Happy Fourth of July

[mistykalia]

Spent the fourth performing music at a street fair, helping cue the fireworks for a massive orchestra/fireworks extravaganza here in town, observing the folks around me who were organizing the city events (namely the friendly and helpful members of our local law enforcement and national guard who spent the ENTIRE DAY in full uniform in 90 degree

Comments

[colomon]

I can only comment very tangentially on this, but my tangent is something I've been thinking about alot lately. I keep running into "classically" trained musicians online who are trying to take up Irish music. To a man, this latest batch doesn't seem to understand that long years of playing some other style doesn't make their (inevitably) rash, off-the-cuff observations about Irish music any more valid.

So, for instance, there was the guy who saw that "Shebeg Shemor" was an air whose song was about a battle, and concluded that everyone else was playing the tune wrong, it obviously was a lament needing "lots of rubato", quoting lots of references on the playing of sean nos slow airs in the process. The fact that the battle in question was between two groups of fairies seemed to go straight over his head. And I suspect he may have never have actually heard a proper slow air, else the wild differences in the two types of tunes would have been obvious. Any attempt to point out that he clearly didn't have a clue what he was talking about resulted in posts about respecting his 18 years in music education -- as if teaching high school band (or something, he didn't specify) automatically meant he knew everything there is to know about traditional music.

[mistykalia]

my response got too long... so I just made a new entry. :-)