Some Thoughts on the Reality of the New England Tradition. I describe the tune selection I present in the sheet music on this web site as being from the New England, Canadian, Swedish and related traditions. Sadly over the years I have had the following experience on several occasions - which in my opinion is several times too many, thus the following discussion. A musician - generally a very good fiddler, generally playing in an Irish tradition, never from Ireland - learns that I play New England contradance music. He or she then informs me that there really is no such thing as a New England tradition; all the best New England tunes are really Irish.
Here’s are my thoughts, in the context of previous commentary. Please note that this should not in any way be taken as an insult to Irish music which is one of the great musical traditions and has without a doubt made major contributions to the music of New England.
Regardless of its validity, to deny the existence or validity of someone’s musical tradition in such a fashion is at best arrogant, and is a great way to arouse a variety of negative thoughts and emotions in other musicians. In addition it’s obviously incorrect, which leads to obvious conclusions about the credibility of the person who makes such a statement.
Let’s see ... Amelia, Ross’s Reel #4, Fair Jenny’s Jig ...
As far as I know New Hampshire has been part of New England for all of recorded history, and if through continental drift it was once connected with Ireland there were no fiddlers around at the time. Therefore, one would have to account for Bob McQuillen and the well over a thousand tunes he’s written. In 1980 and 1981 Rod and Randy Miller justified including Bob’s tunes in New England Chestnuts Volumes 1 and 2 (an excellent pair of records now reissued on one CD by Great Meadow Music) by declaring Bob to be a New England Chestnut himself! Then there are all the other people we know of, not to mention all the ones lost to history, who have composed great tunes in New England over the past few hundred years. We have a long tradition of our own tunes, many of which are excellent and many of which are played elsewhere including Ireland.
Having said that, it is certainly true that many of the tunes we play have their origins in Ireland (or England or Scotland for that matter). But would we really call those tunes, as played by a New England contradance band, Irish tunes? It’s interesting to compare how we play our tunes, and how a traditional Irish band plays a similar set of tunes. (I realize both traditions include considerable variation, and some New England bands emulate the Irish sound.) Sometimes they sound so different it might be hard to realize they are the same tunes.
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‣It must be said that the same person who might say all the best New England tunes are really Irish, if faced with a New England musician playing New England style at an Irish session, would probably be horrified. For that matter an Irish musician tends to sound out of place in a New England jam session. The styles are so different they’re only marginally compatible.
The Role of Dancing. Here’s a partial explanation. In part it’s just a gradual drift in styles over time. But another issue is the role of dancing. In Ireland the music is played mostly for listening so rhythm and phrasing are much less critical. In New England our music is ultimately dance music, and rhythm and phrasing are key. Bob’s piano style probably exemplifies what’s so central to our music that’s generally not really present in much Irish music better than anything else. (Until fairly recently accompaniment of any sort was a foreign concept to Irish music; even now it tends to be much lighter.)
New England fiddling should be rhythmic too; Lissa once mentioned in a conversation that a good fiddler should play sufficiently rhythmically that you wouldn’t entirely need accompaniment for the music to be danceable. Irish fiddling may be rhythmic, but it’s often much less so, and wouldn’t really work well in the context of a contradance.
This distinction has caused problem on more than one occasion when I’ve called with musicians who weren’t dancers and didn’t understand this issue! Now and then someone has pulled out an Irish tune that has phrasing that just made no sense to me and isn’t clear enough to fit the dance. It may be a fine listening tune, but it’s not a contradance tune. One time I actually had to stop the dance and ask for a new tune; I just couldn’t figure out where to call the figures!
To conclude this section, in my opinion based on lots of observation and a fair amount of research although very little formal background in the field, it seems most desirable to acknowledge that each tradition exists largely as its own independent tradition, while at the same time acknowledging that they are all interconnected, often to surprising degrees, and have been for a surprisingly long time. Tunes and styles travel up and back across cultures, whether we want them to or not. We need to think about the implications of that, but ultimately it’s how things work so we should make the best of the situation, and if possible use it to the advantage of our tradition rather than complain about it.