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Saturday 9 May 2015

Sean-nós Studies?

Had a fiddler visiting, (most assuredly a fiddler, not a violinist,)  delightful days, and now, after a number of years of appalling vocal laziness, (and I've chided Himself!) I want to study. I want to learn. I want to expand.

I want to know how to sing Sean-nós songs.

I never had enormous flexibility, despite the best intentions of several superb teachers to fashion me into a coloratura, (is there anything more useless than a soprano with a high E and no flexibility?)

So deliberate pursuit of the skill, (rather than yodelling along with other people in the shame-free environs of my den,)  is not going to come easily, even if I do ferret out a way to learn the old style.
I've sung my share of Irish-ish songs, but they were of the Herbert Hughes "art song" variety and my technique, or at least my intention, was pointedly not folk.
In retrospect, I wonder? did we, (everyone at conservatory, prosperous non-American blacks singing spirituals, preppies getting in touch with their Irish roots, giant Slavic voices having a go at Russian folk tunes, etc.) sound as silly singing the art music versions of the Songs of Our People as when we helped out a friend by providing back-up vocals rehearsal tapes for a "rock musical"?
Beside the inauthenticity, you have to deal with the Using a Howitzer to Kill A Mosquito syndrome that opera singers often evince when they slum...
Well, age and inertia's effect on my chops should save me from that! Ha!

And who knew, Irish trad musicians have the same mindset as Bach!

"DO MHÉADÚ GLÓIRE DÉ AGUS ONÓRA NA HÉIREANN"

I think, can't be sure, (darn Those Interwebs,) it means,
 "FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD AND THE HONOR OF IRELAND."

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