Song Traditions

Question 1

Song traditions of Ireland

Answer 1

• dual language
• from 1600s onwards
• wide repertoire range, important historical/cultural context, specific sound

Question 2

Sean-nos

Answer 2

• old-style
• Irish language
• performed typically solo and without accompaniment
• head voice timber (nasally)
• from Gaeltacht areas… regional styles in each Gaeltacht but highly individualized

Question 3

Sean-nos sound

Answer 3

• ornamentation (rhythm, meter, and melody)
• slower and varied tempo… not metered dance music
• 18th and 19th century poetry repertoire, quite versified
• themes of love and loss, many big songs of high poetic value
• also lighter songs and lullabies

Question 4

Sean-nos performance/transmission contexts

Answer 4

• change from domestic to public in the 19th/20th centuries
• change in transmission from oral/family-based to formal classes and workshops
• influence of Oireachtas na Gaeilge (Gaelic League festival)
• had historically been domestic, indoors, and non-commercial

Question 5

Influences on performance contexts of sean-nos

Answer 5

• Oireachtas: competition/festival first held in 1897, hosted by Gaelic League
• Media: Irish language radio station, national Irish language TV, and recordings
• concerts (so more stage context) and rural rather than urban pubs in the 20th/21st century

Question 6

Oireachtas revival of sean-nos

Answer 6

• vernacular, Irish language song competition
• both gendered and mixed gender competitions
• Connemara region was typically favored
• adjudicators were Gaeltacht singers, academics, and people in the world of Irish trad music
• adjudicated on… quality of speech, voice/emotion/music, choice of song
• preference for ‘old-style’, natural and authentic

Question 7

Joe Heaney (Seosamh O hHeanai)

Answer 7

• 1919-1984
• born in Carna, Connemara, Co. Galway, then emigrated to the US
• part of the 1950/60s folk music revival
• field and archive recordings at Wesleyan and U Washington
• unusual for his time, heavily recorded

Question 8

Una Bhan

Answer 8

• solo, florid Connemara style
• melisma: many notes to one syllable
• song was part of a national repertoire
• versions found across various communities of sean-nos
• love and loss

Question 9

Nioclas Toibin

Answer 9

• 1928-1994, from small Gaeltacht in Waterford
• cleaner sound, song pitched in higher register
• sang Na Connerys, an overtly political song

Question 10

O Laoire

Answer 10

• horizons of understanding
• narrative, interpretation, and reconfiguration
• Tory Island, Donegal gaeltacht

Question 11

English language narrative singing

Answer 11

• reported sequence of linked events
• narrative to story, to fact, to fiction
• oral art form, broadsheets
• subforms include lays, ballads, lyric songs
• all are story-telling

Question 12

Narrative song devices

Answer 12

• report of a fulfilled action
• call to attention
• use of refrain (separate or at the end of verses)
• songs can vary the perspective on an action and comment on it
• frequent use of dialogue

Question 13

Francis James Child

Answer 13

• 19th century collector of music
• mainly published volumes of English/Scottish ballads, less sean-nos style

Question 14

Migration of songs

Answer 14

• big proponent of sharing culture
• migrates from Ireland to US, England, Scotland