September 1 2015 Irish Music & Meán Fómhair Dance Association 33rd Year, Issue No. 9 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. Mike and Jan Casey Receive Irish Fair ’s Inside this issue: 2015 Curtin-Conway Award The Gaelic Corner 3 IMDA Grant Winner 5 The Curtin-Conway Award honors Leah Curtin and Roger Conway, two of The Minnesota Feis 6 the original organizers of the festival. The honor is presented annually to someone who has made significant contributions to the Irish cultural community in the Twin Cities and/or Minnesota. The award includes a $1,000 donation by the Irish Fair to the Irish cultural charity of the recipient's choice and the name of the honoree is placed on a plaque that is on public display at Irish On Grand. The award presentation on Saturday at Irish Fair was bittersweet, as Roger Conway had just passed away. Mike and Jan Casey are active members of our local Irish community, regulars at concerts and dance events and enthusiastic and involved volunteers. While Mike had been volunteering with Irish Fair as a stage manager, they both became more involved when they began coming out to the Dubliner Pub for céilí dancing. They met a new group of friends and found themselves drawn in. Mike has been involved with Irish Fair since the early days at St. Thomas, first as a stage manager and, beginning in 2002, as chair of the Cultural Area and member of the Board. Over that time, with assistance from many contributors, he has helped the Cultural Area grow and expand to include a non-profit Irish community groups table, models of a famine ship, a high cross, a holy well, Irish still and wake parlor, as well as rotating displays, an expanded workshop stage, Tea Room, speaker’s stage, Irish theater, and a literary corner. He created both the storytelling tent and the Celtic chat table. Mike is a long- time MC for the Irish Music and Dance Association’s St. Patrick’s Day Irish Celebration and Day of Irish Dance at Landmark Center. He also serves on the Board and performs with the Celtic Collaborative Irish theater group. Jan has also been an active volunteer with Irish Fair. She created the banners that hang in the Pavilion, as well as several of the rotating displays that appear in the Cultural area each year, including the display focusing on the 50-year history of Irish music in the Twin Cities. She has coordinated the Irish Fair’s Triscéil Tea Room for the last 6 years, and received Irish Fair’s Turf Cutter award as Volunteer of the Year in 2014. She has served in numerous capacities on the Board of the Irish Music and Dance Association since 2006, including volunteer coordinator and Secretary, and continues to serve as Vice President and entertainment coordinator. During her watch, the entertainment at the Landmark Center on St. Patrick’s Day and the Day of Irish Dance has grown to include a children’s stage, Irish theater, expanded Tea Room music and seminars. She regularly updates the IMDA website and Facebook page, and contributes each month to the IMDA newsletter. Jan created and continues to coordinate both the IMDA’S Decade of Dance Award and IMDA’s Educational Grant Program. Mike and Jan also actively support and volunteer with the Celtic Junction, the Center for Irish Music and the Friends of St. Patrick. www.IMDAwww.IMDA----MN.orgMN.org 2 Irish Music & Dance Association The IMDA Board is : Tune of the Month by Amy Shaw President: Lisa Conway Vice President: Jan Casey Here is an interesting reel from the playing of Paddy O’Brien. I Treasurer: Mark Malone Secretary: Ciara Reynolds was reminded of it recently when fiddler Tom Schaefer played it at a Board Members: John Concannon Keegan’s session one Sunday. How could you not like a tune with a Kevin Carroll Kathie Luby name like this one? Tim Monahan Julia Rogers Editor: John Burns This tune has Scottish roots and appears in early published IMDA Board Meetings are open to the membership. The Board meets regularly on the First Tuesday of each month at 6:30 pm at the collections, such as Robert Bremner’s Collection of Scots Reels or Dubliner Pub in St. Paul. Members are encouraged to verify the time and location Country Dances of 1757, where it is titled The HighlandmanKiss'd shortly before, as meeting times and locations can change. his Mother. Its limited range and character suggest that it was a Contact Information piping tune. The tune made its way to Ireland, probably by way of Write to: Irish Music and Dance Association 236 Norfolk Ave NW Donegal, and has since appeared on various Irish recordings, Elk River, MN 55330 including Paddy O’Brien’s Stranger at the Gate (1993). I’ve always Call: 612-990-3122 E-mail: [email protected] found it a difficult reel on the flute, but it’s fun to play in the key of C Newsletter Submissions for a change and well worth the challenge. So give it a try! We welcome our readers to submit articles of interest, news, and notices of events to be published in the newsletter. The deadline is the 20th of the preceding month. Usual disclaimers: Any transcription errors are my own. The notation here Send to: [email protected] is not meant to be a substitute for listening. It is simply an aid to learning the tune. IMDA on Facebook While the IMDA monthly newsletter strives to bring you all the news about Irish music, dance and cultural activities in the Twin Cities and beyond, we often receive notice of events after the newsletter goes out. Facebook is a great way for IMDA to let you know when updated news becomes available. However, Facebook notification rules continue to change and evolve. If you have “Liked” IMDA on Facebook ( www.facebook.com/IMDA.MN ) and you have not getting updates from us regularly, please go to the page and check the “Liked” button to be sure that Get Notifications is checked. www.IMDAwww.IMDA----MN.orgMN.org 3 Irish Music & Dance Association The Gaelic Corner By Will Kenny "To be or to be?" Not exactly what Shakespeare To add to the fun, the copula ( is ) is what's known as a wrote, but a question that comes up fairly often when defective verb, in that it doesn't show all the usual speaking Irish! forms. While bí, the first "to be" mentioned above, goes through the usual conjugation of tenses, the copula has The fact that Irish has two verbs to express "to be" is a just two versions. One handles the present and future, challenge to Irish learners, and the fact that one of them and one handles past and conditional ("would") is a bit odd doesn't help matters. meanings. Context counts for a lot, Irish is hardly the only language then, in some copula sentences. that does this, of course. But the fact that English gets along fine To get around this "defect", we can with just one "to be" makes it a "cheat" using a special construction little harder for most of us to get with bí . To clearly express the used to choosing the right "to be" future, we might say, Beidh sí ina dalta amárach to when figuring out how to say things as Gaeilge. express, "She will be a student tomorrow". That literally means, "She will be in her student tomorrow"! For instance, in English we might think of famous adopted Minnesotan Paul Bunyan and say things like, One thing you might want "to be" is a Gaelic speaker, "He is big", "He is a giant", and "The giant is big". That and this fall, Gaeltacht Minnesota is offering Gaelic in one verb, "is", works fine for all of these statements. two flavors! Not so in Irish. For the first statement, we can use a Our four-week "Introduction to Irish Gaelic" class will tense of the common verb bí (coincidentally be taught through St. Paul Community Education. The pronounced "bee"), to say, Tá sé mór. And using the class meets 7-9 Monday evenings starting September 21. word fathach for "giant", we can similarly use the same And completing this course will get you into our regular, verb to translate "The giant is big" as Tá an fathach free Monday night classes for as long as you like. mór. In addition, "Scots Gaelic I" will run for four one-hour But for that middle one, "He is a giant", we have to use Monday sessions, starting in November. This will give a different verb. This special form of "to be" is known you a taste, at least, of Gaelic as it is spoken in Scotland. as the copula, and we end up with Is fathach é. Again coincidentally, that present (and future) tense of the On-line registration for both of these classes opens copula is "is", but it is pronounced "iss" rather than September 8, and it's a good idea to register early, "iz". especially for Irish Gaelic. Visit our web site at www.gaelminn.org for more information and a link to The first "to be" we met, bí, is used largely to describe the Community Ed site.. things. When we say something is red or blue or fast or slow, or when we want to say what someone is doing -- Is ionann an cás, an t-éag agus an bás swimming, singing, sleeping -- we use this verb.