May 1 Irish Music & 2011 Bealtaine Dance Association 29th Year, Issue No. 5 The mission of the Irish Music and Dance Association is to support, coordinate, encourage and promote high quality activities and programs in Irish music, dance, and other cultural traditions within the community and to insure the continuation of those traditions. Inside this issue: 2011 Great Northern Irish Pipers' Club Tune of the Month 2 Gaelic Corner 3 Tion ól Tionol Artists 4 Odyssey to Tory Is. 7 Workshop (May 13-15) and Concert (May 14th) May Calendar 8-9 featuring An Leabhragán 10 Blackie O’Connell, Sean Gavin, Patrick DArcy Cu Ceoil 12 + surprise guests The Ceili Calendar 14 Smidirini 15 The Great Northern Irish Pipers' Club (GNIPC) will be holding its tenth tionól (uilleann pipers' gathering) this May 13th-15th in St. Paul. The tionól is a weekend crammed full of workshops and an open-to-the- public concert. To mark the special occasion of this 10th tionol, GNIPC will be bringing (from Ireland) the legendary Michael "Blackie" O'Connell. Joining Blackie will be Dubliner Pat D'Arcy (a perennial GNIPC tionól favorite!) and Chicago-based piper and flute player Sean Gavin (known to audiences for his performances with Bua and Nicgaviskey). The workshop (two days of instruction in the art and music of uilleann piping) will be aboard the Covington Inn at Harriet Island (registration available via GNIPC's website: www.gnipc.org ). The tionol workshops offer the interested and curious an intimate view of this iconic instrument and its music. Even if you don't own a set of pipes, you will find the workshops to be an occasion of fun and inspiration, an eye-opener into the original source of so much of the Irish traditional music that we cherish today. The tionol concert is a wondrous display of some of today's finest traditional musicians. GNIPC is pleased to be hosting the concert for the first time at one of our area's premiere folk venues, The Celtic Junction (836 Prior Avenue N, St. Paul, MN 55104). Show starts at 7:30pm. Tickets are available from the GNIPC website and at the door the night of the show. $10.00 pre-sales available from www.gnipc.org www.IMDAwww.IMDA----MN.orgMN.org (Continued on page 4) Irish Music & 2 Dance Association The IMDA Board is : Tune of the Month by Amy Shaw President: Lisa Conway Treasurer: Mark Malone We’re so saturated with television and other mass media these days, Secretary: Jan Casey that it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, radio was the new thing. Radio Board Members: Suin Swann broadcasting in Ireland began on New Year’s Day in 1926 on the 2RN Ruth McGlynn station, which later became Raidió Éireann. A new CD from RTÉ, Tuning Patrick Cole the Radio , documents some of the traditional music that was broadcast during the early years of Irish radio. The first ten years or so are lost to us, Editor: John Burns because all the music was performed live. Beginning in 1936, some music IMDA Board Meetings are open to the membership. was pre-recorded on acetate discs, and a few of these very fragile discs The Board meets regularly on the First Tuesday of each have been preserved. One of the earliest of these was a studio recording month at 6 pm at Perkins in HarMar. Members are encouraged to verify the time and location shortly before, from 1940 of the great piper, Séamus Ennis, then 21 years of age, playing a as meeting times and locations can change. set of reels including The First House in Connaught and Miss Monaghan. With the Great Northern Irish Pipers Club tionól coming up on May 13-15 Contact Information (see http://www.gnipc.org for more information), I thought a good piping Write to: tune from Séamus Ennis would not go amiss! Irish Music and Dance Association Ennis (1919-1982) was a fascinating character, as I am discovering by 236 Norfolk Ave NW Elk River, MN 55330 reading a recently-published translation of the journal he kept while working for the Irish Folklore Commission ( Going to the Well for Water: Call: 612-990-3122 The Séamus Ennis Field Diary, 1942-1946, edited by Ríonach uí Ógáin, E-mail: [email protected] Cork University Press, 2009). As a full-time collector of music and song for the Commission, his job was to travel to rural areas and get people to Newsletter Submissions allow him to transcribe tunes and songs. He didn’t have a car until 1946, We welcome our readers to submit articles of interest, news, and notices of events to be published in the newsletter. so he got around mostly by bicycle, in all sorts of weather. He was ideally The deadline is the 20th o f the preceding month. suited to folklore work. He was not only a piper, but a fiddler, singer, Send to: [email protected] storyteller, a master of local dialects, and had worked at a music printing firm in Dublin. He was tall and charming, made friends everywhere he went, and had a special rapport with musicians. Eventually the Commission got him some portable recording equipment so he could make acetate disc recordings in the field. Ennis collected a wealth of material during his five years at the Commission. He went on to work for Raidió Éireann and the BBC, doing field recording and producing various programs. Tuning the Radio and Going to the Well for Water make for very interesting reading and listening, and are well worth having for their cover photos of Séamus Ennis alone! Usual disclaimers: Any transcription errors are my own. The notation here is not meant to be a substitute for listening. It is simply an aid to learning the tune. www.IMDAwww.IMDA----MN.orgMN.org Irish Music & 3 Dance Association The Gaelic Corner By Will Kenny When we think of pairs of words with opposite across in English in a variety of ways. We have meanings, sometimes they are completely different dí fhostaithe (" un employed"), dí chreideamh (" dis belief"), words -- think "hope" versus "despair" -- and dí bholaíoch (" de odorant"), and dí bheo ("life less "). sometimes one is just the negation of the other, as in the Sometimes we may have more than one option to pair "certain" and "uncertain." One of the things that negate a word. The Irish for "even," in the sense of makes learning another "balanced" or "level," is cothrom . We language fun is that the two can use either éa gothrom or mí chothrom languages do not always map to say "uneven, unbalanced" and it really such pairs the same way. doesn't make much difference which one In Irish, for example, we choose. "certain" is cinnte, and On the other hand, sometimes the "un certain" is éi ginte , a fairly straightforward negation specific prefix makes a difference. The Irish word ceart situation. (The negating prefix éa- or éi- can cause a expresses "right," both in the sense of being "correct" and change in the immediately following consonant, as in in the sense of "a human right." We use dí cheart to this case, from c to g.) But the words for "hope" and express "injustice". But we use mí cheart to say "despair" are also a negation pair: "hope" is typically "incorrect." translated by dóchas , and "despair" is translated by Indeed, mícheart is almost always used as the éa dóchas , or " un hope." opposite of "right" when we want to say "wrong." Most Irish students learn to use trom for "heavy" Reminiscent of the "heavy" and "unheavy" opposites and éadrom for "light" (in weight) fairly early on. And mentioned earlier, in Irish your answers to questions are many of them never notice that they are really using not so much "right" or "wrong" as they are "right" or another negation pair. Éa drom is not so much "light" as "unright." it is " un heavy." Similarly, "shallow" can be translated Thanks to everyone who participated in our annual by éa domhain (" un deep"). And use this éa- prefix spring workshop in April. Instructors Wes Koster, Mary before the word for "end" or "limit," críoch , and you Roguski, Nancy Stenson, and Shane Curran delivered a end up with éa gríoch for something without limit: lot of knowledge wrapped in a lot of fun, and we had a "infinity." great bunch of students. Special thanks to Jim Rogers and In English, we use prefixes like im- and in- and dis the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. - and un- to negate concepts. Naturally, there are many Thomas for sponsoring this event. negating prefixes in Irish as well, and just as naturally, This workshop also brought a host of new students prefixes do not line up consistently across the two into our Monday night classes, and it will take us a while languages. to absorb that influx of eager new learners. To keep an So " in dependent" and " in sensitive" are translated eye out for future opportunities to join our classes, watch into Irish with the prefix neamh -, producing our web site at www.gaelminn.org . Better yet, sign up for neamh spleách and neamh -mhothólach , respectively. our free monthly newsletter, The GaelMinn Gazette. But then we have do -ite for " in edible" and do fheicthe You'll not only get some tips (in English!) for learning for " in visible," as well as éi deimhin for " in decisive." Irish, you will be sure to see announcements of coming We even have a negating prefix in- in Irish, so that events and courses.