzouki, two guitars, two bodhrans, a couple of whistles and Morag. It has led to the Monkey, and this blog. It's been a musical journey, with many side roads, diversions and breakdowns, but we feel - the fan and I - as though we're going in the right direction now.

Which is all background, really, and doesn't explain my current enthusiasm, which I'll cover in another post.