Music is the lowest common denominator among people. Every culture has music in some way, shape or form. There are so many cultural barriers: religion, language, climate, food, political and economic systems, just to name a few. Music is an expression of primal emotion, first and foremost, and as such can be recognized and empathized with just as emotion is. I feel it is as critical as eating, an opinion shared by ethnomusicologist Thérèse Smith: ‘It is exhilarating to discover that music has as many meanings and contexts as there are cultures and subcultures, and, moreover, that it is a fundamental and essential human activity – not something frivolous or “extra” as it is often considered in the West.’[1]
People have been making music for as long as they have been calling themselves people, presumably. The “dawn of civilization” is usually set somewhere around 10,000 BCE, but I’m not talking about civilization. I am talking about people. About humans. The “agricultural revolution” might have done great things for the population size of humanity, but in the long run, I believe it has doomed its partakers to extinction. That, however, is a subject for another day. Music surely had its start long before people began organizing themselves into villages and growing all their own food, just as speaking and dancing did.
At that time, scores of thousands of years ago, music would have been passed on aurally and orally, a practice which in some cultures is maintained to the present day. Although some form of musical notation has been available in some cultures for thousands of years, many cultures remain non-literate to the present day, or they find aural/oral transmission advantageous for any of a number of reasons. For example, the Celtic druids required that their music be passed on in this way, so that no written record might get out to those not ready for it, and as stone-singing (a method of dressing and moving stone through the use of complex harmonic choirs: one explanation for the construction of Stonehenge) is part of the mythic legacy surrounding the druids, this practice may well have been pragmatic.
Personally, I find aural/oral transmission to take more skill than following notes on a page. It also lends itself better to improvisation and dynamic growth of the art. After being actually exposed to what people trained aurally/orally can do, I feel that this type of training is certainly not inferior to classical training, as some people are wont to think, but instead may even surpass it and they certainly can supplement each other with astounding results.
But when you learn something in that way, so the memory of it is inside you, not printed externally, it becomes part of your very being in a way that is somehow more vital. Thus ingrained, the music becomes more integral to the culture as well, that is, it becomes part of a sense of cultural identity and tied to other aspects of the culture. This is perhaps why music is often so much a part of religion, because religion is inexorably linked to cultural identity as well.
Culture itself can be defined as a transmission of a way of being sustained over time. Musical culture would then involve transmission of musics to the next generation and beyond. Because there wasn’t a neutral and reliable source of “how things were” a generation or more ago before the advent of recordings, the sense of “the tradition” that is present in many modern musical cultures was probably not the same issue it sometimes is today. If preserving the tradition was an issue in times past it would have a different cast, as one would have to rely on people’s memories of memories – who would you believe, and how would you solve conflicting reports? Recordings themselves present particular problems, as the cultural situation entire cannot possibly be reproduced, and they lose much along the way, a concern expressed by Smith: ‘If through transference a piece of music survives only as sound, devoid of meaning, its interest is severely reduced.’[2]
Irish traditional music is noted (or notorious) for attempting to strictly hold to tradition, for having respect for old music, sometimes treating as ancient what is certainly less than two hundred years old. Each part of the tradition seems to have this attitude to one degree or another, but sean nós singing, with its very name meaning “old style” takes the concept of upholding the tradition to another level.
However, producing a meaningful and universally accepted definition of sean nós seems to cause its own problems. Somhairle MacGill-Eain has described it in this way: ‘that ineffable fusion of music and poetry, in which the melodies seem to grow out of the words and be a simultaneous creation.’[3] I find this to be a rather observant and apt description for several reasons which should become clear as I describe the sean nós singing tradition.
Because sean nós is a style of singing, the songs contained within range from slow airs to love songs to humorous and bawdy tunes. The songs are in Irish, and the melodies display the rhythm and metre of the Irish poetry to wonderful effect. There are often nonsense syllables, especially in the chorus. Many of the songs date from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, although that is certainly not a requirement, and often the poet and/or composer are not known. This era in turn probably owes a great deal to the bardic tradition of the centuries before.
Usually, the song would be sung before an audience who already knows the words and the story behind the song, however the singer still often relates the údar an amhraín (source of a song) before performing.[4] Sean nós would have been a welcome and appropriate addition to any community gathering, from weddings to funerals to house parties. Although the singer usually affects a more or less detached air while singing, the lyrics themselves and the subtleties of performance create a strong bond between singer and audience.
Instead of using “dramatics” or emotional singing, the singer uses spontaneous and improvised variation to convey expression. Such variation might include ornamenting the main melody, changing the rhythm to suit mood and audience, and phrase management.[5] The consonants l, m, n, and r are often sustained to show phrasing, and are sometimes even slipped in extraneously to signal the end of the phrase. Although the improvisation is entirely up to the singer, there are certain general regional trends which can be recognized by the observant listener, the more distinctive ones being those from counties Galway, Donegal, and
Like the rest of Irish traditional music, sean nós was in danger of dying out as the gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas of
It is often difficult for the “outside” listener to appreciate sean nós because it differs in many key ways from the classical style. No dynamics or vibrato, and the use of a bare (and sometimes nasal) voice are common complaints. These qualities make sean nós all the more appealing and engaging for me. Because it is so different from what I am used to, I want to immerse myself in it until it feels like a second skin. I feel fortunate to be able to take a course in sean nós this term, as witnessing a performance in its natural situation and participation are two of the best ways to come to know a music. I sometimes fear that in these days of globalization, less mainstream aspects of cultures may fall by the wayside. Exposing myself to novel and distinct things is my way of coping. I can only hope that many others of my generation and generations to come will feel the same so that precious things like sean nós singing remain a part of the global culture quilt.
[1] Thérèse Smith, p. 25.
[2] Thérèse Smith, p. 23.
[3] in Companion, p. 336.
[4] Fintan Vallely
[5] Ibid.
Resources
Smith, Thérèse, ‘The Study of Oral Traditions of Music,’ 2001, in Éigse Cheol Tíre Irish Folk Music Studies, ed. Hugh Shields, Nicholas Carolan, and Thérèse Smith (
Vallely, Fintan, 1999, Companion to Irish Traditional Music (
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