Papers from the 2012 North Atlantic Fiddle Convention conference held in Derry City, 2012.

Traditional music has moved from a primary purpose of servicing dance, to expressing artistic preference. This is particularly so for the fiddle, one of the most versatile, accessible and universal of acoustic instruments. The NAFCo 2012 conference explored its current popularity in North Atlantic musics in terms of the shift of folk cultures’ interest from social process to aesthetic product.
The outer fringes of traditional melody-making now shade into other forms – jazz, contemporary classical, rock and pop – and indeed towards the antithesis of genre, so-called ‘world’ music. Questions that the conference was asked to address included:
Is Alan Lomax’s ‘cultural grey-out’ to become reality?
Will traditional fiddling decompose into a cloud of intermeshed idioms and clichés expounded with fabulous virtuosity but devoid of cultural meaning?

Ón gCos go Cluas heard the voices of more than a hundred speakers from all regions of the North Atlantic, each of them a musician or music teacher; thirty two of these are published here along with a full conference summary.

Edited by Liz Doherty and Fintan Vallely.

Liz Doherty, editor of The Cape Breton Fiddle Companion (2015) was NAFCo’s festival organiser for 2012

Fintan Vallely, editor of Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999, 2011, 2021) was the academic co-ordinator of the 2012 conference. Both played key roles in two significant earlier conferences on Irish Traditional music – Crosbhealach an Cheoil – in 1996 and 2003, the first of which dealt with ‘Tradition and Change’, the second with ‘Education and Traditional Music’. The NAFCo event and the papers in this volume complete the ambitions of the Crosbhealach series by now dealing with the changing role of Traditional musics.

The papers from the earlier conferences are still available in book form.

Contents

Introduction
 by Liz Doherty and Fintan Vallely. ix
• 1 Fiddlers, dancing, art and utility: what isn’t traditional?
 – Neil V. Rosenberg. 1
• 2 ‘The concert era’ – innovation in Hardanger fiddling around 1900
 – Håkon Asheim. 14
• 3 Square sets as ‘folk’ dance in Cape Breton community life – 
Jørn Borggreen. 25
• 4 Néillidh Boyle: replacing traditional concepts of storytelling in exploration of the acoustic art – 
Katie Boyle. 30
• 5 Participatory music in the Irish Gaeltacht – 
Éamonn Costello. 38
• 6 Revival of ‘crooked’ fiddle tunes in the performance of contemporary Quebec traditional 
music
 – Jean Duval. 48
• 7 The great divide: recent trends in the technical approach to the fiddle in Norway

 – Anon Egeland. 58
• 8 On first hearing: the John Junner Collection of Scottish and Irish music recordings
 – Stuart Eydmann. 66
• 9 Galician fiddle versus tambourine

 – Alfonso Franco. 76
• 10 The status of the master-fiddler in eighteenth-century Scotland

 – Ronnie Gibson. 86
• 11 Foot-oriented fiddling among the Mississippi Choctaw: R. J. Willis and the house dance
 – Chris Goertzen. 92
• 12 Joe Holmes: the singing North Antrim fiddler

 – Len Graham. 104
• 13 Truth, beauty and authenticity in folk music

 – Ingrid Hamberg. 108
• 14 Follow the band: playing old-time tunes in new performance contexts
 – Gregory Hansen. 117
• 15 More than buzzing bluebottles: new contexts for Irish céilí bands

 – Daithí Kearney. 126
• 16 Traditional style: the student singer and the folk industry

 – Sandra Kerr. 136
• 17 ‘Listen how the fiddle cries and laughs’: traditional Lithuanian fiddling in Soviet-era Siberia 
 – Gaila Kirdienė. 141
• 18 Arranging traditional Norwegian Hardanger fiddle tunes
 – 
Ragnhild Knudsen. 154
• 19 New directions in contemporary fiddle playing in Norway 
 – Gjermund Kolltveit. 160
• 20 The Donegal ‘Highland’ tunes: origins and movement of a dance-driven genre
 – 
Caoimhín MacAoidh. 168
• 21 A favourite Scotch measure: the relationship between a group of Scottish solo dances 
and the tune ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’
 – 
Mats Melin. 177
• 22 ‘Fiddle icons confidential’: the making of a portrait

 – Nicole Murray. 188
• 23 ‘Bhíodh muid ag damhsa go maidin’: dance, music, and community in Árainn

 – Deirdre Ní Chonghaile. 195
• 24 Scottish fiddle music in Australia in the twentieth century

 – Emma Nixon. 207
• 25 The fiddle as a symbolic creative therapeutic tool in music therapy
 – Josie Nugent. 213
• 26 Off the record: Irish traditional musicians and the music industry

 – Leah O’Brien Bernini. 218
• 27 Change and stability in Irish-American-Newfoundland fiddle tunes

 – Evelyn Osborne. 222
• 28 Cape Breton ‘crossroads’: cultural tourism, and the nature of ‘traditional’

 – Janine Randall. 236
• 29 The FiddleLights project: an artist’s recording of bow-hand movements in fiddle tunes
 – Elisa Sereno-Janz. 247
• 30 Constraint and innovation in the traditional fiddle repertoire of Cape Breton
 – 
Sally Sommers Smith. 258
• 31 ‘Jack is yet alive’: fiddle lessons in Shetland Isles schools, 1973–1985

 – Pam Swing. 266
• 32 Examining the Irish connection in the southern American fiddle repertoire

 – Paul Wells. 275

PURCHASE THE BOOK

Parameters of the conference – the original call for papers

Ón gCos go Cluas / From Foot to Ear
Call for papers for international Conference – June 27th-July 1st, 2012

University of Ulster, Magee Campus, City of Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Traditional music has moved from a primary purpose of servicing dance, to expressing artistic preference. This is particularly so for the fiddle, one of the most versatile, accessible and universal of acoustic instruments. The conference will explore its current popularity in North Atlantic musics in terms of the shift of folk cultures’ interest from social process to aesthetic product. Recording played a large part in this redirection, offering musicians opportunity and stimulus for deeper appreciation and analysis. It led to expanded access, to scale and diversity in repertoires, to striving for excellence and a virtually boundless potential for expansion. Recording liberated music from the occasion-specific time-slots formerly defined by social dance. Dance responded differently, more deeply directed by social and economic factors and era-specific fashion shifts, yet vibrant dance practices are still part of most North Atlantic traditional musics. But at its outer fringes, traditional melody-making now shades into other forms – jazz, contemporary classical, rock and pop – and indeed the antithesis of genre, so-called ‘world’ music. Is Alan Lomax’s ‘cultural grey-out’ to become reality? Will traditional fiddling decompose into a cloud of intermeshed idioms and clichés expounded with fabulous but empty virtuosity?

Ón gCos go Cluas will address the process, product and the potential of this progression. We call for papers on all aspects of the dancing-listening continuum with the emphasis being on transformation rather than the static, and on both the consequences and potential of music’s independence from dance, for participants and audiences alike. Papers may engage with:
• composition and performance – themes, direction and personality; cliché, quotation, standard riff, originality; superficiality, dumbing down, cheap tricks; sophistication, challenge, complexity; arrangement and orchestration; the Scottish mixed-tempo set
• the avant garde – ‘world’ music: ‘a sinister globalisation? Eurovision values; the Pop fiddle; tone and tempo; gender and sexism in PR.
• revived fiddle cultures – social practice, cultural relevance; revision and rethinking; imagined and borrowed repertoires; stylistic analysis; philosophising ‘the folk’; collection and collections; the fiddle as icon.
• pushing to the limits – the fiddle family in Traditional musics; old and new forms: three, four – or five strings? The bow, the bridge, the fingerboard, the peg box, chin rest; traditions, innovations: Stroh and electric fiddles.
• the historic fiddle –images in stone, in print, in painting and text; O’Curry’s Irish bow; from plucking to bowing; fiddle bands, town fiddlers; the hurdy gurdy and fretted viols.
• recording – setting standards or undermining traditions? The birth of analysis; single-tunes versus the ‘78’ selection; the ‘standard’ tunes set.
• fashion – the Pop aesthetic; from chest to chin; resonating strings; rapid versus relaxed, decorated versus plain; studio aesthetics; acoustic versus mediated; superstar fiddlers
• accompaniment – in lieu of the dancer? Transformational? Killing or kindling? Dumbing down or enhancing? Plucked or struck? Guitar versus bouzouki; the piano: vamp or vampire? Fiddle and flute, fiddle and pipes, fiddle and accordion, fiddle ensembles
• fiddle and dance – no dance – no rhythm? The rise of beat; dance detail and music decoration; the music phrase and dance movement; the integral melody-dance (set dance). The dancing fiddler.
• fiddle and song – the singing fiddler; the fiddle accompanist; harmony, parts and counter melody with song.

NAFCO’s conference conveners now call for submissions in the form of a 200- word abstract with additional 100-word biography from researchers in all relevant academic fields. Papers are to be of max. 20-minute duration. Further details regarding NAFCo 2012 are available on www.nafco2012.com

The closing date for ALL submissions is November 1st 2011 Submissions and general queries should be sent to: [email protected] NAFCo 2012 will take place in Derry-Donegal from June 27th-July 1st with the conference happening at the University of Ulster, Magee campus, City of Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Dr. Liz Doherty is the 2012 NAFCo Convener and Dr. Fintan Vallely the NAFCo Conference Co-ordinator.