B2
Arts & Culture
March 26 – April 1, 2009
The Epoch Times
MUSIC
The President’s Choice: New Traditional Irish Music
By MARIA CHOW
GREENCASTLE, Indiana—One
doesn’t have to know a lot about Irish music
in order to enjoy it a lot. That’s the impression one got from a concert given by fiddle
player Liz Carroll and singer-guitarist John
Doyle last Sunday at Indiana’s DePauw
University.
“I love music; I am totally enthralled
by this event today,” said John Dittmer,
Emeritus Professor of history at DePauw
University, adding that “I am vaguely familiar [with Irish music], but I want to be
even more familiar after tonight.”
David Burton from Terre Haute,
Indiana, went to the concert with two
relatives upon being urged by his brother
Richard, who said he drove all the way
from Milwaukee (approximately 270 miles)
to attend the concert.
“The music is enjoyable to listen to,”
David said.
Sunday’s concert began with a couple of
reels, a dance in a two-beat meter (duple
meter) frequently used in Irish music. As
soon as the music started, many people in
the audience started tapping along with
their feet and nodding their heads.
The sensation of dance also came from
watching the two musicians play. They
played seated throughout the concert,
but their body movements amplified the
rhythms. Liz, in particular, tapped her
feet in such a way that she could have
been dancing all the time had she been on
her feet. At times the tapping of their feet
sounded like the drumming on the bodhrán (an Irish handheld frame drum).
As the audience of nearly 200 people
loosened up, the cries of “whoo!” to cheer
up the playing came more frequently.
The songs that John sang at the concert—traditional ballads as well as his
own compositions—were equally engaging. Each of them tells a story. The traditional ones included “The Hare’s Lament,”
a hare’s telling how he was being hunted;
“False Lady,” a jealous woman who killed
her former lover; and “The Wild Colonial
Boy,” an Irish immigrant in Australia who
robbed the rich to help the poor.
Many of the pieces in the concert are
from the two musicians’ second CD Double
Play released last week, whose title reminds
one of their first CD In Play released in
Liz Carroll and John Doyle. ANNE HAMERSKY
2005.
The fact that Liz and John performed at
DePauw just two days before their Capitol
Hill debut was purely accidental, according
to Professor Ronald Dye at DePauw who
organized the event.
“I usually book concerts around important days,” Professor Dye said, explaining
that he had wanted Liz and John to play at
DePauw on St. Patrick’s Day but “the agent
said they would like to reserve that day for
big events.” The Capitol’s invitation came
after his.
The two are scheduled to play today
in front of President Barack Obama and
Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland Mr.
Brian Cowen at the St. Patrick’s Day luncheon at the Capitol Hill.
Living the Tradition
Liz and John, who have been playing
together regularly for several years, are
two high-profile artists in the world of Irish
music. Liz’s original compositions, always
sealed with a unique personal touch, have
never failed to be identified as traditional
by Irish music fans. This has earned her the
label “new traditional.”
Liz’s traditionalism consists both in her
instinctive mastery of the fiddle in the traditional Irish manner and in the immense
amount of music she has—both Irish and
non-Irish—at her disposal.
“I think when you have a body of tunes,
when you have a lot of music under you.
You can avoid the other melodies, you kind
of know if you would run into something
else,” she said.
She is like a linguist and a polyglot whose
native language is Irish, and she can choose
to speak any language with an Irish accent
whenever she wants.
“I tell friends I can make the [American]
national anthem sound Irish, I can make
“Jingle Bells” sound Irish. Everything, I can
bring that element to it.”
The DePauw concert arguably had some
noticeable non-traditional Irish musical
elements, including the jazzy feeling from
John’s guitar accompaniment at some
spots.
Strictly speaking, not even the accompanied songs are really part of traditional
Irish music, as Liz said:
“It is not something in the tradition if
you talk about what was there years ago. A
lot of songs being accompanied is a fairly
new thing in Irish music. So if you were
to go to a competition and it was a singing competition, there is no such thing as
a competition where somebody sat down
with their guitar and accompanied themselves. It was all unaccompanied.”
Liz said that the practice of accompanying songs was not part of her Irish musical
upbringing:
“So the whole idea of backing up songs is
not easy for me. Some songs that I actually
have a notion of what I am going to do . . .
But some of them I am still scrambling, it’s
still like foreign to me. I didn’t grow up with
it.”
Liz was alluding to her musical background, which was quite different John’s.
Renowned both inside and outside the
United States, Liz was born of a family of
Irish immigrants in Chicago. Winner of the
coveted Senior All-Ireland Championship
in 1975 at the age of 18, she has been recognized with many awards and honors,
including a National Heritage Fellowship
from the U.S. National Endowment for the
Arts in 1994.
She told the audience at the DePauw
concert that her parents had initially
wanted her to learn the piano. But since the
stairs in their apartment building were too
narrow for getting the piano to their second-floor apartment, she learned the fiddle
instead.
John, on the other hand, a native of
Dublin, Ireland, was brought up with accompanied Irish folk and traditional songs.
“I grew up in the 70s and early 80s. So
I grew up with the bands, the first [Irish]
bands coming out like Planxty and the
Bothy Band and all that. That was my reference for the music at the time.”
For John, accompanying songs with harmony was the starting point, from which he
has constantly tried to explore new timbre
for the music.
“This is still my reasoning: to make it
traditional, but you put all these elements in
it that change the way harmonically it goes
underneath.”
John came to the United States in 1991.
Before becoming a solo singer-guitarist in
2000, he was one of the founding members
of the Irish-American music group Solas.
Currently, he is also one of the three musicians in the band that accompanies Joan
Baez on tour.
At the concert, Liz mimicked on her
fiddle John’s vocal lines and turned them
into Irish tunes with rich traditional flavor,
while John kept spinning out on his guitar
countermelodies to go with Liz’s melodies.
Irish music is increasingly being fused
with other musical traditions, such as jazz,
rock, punk, and blue grass; it has developed
many traditions and sub-traditions. The
way not to lose sight of the tradition while
treading on new paths, as suggested by Liz
and John, is to return to the roots of the
music.
“There is this other thing, and this is really authentic and is there to be found,” said
Liz.
“Go to the source . . . envelop yourself
as much as possible into the music, I think
that helps,” John responded.
Maria Chow teaches music history and
world music at DePauw University.
THE ANTIDOTE:
CLASSIC POETRY FOR MODERN LIFE
A Reading of
‘Old Ironsides’
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Better World
Books partners
with literacy
non-profit Books
For Africa to bring
books to children
in Africa. BWB
president and
CEO David Murphy
(upper center)
and BWB national
partnership
manager Mary
Murphy (lower
center) with
children in
Tanzania in 2006.
By CHRISTOPHER NIELD
Old Ironsides
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar; —
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms—
The lightning of the gale!
Beware the public poem. Literature is
littered with the efforts of poets trying
to rise to some occasion of national importance—and failing dismally.
A gigantic talent when he walked
alone
among
the
mountains,
Wordsworth wrote nothing of value
when he was appointed Britain’s Poet
Laureate, for instance. Neither did Ted
Hughes, when he accepted the same
title a century later. Nor did Professor
Elizabeth Alexander exactly cover herself in glory at President Obama’s inauguration when she recited her “Praise
Song for the Day.”
Thankfully, Holmes’ poem is one
of the glorious exceptions to this rule.
Written in response to the news that
the USS Constitution, nicknamed “Old
Ironsides,” was about to be taken to the
scrap yard, it was rushed into print and
its words spread like wildfire. Recited
up and down the land in front parlors
and bars, it turned the tide of popular
opinion and saved the ship for posterity. Old Ironsides now resides in Boston
Harbor, as a museum dedicated to the
US Navy.
Today, the poem still has the power
to stir the blood, right from the first line.
“Yea, tear her tattered ensign down”
Holmes sneers in disgust. Just when the
ship needs repair, let’s rip it to pieces.
Go on, kick a dog when it’s down.
What a fate for this three-masted
BILL BLUDGUS
Online Bookstore Makes
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LIZA VORONIN/EPOCH TIMES
frigate named after the Constitution of
America in 1794 by President George
Washington himself—and what an
irony! In the War of 1812 against Britain,
she defeated five warships, but in 1828
she finds herself helpless against the
indifference of her own countrymen.
No matter that the sailors of yore were
given the inspiration to fight by its “banner in the sky.” No matter that it swept
the seas like a “meteor” blazing through
the clouds.
In the second stanza, quick journalistic images make us see the sacrifices
and achievement of the sailors who
walked on the ship’s deck: we see their
blood against the white waves; and
the “knee” of the “conquered” bowing before the “tread” of the “victor.”
But now it’s as if the whole age of adventure is going down the plughole.
There is no one to prevent the “harpies
of the shore” rending the “eagle of the
sea.” The complacent landlubbers will
turn against the ship that housed those
brave enough to risk their lives for the
spirit of freedom.
In the final stanza, the note of outage
builds to a crescendo. Far better that
this ship of heroes should be sunk in a
tempest than pulled down by a bunch of
complaining nobodies. (“Harpy” means
“snatcher,” here suggesting people who
take, but never give.) Far better that
she should be rendered up to the ocean
deep, in “the lightning of the gale.” Only
that would do justice to her greatness.
The imagery of the poem is superb,
but perhaps its most striking feature is
its rhythm. It is so rollicking that it is
almost impossible not to end up swinging our arms in time to the beat. Such
rhythms have passed out of poetry now
that, in the main, it is written by and for
the critics. It is too joyful for our dominant cultural mode of tasteful fragmentation. It is too vulgar—and certainly
too popular.
(It is not surprising therefore, that this
poem will go on delighting readers long
after efforts like Professor Alexander’s
have been resoundingly forgotten.)
But what does the poem say to us in
2009? That a country should never forget its own history— never fail to honor
those who fight overseas to protect
the liberty of those at home. That we
shouldn’t fall victim to the casual cynicism of deskbound mediocrities who
would so easily dismiss the heroism of
military endeavor.
Does the ship symbolize America
itself? Far better that such a country,
with its epic struggle for independence
should end with a bang and not with a
whimper. How tragic would it be if that
end should ever come, not from outside,
but from within.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
was an American doctor, lecturer, and
author. Christopher Nield is a poet living
in London. Email him at [email protected]
Better World Books
raises funds for
libraries, literacy
organizations
By CINDY CHAN
Epoch Times Staff
When Xavier Helgesen decided to sell some used textbooks online in 2001, the new
grad from University of Notre
Dame found success and inspiration that would blossom into
a multimillion-dollar business
with a mission to promote literacy worldwide.
The business is Better World
Books (BWB), an online bookseller and a triple-bottom-line
company that cares about
profit not only in the economic
sense but also with social and
environmental good built in.
“Our vision is that we can be
a more profitable company by
trying to set very high standards in social and environmental performance, as long
as we do those smartly,” said
Mr. Helgesen, who co-founded
BWB with fellow Notre
Dame graduates Christopher
“Kreece” Fuchs and Jeff
Kurtzman.
BWB collects donated, resalable used books through book
drives and library discards and
donations programs.
It sells both used and new
books, to grow its business, to
help libraries raise money, and
to help charities fund literacy
programs in the United States
and abroad.
The company redistributes
or recycles books that it can’t
sell, and buys carbon offsets
through an organization called
Carbonfund.org to offset pollution from shipping.
With two million used books
and additional new titles in its
selection, the award-winning
U.S.-based social enterprise
is now shipping thousands of
books to Canada for a cheap
flat rate of $3.97.
“With the kind of charitable
spirit in Canada, people are
very, very open to this idea so
our book drives are usually
really successful and we get a
lot of high-quality books,” Mr.
Helgesen said.
Replicating Success
Mr. Helgesen never thought
he’d be a bookseller. At school
his interest was the Internet
and online entrepreneurship.
“[But] when I graduated in
the middle of the dotcom bust
there were very few opportunities to start a company or join
an existing start-up,” he said.
He was trying to make ends
meet. When he took some textbooks to sell back to the college
bookstore, they barely gave
him anything for them, so he
decided to try selling them online. Selling to other students,
he learned, those students paid
a lot less for the books while he
got a lot more money back.
That gave him the idea of
holding a book drive to get lots
of donated used books to sell
and then give the proceeds to a
good cause. He and his friends
ran a book drive at Notre
Dame to benefit a community
learning center in 2002.
“That proved to be a success. We sold about $20,000
[worth] of books and decided to
try to replicate that across the
country.”
They formed BWB and the
next year their business model
won the $7,000 grand prize in
the Notre Dame Social Venture
Business Plan Competition.