Watching Thursday's video on "Amazing Grace," I was reminded how much the roots of our popular music are a blend of African American and Scots-Irish traditions. Some of the people who spoke about the origins of the song said it cmae from a West African slave melody, and others said its origins were in Scotland and Ireland, or with Scots-Irish settlers in the southern Appalachians.
My take on it (for what it's worth): "Amazing Grace" has deep roots in both cultures. So it's not African American or Scots-Irish, it's both. We'll never know exactly where it comes from, but that doesn't matter. Music transcends cultural boundaries.
But today I want us to explore one of those boundaries. Our popular music in America first came to these shores from Scotland and Ireland, as well as Africa, and I think it will help us to hear some of the Celtic roots of the music. I think a lot of it is universal. People of all cultures join in on songs, for examples, and kids get up and dance when they hear dance music. (We'll see that, too.) But there are also common threads. Listen for things like tempo, the way the musicians listen to each other and build on each others' playing ...
In the first video clip, American folk singer Jean Ritchie visits a village in Ireland. She was in the Bill Moyers video, by the way, playing the dulcimer (or "hogfiddle," the instrument this blog is named for). The family reunion in the Kentucky mountains at the beginning of the video was hers. In this clip from YouTube, she shares a folk hymn from her native Kentucky with Irish musicians who sing and play in the traditional Irish style (in Gaelic, "sean nós" pronounced shawn-NOS"). Listen for the man in the cardigan sweater singing in Gaelic, followed by Ritchie singing the Old Regular Baptist hymn, "Look away ... you can see the promised land." She sings in a traditional Appalachian style, but notice how much it sounds like Irish sean nós.
Here's a brief clip of an unidentified woman singing in the sean nós style at a folk festival in County Kerry, Ireland. (Next year's Benedictine University tour of Ireland will go through Co. Kerry, by the way.) Notice the older folks joining in.
Next we'll hear bluegrass artist Ralph Stanley and the Country Gentlemen of southwestern Virginia sing "Angel Band." Compare his voice to the Irish singers' and notice the way the band joins in. Hear the similarity?
A lot of Scots-Irish music was dance music, and the rhythms and some of the feeling carry over into southern Appalachian roots music. Bluegrass, too.
Here's a performance by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh fronting the Irish roots band Altan, on a "Balcony TV" show shot on, yeah, a balcony in Dublin. How is Ní Mhaonaigh's vocal like the Irish folk singers' even though the type of music is different from their ballads and hymns? How is it like Ralph Stanley's? How is it different?
Next Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless sing "Pretty Polly," a bluegrass version of an old Scots-Irish ballad. Compare their vocals to the Irish singers' ... both the traditional singers and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh.
Traditional music session in 2008 at J.J. Killeen`s Pub in Shannonbridge, Ireland:
And American old-time musicians jamming at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, W.Va. The dulcimer player at right is one of my teachers, Don Pedi of Madison County, N.C.
Altan, the Irish band that played the promo TV spot on balcony in Dublin, at a 2003 folk festival in Cambridge, England.
A little girl starts dancing during a pub session in Oughterard, Ireland
Another little girl dances as the Southern String Band plays "Cumberland Gap" in Raleigh, N.C.
The Hoorah Cloggers dance to music by the Wild Turkeys Old-time String Band in Floyd, Va.
"To Hear Your Banjo Play" (1947). Pete Seeger narrates Alan Lomax's 16-minute documentary on the evolution and appreciation of American folk music. Production values - and the film's message - are really, really old-fashioned and hokey, but it gives a capsule history of what we now call American roots music.
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