Beginners dipping their toes for the first time into the Irish session music scene often ask this question. The answer is not nearly as simple as you might think.
It’s a question that concerned me a lot. Admittedly I had my first exposure to traditional music as a student back in the 1960s, and admittedly I learnt a tiny bit of whistle, a scraping of fiddle, and even had a flute (modern, cylindrical, metal) for a couple of years. Admittedly it was in the 1990s that I made myself the worst flute that I have ever seen out of a piece of polythene tubing. I did hear of a flute, although I never saw it, fashioned from a large carrot. That one may have been even worse than my polythene effort, although I wouldn’t count on it. And admittedly it was later in the 90s that I got my first half-way reasonable wooden flute. But it was not until a year or more into this millennium that I decided to make the effort to get somewhere with it.
I was living in Ireland at the time, and sessions were easy to find. Some seemed quite relaxed, so although I didn’t have many tunes I began to dare to go on and join in a bit. I do remember turning to a neighbour at one of my first sessions (I won’t name him, RIP) and asking “So what tunes get played a lot here?” I did find the answer of “Oh, there are so many” unhelpful, but bit by bit I asked people “What was the name of that last one”, I got hold of tune books, I spoke to the friends I was making at the sessions and began seriously to build up the stock of tunes that I knew.
Starting at this latish stage in life, I did find that I was playing “catchee-upee”. Some people, of course, had grown up with traditional music, and many of the non-Irish “blow-ins” had been interested continuously for a couple of decades, so they had lost count of the number of tunes they knew. Eventually, after about four years, I started to feel that I had, in a sense, got “enough” tunes. In another sense, of course, you can never know enough – it is only natural and proper to always be learning new ones. But with the best part of 200 tunes under my belt I found that at most of the sessions I would go to I would know at least a fair number of tunes, perhaps one quarter or one third of those that got played. Not as many as the hardened sessioneers, although my repertoire did have a relatively high proportion of odd tunes from odd places – my 200 were not actually 200 “session standards”. But it was enough not to feel that I simply sat at the edge all night hoping that one of the tunes that I knew would come up. It was a good working basis.
And then I came to live in Sydney. I tried one session (in Paddington) for a few weeks. I wasn’t too comfortable with it, as it leant in the FARTing direction (that’s FAst Reel Thrashing, by the way). After three or four visits, however, my enthusiasm waned even further when it was pointed out that I would have to find another seat, since the one I was in was the one for “Mick” the banjo player (I think it was Mick). Mick had been away for a few weeks, and Mick had not turned up in time to get a good seat for himself, but Mick was expected today, so I had better let him have “his” seat. I got the message.
After a while another session started in Newtown, and I began to go. The pace was much more enjoyable and while, of course, there were “senior” musicians, there was more of the sense that they were first amongst equals. But I soon came to feel that the number of tunes I knew was hopelessly inadequate. The “old favourites” of Skibbereen were either altogether unknown or deeply unpopular. How many did one need to know? This difficulty was exacerbated here because two of the “senior musicians” have, for different reasons, a phenomenal, even encyclopaedic knowledge of tunes. I started to look at the lists helpfully provided by various people of what were held to be “core” or “stock” tunes, tunes that almost any player should know. You’d think this would be a good idea. I did, at least, but close examination led me to the understanding that this approach is a dead end.
First, there is only a limited overlap in the contents of these lists of “core tunes”. I analysed several such lists, as well as lists of tunes that were actually played at certain sessions and festivals, with the help of Excel data sheets. It turns out that the majority of tunes on which there is agreement that they are “basic” are hardly ever played, because they are considered to be hackneyed. On the other hand, a good proportion of the allegedly “core” tunes seem to be idiosyncratic choices with which other list compilers disagree. In the middle, tween those two groups, we find a sample from a large body of more or less popular, more or less well-known tunes, but the sample depends on the background of the list compiler.
So what happens to the beginner who, in contrast to my experience, does get given a list of, say, 100 “important” tunes? Let’s imagine that the beginner is very enthusiastic, and manages to keep up properly learning a tune a week, or even more. Because they are unlikely to be learning in a vacuum, a beginner will also be learning other tunes not on this list, so nevertheless it will take them something like two years to learn these tunes. Now suppose they take the list seriously, and go away to learn them all. When they have the courage to turn up at the session again, two years later, they will find that of the tunes they have learnt, about one third are hackneyed and corny, so that nobody wants to play them. Another third were not popular tunes at all, and one could sit in sessions every night for a year and not hear them. The third in the middle were popular at one time, but things have moved on, and most of the third are now either forgotten or hackneyed. The beginner has spent two years and has no more than a handful of useful tunes. Not thrilling.
The whole approach is clearly just wrong. We could learn 500 tunes (and that will normally take quite a few years), sit in sessions, and still find ourselves waiting and waiting for a tune that we know. The number of tunes that we know is in fact not very important at all. Of course, we do have to know tunes, and it is good if the number is high, but the way we can play is far more important. If we know just a few dozen tunes, but we can deliver them with drive, with lift, with joy and with musicality, people will want to hear them. If we know just 100 tunes (which in this context is not terribly many), but can deliver them as just described, we could make a really valuable contribution to a regular session; some of our tunes might be played often, some less often, and of course a good player doesn’t join in every tune or every set.
So if I am asked again about how many tunes are session player needs to know, the answer will be that although in time one will certainly know many more, a few dozen is enough to get started, and that from then on the way we play them is more important than the number that we know. And as to which tunes they should be, the answer is that we should learn the tunes that we like and the tunes we can share with our fellow musicians. Whether they are hackneyed, obscure, generally popular, last year’s tune, next year’s tune – these are also unimportant questions.
I recently pointed out that we have a civic duty to learn about encryption, anonymization and other such techniques that we should use, by default, to hide our information, however innocent, from unethical government intrusion. I would like to give some further reasons.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, more commonly known as ASIO, has the right to detain a person, even when they are not suspected of a terrorist offence, for at least seven days if it is believed that they can “substantially assist in the collection of intelligence”. The Attorney General (an entirely political appointee, be it noted, nothing to do with the judiciary – in the Prime Minister’s pocket, in essence) must consent to the application for a warrant. The application is made to certain magistrates and judges who have volunteered for this job, but these seemingly judicial persons do not act in their judicial capacity, just as designated persons. The application is made without the prospective detainee being present, and the detainee is not informed of the reasons for the application. If the detainee wishes to challenge the sufficiency of the grounds, their legal adviser is not allowed to see any of the supporting documentation; the detainee, in any case, does not in fact necessarily have a right to legal advice, or even to contact anybody at all.
On top of this vile law, it has been made an offence to disclose that someone is subject to such a warrant; journalists are not allowed to report the existence of a warrant, even when trying to expose abuse or misuse of the system. ASIO and the AFP have made themselves into laughing-stocks over, for instance, the Haneef case, so we can be quite certain that sooner or later these powers will be abused again.
In the face of such severe threats to our safety, it would be helpful if we all know how to publish anything that we know about such things, whether we are reporters, friends of the detained or just concerned about human rights. We should know how to publish any information anonymously, to do our best to ensure that ASIO and the AFP are held to account. It is, however, ethical but illegal.
But do remember, it is legal to know about these techniques, it is unethical for ASIO and the AFP to have such powers, but if you actually publish information such as the existence of the kind of warrant mentioned above, you are breaking the law. I cannot urge you to do it.
This is the college matriculation photo from 1967, recently made available by the website people there. All of the freshers (1st years) at the House (Christ Church), lined up in Peck on the morning of matriculation, which is a kind of “induction” into membership of Oxford University. I am there, along with friends Bob Shatwell and Martin Jones (I recognize them) and doubtless others I can’t recognize – which one is Andrew James, for instance? Oh yes, acquaintance “Budgie” Jodhpur, relatively easy to spot. But where are Herbert Gray and Whatsisname Harris?
Submit your guesses in comments! (Oh, I had to change the setting for comments so that I have to approve them before they appear, as I was getting anything from a handful to a score of spam comments every day, but I will of course approve anything that is even 1/4-way reasonable.) You might need to click-to-enlarge to get the necessary detail.
I asked the same question about a different picture on Dang Zang, but that one is relatively easy.
According to an article syndicated, amongst other places, in the Sydney Morning Herald , Everton has hired Maori dancers to perform a dance based on the “haka” (as used by the New Zealand rugby team) as Everton and Arsenal run onto the park at Liverpool on Saturday.
The club has now, it seems, received “written threats from a leading Maori lawyer”, claiming that “the dance trespasses on Maori rights and disrespects their cultural heritage”. The club management, it appears, intends to go ahead, as indeed they should.
There are legal issues here, and there are also issues about modern culture. As to the legal issues, I am of course not an expert, but if the original “haka” is indeed traditional, then by definition it was not composed by those represented by the lawyer. Their claim is presumably based on genetic and cultural descent from those who first developed the dance. As an Englishman, do I have a right to prevent Maoris from performing (possibly bad) versions of Shakespeare? I think not, even though I do believe there is a Shakespeare way, way back in my ancestry. The dance has been used as part of the pre-match entertainment by Maoris for many years now. The idea that someone in New Zealand has some kind of intellectual right by means of which they can prevent someone doing a modified version of that dance in Liverpool, England, seems to be stretching the law a bit far. The club has indeed hired people of Maori appearance to do this dance, so in any case shouldn’t they be the target of the lawyer’s action? Those Maoris are the ones who are selling the dance to the club, after all. Here it is:
The whole question of the extent to which we have “rights” over the culture that was developed by earlier generations is one that interests me. (The meaning of “aboriginal painting” is an example of these muddy waters to which I hope to return one day.)
And then there is the question of culture. According to the article:
Intellectual property lawyer Maui Solomon told the Herald on Sunday he thought the haka, which starts “Everton! Everton! He, ha, he, ha!”, was “totally disrespectful”
As the Germans might say – “Na und?” And so? I have, of course, no knowledge of the hearts of the Everton management, and cannot comment on whether or not they respect Maori culture. In an ideal world we would all respect each other’s differences, although I certainly hope that would still allow us to make fun of them. Let us, for the moment, assume (perhaps unfairly) that they really are being disrespectful. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where the appearance of respect is enforced by the law. Too many people have fought too long and too hard to win us the moderate freedom that we now have to speak our minds to have that thrown away for the sake of every group that feels threatened by the way it is represented elsewhere. We can make comical drawings and jokes about Muhammad, we can say that the Queen of England is a frosty old bat, we can satirise Christian priests, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, our Prime Ministers and other political leaders, not to forget the Dalai Lama or, indeed, “Western Buddhists” like myself. And we can giggle at Maoris sticking their tongues out, stamping the floor and going “Ha Ha”. I am not sure whether blasphemy is still on the statute book, but it has become, thankfully, a pretty irrelevant law. I would, let me repeat, hope that we have respect for each other in our hearts, and that we would therefore refrain from doing things like the above under certain circumstances, especially those where they are particularly likely to cause hurt or offence. But it would be a grim, grey, oppressive and oppressed world in which the law was used to impose the personal taste of the few on the general taste of the many.
… a bunch of people who think that Australia’s national anthem is “Advance Fairskinned Australia”.
Or so it is said.
This isn’t the interesting, focussed blog you might have been looking for…
"Pica Pica" is, as I'm sure you knew, the name for the common magpie. It's no more than a collection of bits and pieces I wanted to make available for friends and family. I have other blogs for dharma related material (at DangZang), and a small one for translation at my work site.
At last the catalogue project that I began so long ago has reached a sort of completion. Improvement will always be possible, through more detail and ironing out mistakes. But at least I now know what I’ve got, and will avoid that embarrassing moment when you start reading a wonderful text that you ordered from […]
Happiness is booming: its stock is riding high. In 2012 you will be able, for a mere thousand Australian dollars, to take part in a conference on “Happiness and its causes” in Sydney. Unless, that is, you happen to want to join the additional workshops, which take another 700 dollars or more out of […]
Everton Haka
According to an article syndicated, amongst other places, in the Sydney Morning Herald , Everton has hired Maori dancers to perform a dance based on the “haka” (as used by the New Zealand rugby team) as Everton and Arsenal run onto the park at Liverpool on Saturday.
The club has now, it seems, received “written threats from a leading Maori lawyer”, claiming that “the dance trespasses on Maori rights and disrespects their cultural heritage”. The club management, it appears, intends to go ahead, as indeed they should.
There are legal issues here, and there are also issues about modern culture. As to the legal issues, I am of course not an expert, but if the original “haka” is indeed traditional, then by definition it was not composed by those represented by the lawyer. Their claim is presumably based on genetic and cultural descent from those who first developed the dance. As an Englishman, do I have a right to prevent Maoris from performing (possibly bad) versions of Shakespeare? I think not, even though I do believe there is a Shakespeare way, way back in my ancestry. The dance has been used as part of the pre-match entertainment by Maoris for many years now. The idea that someone in New Zealand has some kind of intellectual right by means of which they can prevent someone doing a modified version of that dance in Liverpool, England, seems to be stretching the law a bit far. The club has indeed hired people of Maori appearance to do this dance, so in any case shouldn’t they be the target of the lawyer’s action? Those Maoris are the ones who are selling the dance to the club, after all. Here it is:
The whole question of the extent to which we have “rights” over the culture that was developed by earlier generations is one that interests me. (The meaning of “aboriginal painting” is an example of these muddy waters to which I hope to return one day.)
And then there is the question of culture. According to the article:
Intellectual property lawyer Maui Solomon told the Herald on Sunday he thought the haka, which starts “Everton! Everton! He, ha, he, ha!”, was “totally disrespectful”
As the Germans might say – “Na und?” And so? I have, of course, no knowledge of the hearts of the Everton management, and cannot comment on whether or not they respect Maori culture. In an ideal world we would all respect each other’s differences, although I certainly hope that would still allow us to make fun of them. Let us, for the moment, assume (perhaps unfairly) that they really are being disrespectful. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where the appearance of respect is enforced by the law. Too many people have fought too long and too hard to win us the moderate freedom that we now have to speak our minds to have that thrown away for the sake of every group that feels threatened by the way it is represented elsewhere. We can make comical drawings and jokes about Muhammad, we can say that the Queen of England is a frosty old bat, we can satirise Christian priests, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, our Prime Ministers and other political leaders, not to forget the Dalai Lama or, indeed, “Western Buddhists” like myself. And we can giggle at Maoris sticking their tongues out, stamping the floor and going “Ha Ha”. I am not sure whether blasphemy is still on the statute book, but it has become, thankfully, a pretty irrelevant law. I would, let me repeat, hope that we have respect for each other in our hearts, and that we would therefore refrain from doing things like the above under certain circumstances, especially those where they are particularly likely to cause hurt or offence. But it would be a grim, grey, oppressive and oppressed world in which the law was used to impose the personal taste of the few on the general taste of the many.