Excerpts
As a number of musicians quietly collect themselves, moving their chairs into a circle, a bit of conversation begins to bubble in a lively pub. These musicians have gathered to perform Irish traditional music in an informal context known as a session. The resident leader of the session is an accordionist seated next to a fiddler, flautist, and guitarist. The last musician to arrive is a man holding a circular bag containing a bodhrán and several tippers. After a brief greeting, the music commences. Reels and jigs are organized into sets rapidly following one another interspersed with snippets of conversation pertaining to local politics, new recordings, humorous stories, and personal anecdotes. The accordionist, fiddler, and flautist provide the melodic content, the guitarist offers harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment, and the bodhrán player offers percussive rhythmic accompaniment. The pub patrons continue eating and drinking. Occasionally a heated musical moment captures their attention only to be shortly redirected back to their conversation. This musical context is familiar to Irish traditional musicians and enthusiasts alike and serves as one of the most common performance contexts for the bodhrán. Unlike any other instrument associated with Irish traditional music, the bodhrán in the last fifty years has been significantly altered in design, performance techniques, and music contextual practices. The bodhrán is the Irish circular frame drum, which has experienced a rapid period of development and expansion spurred on by professionalization, bodhrán maker innovation, performer creativity, acoustic analysis, and organological experimentation. In part, this text tries to make sense of the myriad changes in organology (the study of musical instruments), performative practices, pedagogy, and repertory. It also examines the historical development of the bodhrán including an analysis of the changing role and function of the instrument in Irish traditional music and culture. Drawing from a host of interviews over several years in Europe and North America, this work provides a voice for multiple perspectives regarding the bodhrán. Participants include bodhrán makers, professional performers, educators, amateur musicians, historians, and enthusiasts. Growing out of rich ethnographic interviews, this text serves as the definitive reference for understanding and navigating the developments in the bodhrán's history, organology, performance practices, and repertory. The bodhrán is the focus of this ethnography because it has changed from a maligned, peripheral Irish traditional instrument to a recognizable, versatile percussion instrument used in various musical traditions and contexts. This period of change provides a fascinating window into larger tectonic shifts that have occurred within Irish traditional music as a result of professionalization, cosmopolitanism, and globalization. Despite a number of introductory pedagogical texts, the bodhrán has not been fully explored in an ethnographic sense. My research methodology was based on participant observation, interviews, video and audio documentation, musical involvement, written correspondence, and archival research. I participated in musical contexts ranging from formal class lessons and rehearsals to informal house performances, sessions, and concerts with local musicians in North America and Europe. By employing a comprehensive fieldwork methodology that engages communities on different fronts, I was able to gain a detailed understanding of the bodhrán's role in these communities. Multisession interviews with key informants (educators, makers, community members, performers, Irish traditional musicians, and enthusiasts) represented a wide spectrum of instrumental expectations and perspectives. These interviews along with other musical activities were documented through audio and video recordings. The research sites varied considerably based on venue, region, and country, although most field visits were conducted in Ireland and the northeastern United States. It should also be noted that the bulk of interviews occurred in Ireland, Scotland, England, the United States, and Canada. During my research, I used compact, portable digital equipment for data collection and processing for recording music events and interviews. Since many visits included classroom observations, discrete compact digital equipment was essential in order to minimize any in-class distractions. The audio and video recordings facilitated my interviews and analyses of bodhrán making, performance, and instruction. The photographs document the makers, performers, teachers, and students interviewed, types of instruments, performance spaces, and types of rehearsals and performances. Over the course of seven years, I accumulated a sizeable number of field interviews, notes, and participatory experiences. Inspired by research participants' generosity of time and information, it was evident that an ethnography explaining the instrument's unique and often misunderstood history, evolving musical role, and variations in design, usage, and pedagogy filled a gap in Irish traditional music scholarship. Due to the global spread of the bodhrán and sudden increase in interest and popularity, the participants are from locations around the globe. Therefore, communication depended on all possible forms: in-person meetings, letters, email, telephone, Skype, instant messaging, texting, and online forums. Through these interviews, idiosyncratic approaches to bodhrán making, performance, and pedagogy emerged whose collective variations pushed the instrument into new realms of artistic and instrumental expressions. Based on the analysis of bodhrán historical texts, ethnographic interviews, and instrument observations, I constructed a historical narrative of the organological development of the bodhrán and its associated performative practices. Chapter 1 provides a historical basis for discussing current trends in bodhrán design, performance, and pedagogy. This historical foundation grounds the reader in the possible origins of the bodhrán, its musical roles in various cultural practices, and the techniques involved in building older models. Seminal bodhrán makers and performers are discussed in detail, analyzing their influential contributions in chronological order. Chapter 2 examines recent experiments and innovations in bodhrán design, and specific models are analyzed. Leading makers are discussed in relation to their motivations for bodhrán construction, scientific experiments, composite materials, drum design, and technological innovations. The impact of new performative practices and Irish traditional music is examined at length. An analysis of the impact of the professionalization of Irish traditional music and, subsequently, bodhrán making is included. In addition, a further elaboration upon the impact of the commercialization and standardization of bodhrán production serves to explain recent progress in bodhrán making. Chapter 3 explores a variety of innovative and idiosyncratic performative practices as executed by a host of performers. Each facet of bodhrán performance is analyzed including sticking, pitch control, skin manipulation, rhythmic patterns, the mapping of rhythms on the drum head, different percussive conceptualizations of the bodhrán, microphone placement, technological experimentation, and computer software. I also discuss the impact of professionalization upon bodhrán performance. The recent expansion of bodhrán performative contexts and diverse musical roles is studied and explained in relation to the concepts of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and imagined communities. This chapter focuses on the different sonic and performative possibilities of the bodhrán as realized by competent performers. In conjunction with advances in bodhrán design and performative practices, chapter 4 discusses the repertory of the bodhrán. An analysis of different bodhrán sources is detailed extensively. A review of the multitude of academic publications, scores, instructional materials, film and television, literary fiction, online resources, and seminal recordings are provided. Excerpted from The Bodhrán: Experimentation, Innovation, and the Traditional Irish Frame Drum by Colin F. Harte All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
