Week of Music in Retrospect

Last week was one of perhaps the most musically inspiring weeks I've ever experienced! The university brought a slough of musicians and music-academic minds to us so we could pick their minds!!

Starting the week, we had the band Mozaik (look them up), which is made up of living legends from three different folk genres. Dónal Lunny and Andy Irvine and legends in the Irish music scene, and were founding members of the original Irish super groups (Planxty, The Bothy Band, Sweeney's Men, and other more contemporary groups). These men are two of the founding fathers of the Irish Bouzouki, so I was obviously very excited. Dónal plays bouzouki mainly, as well as guitar. While Andy plays bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, harmonica, and other stuff. Bruce Molsky is an American Old Tyme fiddler and singer. Nicola Parlov is a Bulgarian and Hungarian multi-instrumentalist, and is highly respected in Balkan music. And Rens van der Zalm is a Dutch multi-instrumentalist who can basically play anything that the other four can, and just as well. The band did workshops with the Irish traditional music MA students in a band setting. Helping them fine tune arrangements they are working on for a concert with the Chieftains at the end of this month. Later on that afternoon, the band performed in the small performing arts center on campus. One of the best parts about this, the PA went out 3 songs in. The guys decided to continue playing their mix of Irish, American Old Tyme, and Bulgarian folk music acoustically, while standing in the center of the hall amongst the crowd. It was awesome!!! After the concert, the gave a two-hour seminar talking about their music and how they make decisions when it comes to mixing these three styles of music. It was inspiring to say the least. One of the best quotes, the band was talking about life as a professional musician and that one has to make sacrifices to do it. Then they also mentioned that the music will make hard decisions for you. Meaning, that if the music has a grip on you, it will guide your decisions. A girl asked, "Is it really black and white like that?" Nicola Parlov responded, "Its mostly black." It may not seem funny to you, but it was hilarious given the context of the conversation.

Okay, the next day, us ethnomusicologists had the band to ourselves over breakfast and coffee before they headed off to the next town on their tour. Svend (another ethnomusicologist in our program, and friend of Dónal) grabbed Dónal and myself to do a private interview and small recording session. Svend and Dónal are developing bass-bodhran techniques, so I just king of hung out. This we a great opportunity to get to know Dónal, and I owe great thanks to Svend for letting me tag along. Long story short, Dónal and I got to know one another and he's agreed to an interview at the end of january. We exchanged email address' and I'll also be asking him questions here and there as well, as at this moment I'm in process of writing a 20 page paper on the man.

Wednesday, ethnochoreologist (dance) Ruth Hillier, gave a lecture on work she'd done in eastern Mexico. This was interesting, but my mind was on other things so I didn't really pay attention. But, on thursday, ethnomusicologist Tim Cooley gave a lecture on work he's done on Surf-music. Yes, music that is related to surfing. It was rad!! He's from Santa Barbara, so he and I ended up having a conversation over lunch about the west-coast punk scene, its relationship to skateboarding, as a possible PhD topic for myself.

The week was topped off by a trip to Ennis in East Clare for the Ennis Trad Fest!! After a considerable amount of persuasion, I was convinced to play bouzouki in a session in Ennis on friday night. I'm glad I did, it was a good time!! The entire next day was spent walking around Ennis hanging out in sessions, then we (myself a a good lot of musicians from school) all went to see Lúnasa (considered the greatest of Irish super-groups). The concert went until about 3:30am, and was absolutely insane!!

It was one hell of a week, but now I'm back into books and freaking out that I won't get everything done on time. But, on December 3rd, all my worries will be over as that is the day all my work is due. In that case, there's a good chance I won't be writing in this till after then. So until then, wish me luck!! I'll be reading and writing till the wee hours of the morning from here on out.

Cheers.