Location: Irish Cultural Centre of New England Bar
Date: February 16, 2008
Arrived at the bar at 7:45, show scheduled to start at 8:00. Younger man (early twenties or so) was standing by door smoking a cigarette, greeted us in an Irish accent. Bar was fairly empty, no musicians in sight. Around 8:00, young man comes in with a middle-aged man. They start moving chairs and tables away from one corner of the room. Middle-aged man leaves bar and returns with a guitar, amplifier, and microphone. Younger man brings a fiddle to the remaining table in the corner of the room, sits and starts playing softly. By 8:30, there are about 20 people in the bar and a four musicians sitting around the table: the middle-aged man on guitar, the younger man on fiddle, another middle-aged man with a mandolin, a bouzouki, and a fife, and an older woman with a bodhrán (a hand-held drum). The performers sit around the table facing each other, a microphone suspended above the table connected to an amp off to the side which faces the greater area of the room. Musicians start to play an up-tempo Irish instrumental at 8:35, do not address audience. When the song ends, all the musicians give a hearty shout and the crowd claps enthusiastically. The musicians look around amongst themselves, chat a bit with each other, laugh, and start another song.
Middle-aged man with guitar seemed to be the one who other musicians deferred to: the session leader.
Middle-aged man with guitar would sing, but it was hard to hear him because the microphone was picking up all the musicians. When I could hear him, he was singing with an Irish accent, though I had heard him talking with some of the patrons before he had finished setting up the performance space in an local accent.
Throughout night, more and more people started to show up. Social atmosphere, lots of talking over the music. Yet audience seemed conscious of the songs, singing along sometimes to the songs with vocals and always stopping to clap and cheer at the end of every song, even if they were engaged in conversation.
As show went on, more musicians showed up: two more bodhrán players, another fiddle player (female with a young son who was constantly trying to get into her lap while she played), a older-male harp player (whose playing was inaudible in the loud room), and another older-male who sang a song that the bar patrons seemed to be familiar with (they sang along).
Mix of instrumentals and vocal based songs.
Fiddles/mandolin would almost always play the same melody lines in unison.
Lots of patrons appeared to be families, ate together while music played.
Seemed as though the music provided an atmosphere for people to socialize to, few patrons actually seemed to be attentively listening to the music. All patrons seemed to appreciate the music, though; musicians and patrons seemed comfortable, as though the music wasn’t an exhibition but auxiliary to the social gathering.
Throughout show, patrons would come up and converse with performers. Long, leisurely pauses between songs to accommodate conversation. Musicians seemed very approachable.
Heard patron ask the younger man if he and the female fiddle player ever had a “fiddle duel”. Younger man said he didn’t believe in such practices.
Throughout show, musicians would come in and out of performances to get beer, would sit out songs, would join in whenever they seemed to feel like it.
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3 comments:
Hey Ben,
Your project sounds really interesting so far! It sounds like a really great atmosphere for field notes and talking informally to people as well.
I would be curious to see what kinds of songs the musicians were playing--if they are considered "traditional" Irish songs or more Irish-American fusions, or perhaps both. Where and how did the musicians (and audience) learn the songs? Also, are the musicians and audience of mostly Irish descent? It would certainly be interesting to see whether people are there because of heritage or affinity, or both. It also might be interesting to ask what people's perceptions of Ireland are, whether they have been there or not, and whether they would like to go back, to see how the "myth of return" plays into all of this.
Ben I think that you have gotten off to a great start. Reading your proposal, it seems that you definitely have a grasp on what you want to study and have chosen a topic that interests you and is personally relevant. Your field notes are very detailed and it seems that there is a lot of information there for you to go through. I can't wait to see what you find when you go to the cultural center. Also, don't forget that there are a number of great resources online that you might want to you in conjunction with the actual hands on research that you do. You will also have another great opportunity for research this month when St. Patrick's day comes around.
You've got a lot of great description in there, Ben. You do a good job characterizing this kind of music-making where it's not exactly "a performance" but not exactly not a performance either - that's a tricky thing to do.
Your notes leave me wondering two things:
1) where were you in all this (near the musicians? far away? who did or didn't recognize your presence and how did you interact with them?)
and 2) how did the session end?
In any case, you clearly have a lot to work with.
You might want to take note of ways you can fill in the details through interviews or just conversations: why was that guy singing in an Irish accent? what were the songs called? is the session leader a formal role or an informal one? etc.
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