I must reassure that Hungarian music IS Celtic. They have just found a Celtic settlement in one of the Southern suburbs of Budapest. So? What’s the problem here?
:-)
On 12/10/06 08:36, "Melissa Kacalanos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It's been so much fun reading people's reactions to this Celtic issue etc, I just had to share a story of how I got some grant money once. Sorry if this is off-topic.
My various bands had played at a particular contra dance several times, always for very little money. Then the dance organization managed to get its hands on some grant money that would enable them to pay a band more. However, this money came with the stipulation that the musicians had to be "self taught." They didn't want any trained musicians, we had to be just pure and natural untrained unprocessed organically-grown musicians. This eliminated most of the musicians in my various bands, because they generally have studied music since they were children. I would have liked to invite some particularly good musicians I know to play this gig with me, but unfortunately they have degrees in music, which disqualified them.
However, the grant money seemed too good to pass up, so I figured that I still qualified for it, as long as I played only my instruments that I hadn't taken lessons on. That eliminated percussion, which I had studied formally for years and was my main specialty at that time, but allowed hurdy gurdy and tinwhistle, since I hadn't really taken any lessons on those at the time, but had taught myself. I enlisted another musician who had studied Korean drumming, so that was out, but had taught himself tinwhistle and concertina. I also got a genuine self-taught guitarist, who was actually remarkably good.
After a few rehearsals, we were ready to play this lucrative dance. We weren't as good as we might have been if we'd had some lessons, but we were pretty good anyway, we thought.
We got there, looked at the description of us in the program, and could barely hold our tongues long enough to pick up our checks. According to the program, "self taught" musicians are musicians who play "old-timey" music, which is the same as "traditional" music, which means that we learned to play this from our parents and grandparents. Yes, '"self-taught" musicians learned their music from their ancestors. This, of course, prompted us to start singing, "I'm My Own Grandpa." I'm surprised the program writers didn't also add that we were Celtic. The tunes we played, like Hungarian traditional tunes and Italian renaissance dances rearranged for contra dance, certainly count as Celtic, right?
Basically, the people handing out the grant money had no idea what they were asking for. For that matter, the crowd who showed up for this well-publicised event had no idea what they were dancing to, but they all seemed to be enjoying their first contra dance, and possibly their first dance ever. Many of them came up afterwards to ask what the concertina was, since they'd never seen one before. Some of them asked what the tinwhistle was.
Whatever.
In general, I have the darndest time trying to convince people that I don't play Seltic music. I try arguing, but it does no good to tell them that that last tune was Hungarian or Turkish or whatever, they keep insisting that it sounds Seltic. I eventually give up and tell them to buy my CD, since it's packed full of that Seltic music they love so much. They buy it.
I'm afraid that some day my tongue will slip and I'll say "Seltic" when I'm talking to actual Celtic musicians.
Melissa
www.melissatheloud.com <http://www.melissatheloud.com>
www.djinnnyc.com <http://www.djinnnyc.com>
http://www.amarcus.org/jiggermeister/
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