CEOL - OR IS IT “IRISH SOUL”?
By Brian McGowan
Rethinking Irish 5
You may recall prior mention of a
singing style called sean-nós. What, you may be asking, is this sean-nós singing? Quickly said, sean-nós is a highly ornamented style of solo, unaccompanied singing
defined by one authority, Tomás Ó Canainn, as a complex way of singing in
Gaelic,
with a highly ornamented melodic line, and varying greatly in ornamentation
depending upon where in Ireland where the singer hails from, either the South
(Munster), the West (Connacht) or the North (Ulster), three of the four
“provinces” of Ireland. The fourth
province, Leinster, in the east and southeast of the island, and holding
Dublin, capital of the 26-county Republic of Ireland, was historically called
“The Pale”, that region of Ireland centered on Dublin where English law and
authority prevailed in the centuries following the 12th Century
Norman invasion. The other three
provinces retained their Gaelic identities, and were referred to as “beyond the
Pale.” Now, there’s a phrase you have no
doubt heard, and maybe puzzled over, maybe not.
Either way, that’s where it comes from, and what it means.
Back to sean-nós. For those of you
who would like to understand Irish music deeper than the rest of the pack, Ó
Canainn has this advice: “No aspect of Irish music can be fully understood
without a deep appreciation of sean-nós
singing. It is the key which opens every
lock.” We’ll do it more justice down the
road.
Building in the main upon fairly
standard melodic outlines, the true beauty of the music lies in the brilliant
ornamentation each musician imparts on his own, unfettered by rigid rules as is
the case in other genres, such as the ceol
mór (literally “big music”) of the Great Highland Bagpipe. In Irish trad, as long as a musician stays
within a certain framework, he can morph a tune however he may like, using
various methods of ornamentation and variation, making it truly his or her
own. When you listen long and hard
enough to particular players, you can often identify a player on the radio
within the first dozen notes of a tune.
“Ah, that’s Eileen Ivers!” Of
course, mistakes can be made. “No, wait,
that’s…”
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