There’s a funny thing about Irish tunes.<\/p>\n
I’ve been going to an Irish\/Celtic Session, down in Renton<\/a>, with Anna, for a year now, and playing. Actually, it was a year last month, and we had an anniversary party of the session’s founding. (Wednesdays, A Terrible Beauty, Renton, 7pm. C’mon by!) There’s a big picture of one of the session meetings up on the wall; I’m in that photo. Anna and I are session founders; Anna heard about it starting up and said, “Hey, let’s go!” and I thought it sounded fun.<\/p>\n I should explain; “tunes” are different to “songs.” “Songs” have lyrics; tunes are instrumental, with a primary melody, played on melodic instruments, with maybe one person playing chorded instruments along as well<\/a>, and maybe a drum. Lukey is a song; Road to Lisdoonvarna is a tune. Search on those if you want, you’ll have a zillion hits. There are thousands of tunes, some of which are centuries old; they’re both dance music and a conduit for parts of traditional Irish culture. They attract attention, they’re accessible, people react to them positively, and enjoy them.<\/p>\n I’ve been trying to learn the language of of these things for over a year now. I’ve learned some of the tunes pretty well; I’ve learned some others not as well. I recognise a lot of the tropes and rhythms.<\/p>\n But as much as I hate to say it, emotionally, Irish session tunes still<\/em> mostly don’t make sense to me as music. It’s not that they aren’t melodic, and of course I’m not saying they aren’t music, because of course<\/em> they are. But for me – they’re like particularly melodic but ultimately arbitrary exercises. Where you’ve just been says little or nothing about where you’re about to go.<\/p>\n