Ireland and Their Culture

Hello Everyone! 

    Welcome to the first finals week of our freshman year and my very last blog for this class. Before I get started on my blog, I wanted to talk about the reason why I chose Ireland to do my musical research on. When I was 16, I babysat for an Irish family who had just moved to Charleston. After babysitting for them for a year, I really started to learn more about Ireland and listen in to the stories and their experiences that they had living in a different country. To me, this really caught my attention because I realized that I knew nothing about other countries and their cultural aspects, so I thought I would talk about Ireland. SO… hold on, stay with me, and be patient as you read through my blog. I am still learning about their culture, and do not know everything about them, but I will do my best to explain what I have learned. 

    To get started on my blog, I am going to talk about how Irish music came to be and the background on how it formed. Irish music has been traced back to about 2000 years ago, when the Celts arrived, but it has only gained recognition within the past two decades. Not only did the Celts bring music to Ireland, but they also brought arts and crafts too. The Celts were established in Eastern Europe in 500BC, and were undoubtedly influenced by the East, where the Irish harp was suspected to originate from Egypt. Along the way the Celts also left their mark on Spain, Northern France as well as Scotland and Wales, but strongly thrived within Ireland (Story of Irish Music). The first written collection of Irish music appeared in 1792, containing “49 airs and published by Neale Brothers in Dublin.” Although this was the first written collection, it was not until the Belfast Harp Festival during the same year, that the most significant Irish was made by Edward Bunting. Up to the 1960’s, Irish music still had its main settings of houses and pubs or rural areas, where music was performed mainly to be danced to. It was not until Sean O’Riada’s involvement within the traditions, that the music found a wider audience. O’Riada was a music lecturer at the University of College Cork who knew a great deal about western music, but became very interested in Irish music and eventually created a band. The band was named Ceoltoiri Chualann, and they made many classical forms of music made up of fiddle, flute, uilleann pipes, accordion and bodhran, and came up with solos. O’Riada created the concept of an Irish music ensemble, which influenced people around them to try other styles of music. A few years later, the group Planxty arrived and created a new sound. That sound consisted of traditional folk music and a ballad style which then helped form a musical movement that encouraged bands to master musicianship and explosive sounds. I know that this is a lot of information to take in, especially since it is just the start of Irish music, but I thought that I should talk about the most important parts that helped the emergence of the Irish traditions (Story of Irish Music). Below is a video of the Belfast Harp Festival Scenery.

    Since y’all have read through the background information, I am going to make it more interesting and fun. When I got to researching about Ireland, I looked up the traditional Irish instruments and the instruments played in traditional Irish music. Some of the instruments consist of Bodhrán, Fiddle, Tin Whistle, Uilleann Pipes, Concertina, and the Harp. The Bodhrán is a simple handheld drum, with goatskin stretched across the top and a wooden cross on the inside for the player to hold the drum. It is always played vertically while resting on the knee, and the free hand is placed around the drum to control the pitch and timbre. The Fiddle is very well known around the world, there is no difference between a fiddle and a violin except for the way it is played, the fiddle is used in folk and upbeat music, whereas the violin is used in classical music. The Tin Whistle is another simple instrument that surprisingly takes a lot of skill, it has a range of two octaves with 6 holes and a mouthpiece. The Uilleann Pipes are similar to the Scottish Bagpipes but are much quieter with a range of two octaves and they usually have key drones and regulators with a few extra pipes. The Concertina is a small hexagonal accordion with a keyboard on both ends and no bass (female musicians are particularly skilled in playing this instrument).The last instrument, the Harp, is not an Irish instrument but is traditionally played within Irish music. The Harp comes in many different sizes and shapes that have multiple strings with a neck and a resonator and can be played very differently, but is played normally for their “dreamlike” sounds (Traditional Irish Instruments). Below you will find some of the instruments and a video of the instruments being played together (or at least some of the instruments being played together). 

                                                                            (Bodhrán)

                                                                        (Uilleann Pipes)

    So, within one of my first blogs about my musical culture, I explained the bands that I normally listen to and the type of music that I listen to as well. My favorite genres of music are Metal and Rock, I like the grunge to the music and the sound of the electric guitar with the bass. When I was reading into some of the Irish bands, I wanted to go on a more modern path and decided to look up Irish Metal Bands. One band that I found and really liked was Cruachan; an Irish Folk metal band from Dublin that have been active since the 1990’s. They are known for going great lengths and their attempts to expand the folk metal genre, they are also recognized as one of the founders of the folk metal genre. They specifically focus on Celtic music and the use of Celtic mythology within their lyrics, and their style of metal is known as Celtic Metal (Wikipedia). Below is a video of the first song that I listened to, and although it might not be your taste of music, I thought it was very fascinating and wanted to look at something different. The song is called “The Great Hunger” and is about the struggles that Ireland went through during the potato famine. Listen to the lyrics carefully and let me know what you think. 

    The last thing I want to touch base on are some of the Irish traditions that are still carried onto today. One of the two traditions that I want to talk about is called “Little Women’s Christmas,” where it is a traditional girls night out. It formed because back in the days, where large families were the norm, the men never laid a finger in the house, and the women did everything, so each year, after Christmas the women got a day off and a night out to themselves to celebrate and relax. Women used to gather together in small pubs or rural houses, but over the years  they eventually expanded to going out to restaurants and switched their corn beef with stout to wine and lunch. The other tradition that I was interested in was Celtic halloween, which is very well known in America. Ireland handed down this tradition, but they celebrated the veil between the spirit world and the human world on November 1st. The tradition of dressing in Halloween costumes and painting their faces in an ugly way was a way to scare off the wandering spirits, and they encouraged each other to make loud noises to frighten the spirits away (Ireland Fun Facts). I know that there are only two traditions that I talked about, but if you want to learn more, my links are at the bottom. Feel free to explore, and comment if you see a tradition that really appealed to you! 

    I am closing my blog with a small note, and then I promise I am done talking. I want to thank everyone for making this class a great time, and I really enjoyed getting to read y’alls blogs. I learned so much from y’all and found things that really interested you. I truly have looked into other genres of music, and the songs that you have all posted on your blogs. I hope that everyone has an amazing break, and hopefully I will see y’all in my other classes.

PS: Here is the Celtic Music I first found and fell in love with. It is long but skip through it and listen.

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_(band) 

https://www.musicalpubcrawl.com/story-of-irish-music 

https://www.claddaghdesign.com/ireland/traditional-irish-music-whats-it-all-about/

https://www.ireland-fun-facts.com/irish-culture.html