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Last week, my job took me to Ireland and I stayed in the country for a few extra days to hang with an old friend of mine who lives in Ennis. While we were only there for a couple of short days, we managed to squeeze a lot in - from cliff walks, to farm houses in the country, to a few pints of Guiness in some pubs along the way - and more. One evening found us in a tiny pub in Ennis, where a group of 6 musicians circled a table adjacent to the bar, jamming on one Irish melody after another.
What's cool about this is how the pub only "supports" one of the players (meaning they only really pay one of the players - usually the more renowned one) and the rest of the musicians just show up to jam. I guess it's sort of like an open mike nite in the US, but it's different in that when you walk into the pub it looks as if these folks have been playing together forever. The particular group we saw featured a banjo player (he was the renowned one) and playing with him was a fiddle player, guitar, piccolo, recorder, congas, and another banjo. The woman playing piccolo also sang.
What amazed me most was that while the tunes seemed mostly like traditional Irish music, they were fairly complex in notation and phrasing. Yet everyone seemed to hold their own on every song - in fact they did more than hold their own, they actually sounded like a band. They were great listeners, each letting the other take the lead at the appropriate time. Lots of give and take, which is often the difference between a group of people just "playing instruments" vs a great band.
So if you ever find yourself in Ireland, I would strongly suggest that you take in an evening at a local, off-the-beaten-path pub where there is Irish music. A true delight.
What's cool about this is how the pub only "supports" one of the players (meaning they only really pay one of the players - usually the more renowned one) and the rest of the musicians just show up to jam. I guess it's sort of like an open mike nite in the US, but it's different in that when you walk into the pub it looks as if these folks have been playing together forever. The particular group we saw featured a banjo player (he was the renowned one) and playing with him was a fiddle player, guitar, piccolo, recorder, congas, and another banjo. The woman playing piccolo also sang.
What amazed me most was that while the tunes seemed mostly like traditional Irish music, they were fairly complex in notation and phrasing. Yet everyone seemed to hold their own on every song - in fact they did more than hold their own, they actually sounded like a band. They were great listeners, each letting the other take the lead at the appropriate time. Lots of give and take, which is often the difference between a group of people just "playing instruments" vs a great band.
So if you ever find yourself in Ireland, I would strongly suggest that you take in an evening at a local, off-the-beaten-path pub where there is Irish music. A true delight.
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