Guitar Recital and Cleaning Exam

Well, two exams down six to go. The first exam we had was this Monday. Housekeeping came in and evaluated our apartment. We had to reach a level of cleanliness, according to their criteria, that would allow them to NOT charge us for a cleaning service over the holidays. Well, we passed very nicely, thank you very much. The scale ran as follows: Filthy, Dirty, Okay, Clean, Very Clean. Our kitchen rated "very clean" on every count except for the floor. The floor rated "Clean". I could understand that because all I did was sweep and then rub it with a paper towel or two because it looked like the scabrous mop that housekeeping provided would spread cholera better than it would clean the floor. Every room in our apartment rated "clean" on every count except for one room, but he knows who he is. I wouldn't know how they defined 'very clean' for our rooms, but the result of this successful exam is that we don't have to pay for a cleaning service. Yay: all praise for small victories.

Following hard upon this Cleaning Exam was my guitar recital. The Irish Folk Music course I am taking has a practical tutorial. You go to lectures and learn about history and famous players and stuff, but the tutorial is practice. There was a dance group, a tin-whistle group, a bodhran group, a fiddle group, a singing group, and a guitar group. There are over 100 people in the class. This was a fantastic way to really engage the students whether they wanted to be engaged or not. And there is definitely a surly group of young men in the back who test each teacher's patience with their little reindeer games. The recital was well attended, as every member of the audience was also a performer. The singers were able to do a few ornaments and they all could hold a tune, so that was lovely. Eoin Cougohlan is an up and coming performer on the Irish folk music scene (he's backed Emmy Lou Harris!), and he is a fantastic musician as well as a great teacher. Anyway, he was given the task of creating a recital piece for no less than 20 (twenty, that's right) Bodhrans. It was too many to have any melody instruments because any fiddle or flute would be drowned out. Coughlan chose to do an 'a capella', as it were, bodhran piece. He got them to play a 'jig' and a 'reel', or rather rhythmic patterns in 6/8 and then 4/4. He had them play different styles of the rhythms, on edge, muted, rising and falling, and flat out in the middle. He has the group alternate who was playing, and then add and subtract players to create waves of sound. It was fantastic! It was really a testament to a good teacher that he got total novices to do something so cutting edge, and so on the beat. He got them to do some pretty complicated stuff.

Well, Mr. Coughlan was also the tutor for the guitars. We played a polka, The Little Diamond, the Salamanca Reel, and the hornpipe 'Off to California'. We flat picked the Little Diamond, but Coughlan convinced an accordion player and a flute player to do the melody on the reel and the hornpipe. The reel was pretty standard backing, but we did a sort of jazz progression for the hornpipe which was very cool. I wouldn't know if we sounded good or not because I was in the band, and one never knows. I heard one person in the audience say it sounded good, so it must have been okay.

The tin whistle choirs were a little lugubrious, but they were all playing by ear, and the brave accompanist on the piano did a great job of following wherever they went with the rhythm, so it was brave effort by all involved. After the recital, I could hear bits of the tunes being played on tin whistles in the parking lot, so I think some whistle players were made in that class.

The most culturally interesting part was the dancing. The girls, of course, did a great job, and they were totally focused on their dances. The boys were another story. The audience was mostly American since most of the course is full of Americans. What Irish person would take a course called "Traditional Irish Music"? They would either have no interest at all, or by the time they got to university level, be so far beyond it. So, this was, essentially, a group of Americans. No, remember that American men generally don't dance. American undergraduate men, unless they are dancers, don't dance. I believe it is regarded as totally gay. This audience that had joyfully hooted and cheered every performance so far, totally broke down for the dancing groups that included their male classmates. The surly bunch who usually sat against the wall, egged their pals on to utterly harass the men with courage enough to get up and dance. They hooted and cat called from the back throughout the performance. They tried to distract their dancing buddies by making gestures and calling out their names. It was the most powerful example of the group pulling down members trying to break out of the drunken baseball cap mode that I have seen in a long time. It was very painful. The guys dancing on the stage mostly ignored it, but one young man caved and began to cut up in his dance, turning the hand turns into high fives, and goofing around with his steps. I was sad to see how much power these frightened young men exerted in such an insulting way. It was classic mob behavior: the hecklers were all grouped tightly together trying to draw others in to harass the dancers. I'm sure if you asked them why they were so mean, they would have perceived it as joking support. One can only hope the dancers felt it that way, but there was a vicious undertone of 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' and these were the dudes with the hammers.

Overall, the performances were great: it was evidence of great effort and creativity by the tutors, and great effort on the part of the students. It was a very effective way to really engage them in the process.