This is another interview in which I asked a friend of mine from the listeners perspective a few questions (the same I have used in the past interviews) about meaning and Traditional Song. The questions I asked were:
1) Do you have any experience with Traditional Irish song?
2) When you hear Irish song/music does it make you feel a type of ownership/stronger cultural identity?
3) How would you define tradition/traditional?
4) Does the tone of someones voice matter to you when listening to the sing? Would it effect the meaning of the song to you?
5) Do you think you connect more withe the lyrics or the melody/harmony & why?
6) Irish Traditional song is usually sang with one person, how do you feel about it being used in a different setting such as in a band?
7) Pub singing vs. performance/concert hall - does the performance and different aspects of it change the meaning for you personally? and if so why?
So Michele and I had our interview somewhat informally via FB chat where it started off as a regular conversation and then at first I informally asked her a few things but then eventually it turned into the list of questions, here are some of her answers:
1. yes, I was first exposed in Canada in a pub called Tir na Nog. Fell in love with the sound. Bought a couple CDs and found an online site that plays celtic music that I listened to while stuck in my little cubicle.
2. I have absolutely no Irish blood, but the sound makes me yearn to go somewhere where such beautiful sounds are created and more importantly valued.'
3. Tradition is something that is done every year around a certain time. It can be formal as in Poland on Christmas Eve dinner we break the oplatek (wierd styrofoamy wafer - its gross) and tell our family members we love them, or informal as in my mother always prepares her ham and green beans for Thanksgiving
4.Yes very much so. I cannot stand strong vibrato and it will very quickly ruin a song. It will almost certainly make me dislike the artist but if I heard the same song by a different singer I don't know that it would be ruined by the previous one.
5. I connect more with the melody because that is what I sing. I have always wanted to get into the harmony but I don't have the natural ear for it and when I was in chorus they refused to let me in the harmony section because they needed my strong voice for the melody. Go figure. I still really want to learn it and do occasionally try to pick it out. I will say that if there is a piece that has spectacular harmony during a certain part of the song I am drawn to that section more than others.
6.I was first introduced to in it a band type setting with 4 guys, one being the main singer but the others contributing as well as playing instruments.
7. I prefer the informal aspect of the pub. In my musical career I never enjoyed performances but I loved rehearsal, especially when a piece could be played through. I was always extremely sad that we never revisited a piece after the concert. I like the idea that a song is always in your repertoire and just because you have performed it doesn't mean you never get to play it again.
One thing I found really interesting about this interview
was especially in the part when she connected the pub to a rehearsal. This made
me wonder if to her (I’ve also come across this answer before from other
people) and to some others that because of the setting being more informal than
that of a conert type performance that there is less stress and pressure on the
performer in a sense, or that there is an end goal after the pub to “perform”,
the pub players are not “performing/performers”, or if the connection was made
to rehearsal because of factors such as the audience and the fact that in the
pub you are not playing music solely for the audience is the reason for the
connection for some between that of pub playing & a rehearsal?
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