#sessiún

[eagna-eilis]

Star Wars Characters at a Family Wedding in Ireland

ANAKIN - Gets extremely nostalgic about his own wedding and makes his adult twin children groan in embarrassment. Is in such a good mood that he isn't even mad when Leia calls him a fascist for voting Fine Gael, and manages to give his grandson an effective pep talk.

PADMÉ - So resplendent that the bride is almost jealous but honestly how could you be upset with her she's just so nice. Gets giggly tipsy over dinner and waltzes with C3P0 afterwards. Touches up literally everyone's makeup for them throughout the night and does a better job than the actual makeup artist.

OBI-WAN - Waits til the night is winding down then magically locates a squeezebox, fiddle, a guitar, and a tin whistle and hands them out to start a sessiún. The sing-song goes on until 5am and it's all his fault. His signature song is 'The Lass of Aughrim' because it makes him feel all literary.

R2D2 - Has at least four too many double Jamesons and literally starts arguing with the wall. Shmii finds him passed out under a table the next morning, wherein he swears he's not drinking until Christmas.

C3P0 - Wrecks the heads of the hotel staff over dinner with all his requests, to the point of embarrassing the other people at his table. Conducts impromptu ballroom dancing lessons while the band plays and charms the pants off everyone with his patient explanations of how to foxtrot.

LANDO - Pulls out a deck of cards and starts a game of 21s in the corner. Absolutely swindles everyone. It's okay though because he puts his winnings behind the bar so nobody has to pay for their drinks after that.

AHSOKA - Brings enough weed to share with a chosen few, like an absolute queen. Ends up hanging out in the loo for ages rolling for herself, Sabine, Maz, Kanan, and eventually Ben. Despite her relative stillness and quiet, she enjoys the music more than basically anybody else and people will quote her fondly slagging Anakin over dinner for the next 20 years.

SABINE - Camera queen who tries to look like she isn't enjoying herself. Fools nobody because she keeps grinning and snort-laughing. Her photos are a thousand times better than the photographer's and are the ones that the couple use for their album.

HERA - Helps Leia gang up on Anakin about politics because goddamn it, Leia isn't wrong. Hands out isotonic powder sachets and paracetamols to everyone before they go up to bed. They're gonna need it.

EZRA - Gets so hyper after consuming so much 7up that Hera has to send him to bed before the DJ takes over from the band. Sneaks down later for the cocktail sausages.

DIN DJARIN - Couldn't get a babysitter so he's tucked up at home watching The Late Late and hate-tweeting it.

GROGU - fell asleep in front of The Late Late. Delighted when somebody brings wedding cake to the house the following day.

KANAN - Literally will not be at peace until the DJ plays Kenny Rodgers' 'The Gambler' because it's not a wedding without it. Once that's done he insists on 'Come On Eileen'. Somebody's gotta be the keeper of the flame of tradition, after all.

CHEWBACCA - Requests all the group dances. Rock the Boat, The Siege of Ennis, The Macarena, The Walls of Limerick, Chain Reaction. Bullies everyone into joining in, except Ben who is the absolute antithesis of craic.

LUKE - Every wedding requires at least one merrily drunk uncle and Luke does not disappoint. Suit jacket? Gone. Top buttons? Open. Tie? It's now around his head while he stands on a chair playing air guitar to 'Hotel California'. Ends up puking in a flower pot. Iconic.

LEIA - Would have been okay if she stuck to wine all night but a single gin and tonic on top of the shitty hotel merlot and suddenly she's having an hour-and-a-half political argument with Anakin. Embarrasses the hell out of her parents, brother, and son by smooching Han repeatedly while dancing.

HAN - Organises the pre-ceremony pints. His sotto-voce asides are funnier than anything in the speeches. Quietly sings along to 'Brown Eyed Girl' by Van Morrison in Leia's ear while they dance, prompting all that smooching.

FINN - Sneaks into the hotel's public bar to check the hurling scores on the telly then reports them back to all the lads. Keeps his wits about him regards alcohol so he can take care of Poe later but eats so much cake he feels sick.

POE - Holds court in the bar, telling long anecdotes about his life that are only 75% true. Dances and flirts with all the aunties and nanas and makes them feel great about themselves. It doesn't convince Ahsoka to give him a spliff, though, because she is immune to his charms.

ROSE - The boomers yell at her for getting the DJ to play 'Celtic Symphony' by the Wolfe Tones, but she calls them hypocrites who are oozing postcolonial shame. Anakin offers to adopt her because now she's the centre of the politics argument. Knocks it out of the park at the sing-song because she knows all the words to at least 20 rebel songs.

MAZ - The first to place her handbag down on the dancefloor so as to coax the other nanas onto the floor. Jovially flirts with every man over 18 and under 60 that isn't her blood relation. Asks Poe to marry her.

REY - Finishes at least three other people's dinners. Sings along very loudly to every song that the band AND the DJ plays. Can't dance at all but it doesn't stop her. Should probably check on Ben because she knows what he's like but decides that tonight he's his family's responsibility. Loses her entire shit when ABBA plays.

BEN - Zero craic, God help the poor craytur. Drinks brandy as an affectation and starts quoting James Joyce after four of them. Gets extremely mopey after brandy number six and ends up having a long heart to heart with his Grandda Ani. Cries then throws up. Auntie 'Soka gives him a joint to settle his tummy. Subsequently feels better and then knocks everyone's socks off singing 'Raglan Road'.

SHMII - Begs off the party at 10pm because she's 97 years old. Still makes sure that everybody takes their hangover down to breakfast the following morning for a Big Feed of rasher-sausage-and-pudding, and maybe hair of the dog if they're desperate.

[trishcausey]

My friend Morgan playing the nycleharpa -- it looks like a short sitar. He's such a great musician. This is an easy-going open session at O'Briens in Santa Monica. Love coming here! #Irish #music #IrishMusic #obriens #obrienspub #SantaMonica #LosAngeles #LA #violin #nycleharpa #viola #jamsession #sessiún (at O'Brien's Irish Pub & Restaurant)

[plusorminuscongress]

My Job: Patrick Egan, Searching Irish Traditional Music

My Job: Patrick Egan, Searching Irish Traditional Music By Neely Tucker Published August 26, 2019 at 08:58AM

Concertina player Mae Mulcahy, Butte, Montana, 1979. Montana Folklife Survey collection, American Folklife Center.

Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin)  is a researcher and musician from Ireland, currently on a Fulbright Tech Impact scholarship at the Library. He recently submitted his PhD in digital humanities with ethnomusicology at University College Cork. Patrick’s interests  have focused on ways to creatively use descriptive data from archival collections. He’ll present his project “Connections in Sound”  on Aug. 29, at noon in room 119 of the Jefferson Building. There’ll be live music!

Patrick Egan, at the AFC. Photo: Steve Winnick.

You play Irish music but you make your living by researching it. Where did you grow up, and how did you get started? 

I grew up in the foothills of the Wicklow mountains. I started playing Irish traditional music at seven years of age on the penny whistle, but my parents soon introduced me to the concertina, an instrument that has gained popularity in Ireland over the past 30 years. It also helped that there were Irish music sessiúns (jams) and concerts at my parents’ pub, Egans, every Saturday night. There, I developed an interest in music and the Irish language. It wasn’t my first language, but there are traces of it in our dialect of English. It was often spoken by some of my neighbors who came from an Irish speaking area in the west of Ireland called Connemara. I think the music and these neighbors influenced me a lot, and this interest later turned into research.

What’s the simplest definition of Irish traditional music? In 1855, a version of the melody that we now know as “Danny Boy” was published in “The Ancient Music of Ireland,” y the American sense of history, it’s been around a very long time.

“The Companion to Irish Traditional Music” states that tradition is known as “a body of melody, song and dance and associated activities that stylistically comes from the period before recorded music and radio.” Which essentially says that Irish music, song and dance is part of an oral culture, one that is predominantly shared person to person, and is not dependent on written or recorded sound.

Okay, but in the modern era, what makes a piece of Irish music “traditional”? If The Pogues, say, recorded a punk version of “Raglan Road” in the ‘80s, would that be “traditional”? 

In the American Folklife Center there are a number of recordings like this which transcend genres and defy classification, which is quite fun, actually. For example, in some collections there are tunes and songs that could be strictly “traditional.” I am interested in both, but for my current research project I have been using an online resource for cross-referencing called www.irishtune.info. This site lists thousands of tracks of Irish traditional music and is a very useful tool for my research.

Harmonica player Pat Ford  with his children and family, Shasta Valley, California, Sept. 3, 1939. W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection, American Folklife Center. 

The Library has more than a century of Irish music. At the Library, you’re looking to amass a digital database – the “items dataset” of the performers, instruments and stories used in those songs – so that they can be searched and cross-referenced. What do you hope that will tell us?

My research explores a large number of collections in the AFC using digital tools, so I am exploring what it means to use the latest technology to capture  this data. It’s like taking the subject headings of “Irish American” away and experimenting with what happens when we allow collections to be explored by item level. This can reveal all sorts of information about the collections – what metadata (data about data) that we can use (or not) and how compatible collections can be with digital processing. Sometimes there is not enough data in these recordings or their accompanying notes to link them to other recordings, and sometimes the digital tool places limitations on the data because of the way that the digital technology is structured. My research explores these issues. Ultimately, this allows me to make more informed interpretations about both the material that resides in these collections and also the widespread impact of using digital tools.

You mention songs being “lost” in the collections, as when there’s a concert recording but not all the songs that are played are listed. Can you describe some of the finds you’ve made?

The concert and festival recordings that we discovered from the 1970s and 1980s have become an important part of the project. There are over 2,000 instances of tunes, songs, dances and stories from these festivals, which were organized at the peak of the folk revival. And because the songs are not listed, we discovered multiple versions of tunes, some rare songs and fascinating stories about the tunes that have never been described in the archive. For example, there is a concert performance of one of Ireland’s most famous artists, Christy Moore, from 1984. His set list  was fascinating and it gives a snapshot of a key moment in his solo career. Other great finds have been artists such as Liz Carroll, John Vesey and Johnny McGreevy – these were all captured in the late 1970s to early 1980s. They make for priceless listening for Irish and Irish-American audiences in particular.

Lastly, your favorite songs  in the Library’s collections. There are so many great recordings, but some of my favorites:

* “The Monaghan Jig,” also known as “Scotch Mary,” by Patsy Touhey, recorded c. 1902-1904, from The Francis O’Neill Cylinders. The renowned “uileann” piper (Irish bagpipes) Patsy Touhey, showing tremendous skill. This track is part of a collection of some of the first Irish traditional music recordings made on wax cylinder.

* “Bold Jack Donohue” (also known as “The Wild Colonial Boy”) by Pat Ford, recorded in 1938, as part of the W.P.A. California Folk Music, at a time when there were few recordings of Irish music in the region.

* This interview with tunes by Gary Stanton with concertina player Mae Mulcahy, from 1979 in the Montana Folklife Survey.

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[trishcausey]

My friend Morgan playing the nycleharpa -- it looks like a short sitar. He's such a great musician. This is an easy-going open session at O'Briens in Santa Monica. Love coming here! #Irish #music #IrishMusic #obriens #obrienspub #SantaMonica #LosAngeles #LA #violin #nycleharpa #viola #jamsession #sessiún (at O'Brien's Irish Pub & Restaurant)