Irish music + Indigenous Traditions in Alaska (weeks 9-10)

Nationalism and Traditional Music in Irish Music

• English domination provoked an Irish promotion of cultural difference

• Anglo-Irish

• Political nationalism

• Cultural nationalism

• Trad music as Irish in contrast to Western Art Music

Types of Trad - Songs

• Sean Nós or “old style” songs in Irish (solo voice/free rhythm)

  • Meaning "old way," it refers to revered songs sung in Irish Gaelic, considered the heart of Irish traditional music.

• Songs in English

Types of Trad - Airs

• Instrumental slow tunes, often based off song melody

Types of Trad - Dance Music or tunes

• Solo step dances

• Group set dances

• Ceili dances

• ls used in non-dance settings

Types of tunes - Jigs

• Triple Jigs

• Double Jigs

• Single Jigs

• Slip Jig or Hop Jig

• Common dance rhythms for Irish dance tune melodies.

Types of Tunes - Slide

• Triple meter

• Common dance rhythms for Irish dance tune melodies.

Types of Tunes - Reel

• Duple meter

• Common dance rhythms for Irish dance tune melodies.

Types of Tunes - Hornpipe

• Duple meter

• Common dance rhythms for Irish dance tune melodies.

Types of Tunes Polkas and Waltzes

• Brought Into Ireland

• Polkas = Duple

• Waltzes = Triple

Tea Culture

• Rude to accept tea on the first go...

• goes into play. w/ sessions of music (offer/reject method)

Irish Music in the 20-21st Century

• The West of Ireland stood for true “Irish-ness”

• Way to access the irish past via language, folklores, antiquites and way of life

Transformations and Fusions in Irish Culture

• Consists of evolving synthesis from Irish, French, Scottish, English and American sources

• Culture/Tradition is an ongoing and ever-changing thing

Major Figures and Musical Groups in Ireland

• Seamus Ennis (1919-1982)

• Sean Ó Riada (1931-1971)

Ensembles of the first Irish music revival (1960s):

• Ceoltóiri Chualann (est. 1960)

• The Chieftains (first album 1963)

Ensembles of the second generation of the Irish music revival (1970s):

• Plaxty

• Clannad

• Bothy Band

• De Dannan

Main features of modern ensemble style of Irish dance music

• Group performances rather than solo performances

• Chordal accompaniment of the melody

• Use of percussion

• Foreign influences

• Varied musical textures

• Music is for listening, not for dancing (Bakan 187)

Riverdance

• 1994 Eurovision interval act

• Main dancers: Michael Flatley and Jean Butler

• Producers: Moya Doherty and John McColgan

• Composer: Bill Whelan

• A way to present contemporary ireland w/ irish dance (new interpretations

Fusions

• When musicians from different traditions encounter one another and work together to bring their experience and musicianship to create new music styles and musicalities

• Celtic Rock

• Started with Horslips in the 1970s

• Celtic rock is “primarily of an electrificied ‘rock’n reel’ nature—folk rock drawing heavily on Irish tradition” (Herman 1994, 421-422).

Session

• An informal gathering where musicians play Irish tunes together without accompanying dancing. It serves as a social event for validating friendships.

Medley

• A set of tunes (typically three) strung together.

Ceílí

• An informal social gathering, typically at a pub or dance hall, that involves dancing.

Indigenous

• Indigenous peoples are considered as the original inhabitants of a land, region, or territory

Indigenous Cultural Sovereignty

• “the right, opportunity, and agency of Indigenous people to control and make their own decisions about how to represent themselves and others through their language,cultural practices, and value systems” (Senungetuk in Bakan, 341).

Cultural Appropriation

• stealing, borrowing, or copying intangible cultural heritage, intellectual property, or stylistic elements from an Indigenous nation and claiming it as one’s own” (Senungetuk in Bakan, 341).

Common threads in many Indigenous cultures:

• Singing

• Drumming

• Rattles

• Whistles/flutes

• Using instruments from other musicultures

• Typically oral transmission

• the Importance of telling stories

Worldview

• a people’s “ways of knowing and understanding the world in which they live, their place within it, and potentially their connections to other worlds

  beyond this earthly one” (347)

Lifeways shaped by natural environment (For Inupiaq and Yup’ik peoples:)

• Arctic region

• Subsistence hunting and gathering

• Working on/with/around sea ice

• Live in small groups of related families

• Underground winter homes and aboveground summer homes

• Transportation based on sea and snow travel

Story Songs of Inupiaq and Yup’ik peoples

• May contain historical knowledge

• Origins of people or the universe

• Historical events

• Recent events

• May have a lesson or moral

• Passed down from generation to generation

Oral Tradition

• “passing a song directly from one person to another or from one generation to the next without the use of writing, music notation, or other such forms of documentation involves a process of transmission and preservation” (346)

Types of Inupiaq and Yup’ik Story Songs

• Traditional styles with traditional topics

• Traditional style with modern topic

• Traditional themes but modern styles

John Nangerqaleria Angaiak: Indigenous Yup’ik singer-songwriter.

• Songs in folk and folk-rock idioms

• Use of English and Yugtun languages

• Songs for 2 different audiences

  • Fellow Alaska Native peoples

  • As intro to Alaska Native languages for wider, non-Native world

• Musical style

• Lyrics

Music as Identity (Indigenous)

• Through specific timbres, esp. Vocal quality

• Playing techniques

• Use of Indigenous languages

  • Conveys cultural knowledge

  • Represents connection to a community

  • Desire to continue Indigenous knowledge

  • Keeps languages alive

• Song form

• Ownership

• Regalia

Traditional Story Songs of Inupiaq and Yup’ik peoples

• Typically accompanied by 1 or more large, round, frame drums with attached handles

  • Role of drums

• 2-20 drummers, typically male

• Dance Group leader’s role

• Singers

• Dancers - contribute on multiple levels

Contemporary Story Songs

• Home rather then where you are from or moved to is the core of identity to one’s connections to community.

Inuit

• Throat singing

• Katajjaq: vocal game

Intertribal Pow-wows

• Intertribal culture provides a point of access for those individuals to experience and construct their identities on a macro level through social interaction and in doing so to better understand the particularity of

  their tribal specificity.

Pow-wow

• “Pow-wows are intertribal Native American social gatherings built around a shared repertoire of songs and dances” (Perea 18).

• Interactive spaces for Native and non-Native communities to educate each other and create new and relevant forms of culture

• Remain relevant because “they provide space for the creation and negotiation of culture through intertribal music and dance for successive generations of participants” (18).

Common pow-wow dance categories

• Women’s cloth

• Women’s Buckskin

• Women’s Jingle

• Women’s Fancy Shawl

• Men’s Southern Traditional

• Men’s Northern Tradtional

• Men’s Grass

• Men’s Fancy Dance