DecemberDecember Irish Music & 20172017 Dance Association Nolliag2017 The mission of the Irish Music and Dance Association is to support and promote Irish music, dance, and other cultural traditions to insure their continuation. Inside this issue: 2017 IMDA Hannah Flowers Kickstarter 4 Annual Membership Meeting Renew IMDA Membership 8 Yulefest/The Food Group 15 IMDA’s Annual Membership meeting will be held on Sunday, December 3 at 3:00 pm at the Dubliner Pub, 2162 University Avenue W, St. Paul. The meeting will include election of board members and officers as well as other topics of interest to the membership. We welcome others who would like to get involved. There are lots of opportunities to be involved – on existing programs and new initiatives. These Board members are up for election to new, two year terms: . Jean Bergstrom: Secretary. Board Member since 2015, Secretary since 2015. Jean is originally from central Wisconsin. She grew up with the importance of celebrating her Irish ancestry ingrained by her mother. She became involved with the local Irish community when her daughter began dancing with Rince na Chroi in 2005. She has experience working with nonprofit organizations, chairing the Friends of Groveland fundraising group at her children's elementary school. Jan Casey: Vice President since 2013, IMDA Secretary 2007 to 2013, Board Member since 2005. Jan serves on the Entertainment Committee for our Landmark events. Jan helped to define the IMDA Educational Grant Program, beginning in 2006, and coordinates the application process. Jan also manages IMDA's Decade of Dance Award program. Jan contributes regularly to the IMDA newsletter and IMDA's Facebook page. Jan is a long-time volunteer with Irish Fair, managing the Trisceil Tea Room at the Fair and serving on the Cultural Committee and also serves on the Board for the Center for Irish Music. Jan and her husband Mike are both retired and live in St. Paul. You'll often find them at an Irish music concert, ceili or play. Kathie Luby: Board Member began her involvement with the Twin Cities Irish community in the mid-eighties by joining the Irish language class directed by Dennis Clarke that evolved to become Gaeltacht Minnesota. She continues to study Irish Gaelic with Gaeltacht Minnesota. She played several roles with Na Fianna Irish Theater for the fifteen years of its production of Irish plays. Currently, Kathie sings in Irish and English with her three friends in the Giggin' Síles, performing at various Irish events in the Twin Cities throughout any given year. She is very happy to be working with the IMDA board of directors to serve the active and vibrant Minnesota Irish community that includes musicians, dancers, and all those who appreciate Irish culture. Kathie has served as event chair for the last several IMDA Honors events and coordinated the Tea Room at Landmark Center for the last two years. Rob Thomas: Treasurer. Treasurer and Board Member since 2017. In Rob's professional life, he serves as Managing Director of Lakeshore Players Theatre in White Bear Lake. Rob is a dedicated nonprofit arts manager, as well as an occasional performer and playwright. Rob has been contracted for various administrative and management roles for a variety of theaters. Rob has served on and presided over several nonprofit boards, including community soup kitchens, philanthropic organizations, arts organizations, and service clubs. Rob's first involvement with IMDA was to serve as stage manager for the main stage for our 2017 St. Patrick's Day Irish Celebration and Day of Irish Dance. This is a great chance to learn more about IMDA, ask questions and meet other members. The Board looks forward to seeing (and hearing from) you. See you at the Dub! www.IMDA-MN.org Irish Music & 2 Dance Association The IMDA Board is: President: Julia Rogers Tune of the Month by Amy Shaw Vice President: Jan Casey Once again, I’ve gone hunting for a good tune in Smithsonian Global Sound, Treasurer: Rob Thomas the streaming music database that contains the entire output of Folkways Secretary: Jean Bergstrom Records. This month’s tune comes from a 10-inch LP titled Irish Jigs, Reels & Board Members: John Concannon Kevin Carroll Hornpipes (Folkways FP 6819), which was released in 1956. It features Sligo Kathie Luby fiddler Michael Gorman, who was our source for last month’s tune, and uilleann Amber Ladany piper Willie Clancy, who was then 36 years old. (In fact, this was Willie Editor: Kathie Luby Clancy’s first commercial recording.) Apparently the recording was made in Assistant Editor Kevin Carroll IMDA Board Meetings are open to the membership. Ireland, although Michael Gorman’s day job is described as “railway porter at The Board meets regularly on the first Tuesday of each month at 6:00 pm. Liverpool Street Station, London,” and Willie Clancy had just moved to England Members are encouraged to verify the time and location shortly before, as three months earlier. meeting times and locations can change. The producer of this album was the American avant-garde composer Henry Contact Information Cowell (1897-1965). As an undergraduate music student, I was aware that E-mail: [email protected] Cowell’s compositions were very influential, but I had no idea that he also had an interest in Irish folk culture. Indeed, his father was an Irish immigrant. Newsletter Submissions Incidentally, Henry Cowell was married to the well-known folklorist Sidney We welcome our readers to submit articles of interest, news, and notices of Robertson Cowell. Those of you who have heard Brian Miller’s or Jim Leary’s events to be published in the newsletter. The deadline is the 18th of the talks in recent years may remember that she collected traditional music in the preceding month. Upper Midwest during the 1930s. Rodney’s Glory is a set dance. For readers who might be new to this music, a set dance is a type of tune that was composed or arranged to suit a specially choreographed dance. This particular tune should be played in hornpipe time, but set dances can be in 2/4, 6/8, or 9/8 time. You’ll notice that the B section is longer than the A section, which is not unusual with set dances. Rodney’s Glory is said to be a version of The Princess Royal, a harp tune composed by Turlough O’Carolan, although to my ear the two tunes are not terribly similar. The title is a reference to a naval battle that took place in 1782 in the Caribbean, in which the British fleet under Admiral George Rodney was victorious over the French fleet. This is probably my last Tune of the Month column. After 14 years of writing this column, I am planning to “retire” after this installment. Thanks to all you loyal readers for the positive feedback over the years. It has really been rewarding to write about this music for people who care so much about it. If you’re a “tune hound” and you think you might enjoy sharing tunes through this medium, please let us know. www.IMDA-MN.org Irish Music & 3 Dance Association The Gaelic Corner By Will Kenny “To be or to be, that is the question.” Well, emphasize the color (i.e., it's red, not brown), we can’t use that’s not exactly the question Hamlet asked himself in voice stress (“The box is RED”) as Shakespeare’s famous play. But we do in English. Instead, we use being a Dane, perhaps Hamlet didn’t that other “to be,” the copula, to have much Irish. If he had been a pull the important word student of the Irish language, he (dearg, “red”) to the front of the would have asked our version of the question quite often. sentence: Is dearg an bosca sin. The challenge is that Irish has On the flip side, we can also use two verbs that express “to be,” and as (mostly) English a Tá construction to handle those classification sentences speakers we are used to getting away with just one. For that usually use the copula. We saw the sentence Is example, I might observe that “That is a box” and that múinteoir mé to express “I am a teacher,” but we could “That box is red.” We use the same verb form, “is,” in also say Tá mé i mo mhúinteoir, literally, “I am in my both sentences. teacher.” One reason for using this construction is that the When we translate these sentences into Irish, copula is what is known as a defective verb because it however, we use two different verbs. For the first doesn’t have different forms for all the tenses. In English, sentence, we might say Is bosca é sin, where “Is” is the we can say, “He is a teacher” and “He will be a teacher,” verb. This verb “to be” is known as the copula (and this but there is only one form of the copula, is, to cover both form is pronounced “iss” in Irish, unlike the “izz” of tenses. So we work around that by saying Tá sé ina English). mhúinteoir for “He is” and Beidh sé ina mhúinteoir for “He will be.” Again, both these sentences actually use an For the second sentence, we need a different form of “in his teacher” structure to complete the thought. “to be.” We say, Tá an bosca sin dearg, where now “Tá” is the verb. The same structure is used with various states. We Knowing which form to use when is one of the great say Tá sí ina seasamh, “She is in her standing,” to indicate challenges of learning Irish.