On listening to sean-nós
Listening to sean-nós singing forces you to do a lot of things differently. It’s a real re-education. First of all, if you really want to understand the words, you have to sit still and listen very hard, especially if you are not a native speaker of Irish. A few seconds of doing something else - like typing this blog post, for example - and not only have you lost the thread, but you’re out of the ‘zone’, that special state of mind in which everything else stops and you listen only to the singing. As I type, I am listening to Liam Ó Raghallaigh, sung by Caitlín Maude (1941-82), for the twelfth time. I had to listen to it: it was vaguely going around in my head about an hour ago, and now I am trying to piece it together, layer by layer, replay by replay.
Nowadays, with iPod, the more songs you have, the better, it seems. People have thousands of songs with them at any one time, but how often do they sit down to listen and re-listen to just one of them with the aim of understanding it? To be sure, most people listen to songs in their native language, sung in an easily understood fashion, but even so, I think listening to sean-nós is another way of listening to music. It’s about concentrating on less, rather than more, and appreciating and getting to know each work as fully as possible. In short, it is ‘intensive’ music consumption, rather than extensive.
Before I bought this CD, I had a notion of listening to these songs and trying to transcribe them line by line, by pausing and replaying. Now I realise that would have been murder: these songs and their texts are nothing if not taken as a whole. I’m going to have to learn the words of Liam Ó Raghallaigh the hard way: by listening, listening and listening again. This is a real meal for the senses, one that needs serious digestion.
Nowadays, with iPod, the more songs you have, the better, it seems. People have thousands of songs with them at any one time, but how often do they sit down to listen and re-listen to just one of them with the aim of understanding it? To be sure, most people listen to songs in their native language, sung in an easily understood fashion, but even so, I think listening to sean-nós is another way of listening to music. It’s about concentrating on less, rather than more, and appreciating and getting to know each work as fully as possible. In short, it is ‘intensive’ music consumption, rather than extensive.
Before I bought this CD, I had a notion of listening to these songs and trying to transcribe them line by line, by pausing and replaying. Now I realise that would have been murder: these songs and their texts are nothing if not taken as a whole. I’m going to have to learn the words of Liam Ó Raghallaigh the hard way: by listening, listening and listening again. This is a real meal for the senses, one that needs serious digestion.