Transmission; Dance; Céilí
band tradition
Transmission
Transmission of the music traditions of county Clare has undergone
dramatic development in the past two hundred years. The traditional
paradigms for transmission are learning from family and immediate
neighbours and travelling ‘master’ musicians. This certainly
has led to the development of music families, where performance skills
are passed down through the generations and also the belief that a
particular locality is essentially musical. Families such as the McCarthy’s
whose musical life began with Tommy McCarthy from Kilmihil, the Hayes
family from Mahera and the
Russells from Doolin are central to the traditions of Clare while
places such as Kilmihil, Feakle, and the areas around Doolin, Miltown
Malbay and Quilty are regarded as important historical and contemporary
centres for traditional musical making. Such reputations are created
by these important forms of traditional transmission. The other major
paradigm is that the music was spread by travelling musicians such
as George Whelan and Garrett Barry. It was common throughout Ireland
for people with a physical disability, particularly loss of sight,
to make their living, or part of it, from playing and teaching music
and this was particularly true in Clare. Such musicians, like the
dancers, would have restricted themselves to a certain area, perhaps
because their disability needed a community to be prepared to actively
support them. This made contacts with new communities more difficult
and to be avoided unless strictly necessary. Certainly their range
was also limited by competition from similar musicians in surrounding
districts.
More recently transmission has been transformed through
institutional classes promoted in local music schools and branches
of Comhaltas. This has raised the profile of the music in urban centres
in the county, particularly Ennis. Undoubtedly more children are learning
traditional music in county Clare at present in professional and semi-professional
multi-instrumental group classes, very often aimed at producing ensembles
for competition. The adoption nationally of British style grade examinations
and the growth of traditional music in the secondary school curriculum
has contributed significantly to the development of classical style
one-to-one or small group teaching for specific instruments. Also,
the summer schools such as the Willie Clancy Summer School and the
Feakle Music Weekend, while contributing to tourism, have a significant
educational impact through their classes for music and dance.
Dance
Factors for some extent of stylistic homogeneity in the music of Clare
are the dance traditions of the region. Central to the dance tradition
of Clare are the sets. Sets came to Ireland as quadrilles which swept
Western Europe in the early nineteenth century and which came originally
from French courtly dances such as the cotillion. Particularly
popular in Clare are the Caledonian (widely believed to have been
brought to Clare by Scottish sappers), the Lancers and the Plain sets.
The context of the performance of these dances would have been again
the house dances and the more public occasions at pattern days, fairs
and other significant days in the calendar of the locality.11
Set dancing in a pub in Feakle. Photo: Sonia Schorman.
These sets and step dances that today are perceived
as sean-nós were taught by travelling dancing masters such
as Pat Barron and Thady Casey, both in west Clare. It is remarkable
that the dance tradition of Clare survived through the twentieth century
as it faced much institutionalised opposition through the Dance Hall
Act and general opposition from the Catholic church who condemned
such dances and competed with them through the development of parochial
halls. Junior
Crehan gives us an example of this institutional opposition and
the vigour of the tradition that survives it, describing an exchange
between the dancing master Pat Barron and a local curate;
Barron, a dancing master from West Limerick was holding
his classes in Jimmo Sexton’s house, near Mullagh. The local
curate rode out from Mullagh fully intending to scatter the dancing
school. When he came into the house, he found Barron on the floor
putting a pupil through his paces while the music was being supplied
by a concertina player. The priest grabbed the concertina, flung it
on the fire and put his boot on it. Then he turned to Barron and is
reported to have said:
Clear out of here you dancing devil or I’ll
make a goat of you
To which Barron retorted,
If you do, I’ll give you a pucan up in the
arse with my horns
Pat Barron did not evacuate Mullagh because the curate
wanted him out; instead he resumed his classes and remained for
another year or so and he didn’t turn into a goat as far as
I know.12
The opposition to traditional music and especially
traditional dance by the church was not however consistent. Some curates
were of course strict (like the extreme example above) but some were
willing to subvert the music and dance culture to their own ends.
A prime example of this is Father Larkin in Ballinakill, across the
border in south east Galway who was central to the establishment of
the first ensemble credited as a céilí band in Ireland,
The Ballinakill Traditional Players. They were most probably
established to play music for dances to raise funds for the construction
of a parochial hall and playing for dancing classes in the local national
school. It is also believed that the precursors to The
Kilfenora Céilí Band in north Clare were established
in the first and second decades of the twentieth century to play for
dances used to raise funds to pay a large parish debt incurred by
the building of a parochial hall.13
The Golden Star Céilí Band. Photo: Michael John
Glynne.
Céilí band tradition
Dance bands have played a huge part in the successful reinvention
of traditional music practice in Clare in the twentieth century and
particularly since the 1940s. The two bands whose rivalry has been
legendary throughout Ireland among those that follow traditional music
are The Kilfenora and The
Tulla Céilí Bands. However, as stated previously,
there are records of over 50 céilí bands in Clare over
the past century with particular local connections to village, town
or parish. Indeed, in the 54 years of the All-Ireland Céilí
Band competition, an annual event organised by Comhaltas as part of
the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil, the first prize has been won thirteen
times by Clare bands. Céilí bands are most often named
for a particular place (although membership is most often more widely
derived) and can incite ferocious support in that locality in a way
similar to a local GAA club. This support has a wider base in a national
community of dancers and listeners who may prefer the performance
of one particular band over others. The major bands have a dual life
as dance bands and competition bands, a life that many would say is
made by the two performance practices having opposing aesthetics.
The bands tend to be built around a core membership of instrumentalists
(dominated by fiddles and flutes but often containing accordion, banjo,
concertina, pipes and other instruments) playing in unison with piano
and basic, jazz-drum kit (snare, bass, block and sometimes cymbal).
These provide accompaniment for dances and, particularly for ones
that would be for less traditional audiences, a singer may be drafted
in to sing songs with the band for waltzes, one-steps and other dances
considered more modern, less native and associated with contemporary
songs. In the 1950s and 60s, when these céilí bands
had to compete with the more modern ‘showbands’ (céilí
bands would have been more popular in the smaller dance halls and
on the less popular nights), they started to incorporate instruments
and styles from that more popular tradition.14
However, with the demise of the show-band circuit by the early 70s
and the revival of the set dance tradition, the bands returned to
more traditional formats. Today, céilí dances throughout
Ireland would be described as for ‘céilí’
or ‘set’ dancers and the later would be predominant in
Clare.15 These
bands were the central aspect of the first professionalisation of
traditional music apart from the small economy of the travelling musicians
and dancing masters. It is perhaps no accident that the predominant
bands (the Kilfenora and the Tulla) came from the
more rural north-west area of the county and the hill country of east
Clare respectively. Although none of these Clare bands were ever fully
professional, the income they generated was often vitally important
for the families of the musicians.
