Hello All, John Dally has kindly invited me to choose the TOTM for February and it is:
The Keelman Ower Land This tune has been a favourite since 1973 when (according to Johnny Handle) Carole & I gave its first public airing in years. It is still yielding up its secrets 38 years on. 3/2 tunes are becoming more popular and widely established as shown by the following abstract from Stewart Hardy submitted to the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention (A" Cos go Cluas - trans. aEUR~from foot to ear') 2012 I think it might be of interest to some: Working with Dinosaurs Triple-time Hornpipes Stewart Hardy The triple-time hornpipes of the British Isles suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune during the eighteenth century: initially one of the most widely played tune forms, at its end the decline was such that if "extinction" was not complete, then continued existence was "critically endangered". Not until the last quarter of the twentieth century was there a significant effort to reawaken interest in this type of tune. A wealth of fabulous material has been unearthed, containing great energy and appeal for performer and listener alike. Without an unbroken oral tradition and with the disappearance of dances associated with these tunes, there are significant challenges to developing historically and contextually informed interpretations. Clues are found in the surviving manuscripts and published collections, folk song and literary descriptions of village dance. Attempts to reconstruct the dances also provide illuminating material. Rediscovering and resurrecting triple-time hornpipes presents an opportunity to observe the shift from social process to aesthetic product in reverse - "from ear to foot" rather than "from foot to ear". In this paper I will explore these issues, demonstrate tunes and suggest some practical and well-founded solutions to problems of interpretation. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
