Irish music

Sword fights, corsets, and giant goat people at the Sonora Celtic Faire

| maggiebird
Queen Elizabeth
The Queen’s Court at the Sonora Celtic Faire

I am a sucker for themed dress-up events like the Sonora Celtic Faire. I love the Irish tunes rippling through the fairgrounds, with the occasional  Scottish strathspey straining to be heard. My heart beats hard to the pulsing Celtoid drums of bands like The Wicked Tinkers; my eyes mist over at ballads sung by the venerable harp-and-fiddle band Golden Bough; I make my fiddler swing me in the aisles to the raging reels of Molly’s Revenge.

I cheer at the anachronistic (and questionably Celtic) crash-and-bash heavy armor battles and charging horses carrying jousting knights. I admire the long sword-wielding solders in their swoon-worthy uniforms and leg-revealing hose. I shiver with a thrill of awe at the costumed players pretending to be royalty.

I even salivate at faux-Dickensian food like bangers and mash, and turkey legs bigger than your head. Who doesn’t want to gnaw greasy meat off a bone held like a cudgel in the hand?

Wings
Wings at the Sonora Celtic Faire

But what I like best are the costumes.

cosplay
Three sprites at the Sonora Celtic Faire

I’m a nerd that way. I’m flabbergasted at the creativity of those clever enough to make intricate costumes. Most of the cosplay isn’t historically accurate,  but what it lacks in research, it more than makes up for it with creativity and fun.

goat people
Goat people on stilts

I mean, the goat people were just awesome.

 

Knights in shining armor
Knights in shining (and dented) armor waiting to do battle

The knights who bang on each other with wooden swords seem to take their competitions seriously.

Knight jousting
Knight jousting

The jousting ring was not so serious, with a lot of crowd pleasing banter and only a short display joust. But still, charging Percherons! Guys bashing each other with staves! More, please!

Sword play
Young lads sword fighting-Don’t try this at school!

Everywhere boys fought mock battles with swords—toy and real. Even in these modern times, video games  flicker dimly when compared to the romance of actually smacking each other with sticks. Real time, real bruises.

Bubble lady
Bubbles at the Celtic Faire

Originally I thought I would bring my sketchbook and draw, but the fun of photography won me over, and I captured many images that will grace my easel in the future.

Costumed queen
Queen for a day

As much as I love to draw, I mostly kept my sketchbook in my bag. There was too much going on. The camera allows me to capture ephemeral moments, like this young man well seated on his mount.

Boy with sword
Young knight and his ride

At the end of the day, exhausted, I sat still long enough to dig out my sketchbook and draw while I  enjoyed the traditional Irish music of my friends’ band, Cooking with Turf.

Irish band
Cooking with Turf

Cooking with Turf will be playing at the First Congregational Church in Murphys on Sunday, March 20th. Hope to see you there!

 

 

 

Music Sunday

| maggiebird

JohnFiddling

Portrait of a fiddler (but not my fiddler), done in a Canson sketch book with a Pigma Micron pen.

Music is an essential part of my life. You all know what that means. I almost never play much music anymore.

People are funny that way; the things that mean the most to us often take a back seat to everything else. And despite the fact that the fiddler and I love to play music, (in fact, playing traditional Irish music is the oldest, strongest part of our relationship) we are both scheduled to the hilt with non-musical tasks, and so we don’t often have a day devoted to tunes.  To break this trend, we decided to make last Sunday a music day.

The first event we attended was the 9th Annual Santa Cruz Harp Festival at Our Lady Star of The Sea Church, presented by Shelley Phillips of the Community Music School of Santa Cruz. I hope you’ll see more about this wonderful school in future posts.

Harp players

I’ve never seen so many harps in one place! Pixie harps, celtic harps, concert harps, wire strung harps. The music was lovely, the church was beautiful, with lots of milky winter ocean light pouring through etched-glass windows. Perfect for drawing, but the sanctuary was crowded, and I was, of course, struck with extreme shyness.  Someone might look at me! Oh! The Horror! But I dredged up some grit, got out my journal and sketched while the musicians played. If anyone watched me, I didn’t know about it. I listened to the music and drew. It was like a little bit of heaven.

WomanFiddling

If you click on this sketch, you’ll be able to see a blurry bit on the fiddler’s chin (also not my fiddler) where my pennywhistle dripped moisture as I played a tune over the half finished drawing. Although the pen was a Pigma Micron, and supposedly waterproof, I guess it’s not immune to pennywhistle drool. 

Afterwards we stopped at The Poet & The Patriot Pub for the last bit of the Irish session. It was brilliant fun, and once again I forced myself to open the journal and draw (mostly while the other musicians played tunes I didn’t know). No one even payed attention; they were intent on their jigs and reels. And that was the most lovely thing of all.

Celtic harp

The practice of music and art

| maggiebird
Pastel pencil on colored paper
Pastel pencil on colored paper

This is a small drawing I made of my friend Cyndy. It’s from a photo taken as she was sitting around a campfire, playing tunes with a group of musicians.

I know Cyndy’s present teacher. He’s told me that she’s the kind of student a teacher loves to have. She really thinks about the music she plays, and she makes him think about it too. And she practices!

She’s passionate about her fiddle in the way most of us are passionate about a new romantic partner. But, come to think about it, I know a lot of musicians who are married to their instrument, and playing music is simply part of their everyday experience. I also know artists who feel the same way about their art. (I’m torn between the two. Do I play tunes, or do I draw? Tough question, that.)

Sometimes playing music or making art becomes a stale thing, or a stressful thing, fraught with needs and cravings that block the joy of our passions. But if we really think about what we’re doing, and lose ourselves in the process, suddenly the work becomes play, and we amaze ourselves at our success.

Shannon Heaton, one of my favorite Irish flute players, has a terrific blog at Whistle and Drum called The Inner Game of Irish Music about practicing the music. She’s talking about Irish music, but she could be talking about drawing, painting, old time music, classical music, dancing, or even just plain-old, everyday work.

The music in your bones

| maggiebird
Watercolor color study
Watercolor color study

Last night after the session wound up, after the last Irish jig and reel danced out across the floor, after the last polka whirled by and the last hornpipe bobbed out for the night, after the flutes were swabbed  clean and the fiddles wrapped and stowed in their cases., we musicians fell to talking a bit about Irish music.

We talked about how we came to this old and eccentric style of music in this land of pop melody and commercial jingles. Nearly every person at that party came into the music during a crisis in their life (many of us, it seemed, found it while ending a bad relationship). We found solace in the music, friendship in our instrument. “When I feel down or troubled,” C. said, “I tell it to my fiddle.”

How well I know that type of long conversation with my flute.

Not everyone who comes to Irish music is an emotional refugee looking for comfort. Some are lucky enough to have been born into the music, and wise enough to continue playing their legacy. Others just enjoy the intellectual exercise of learning stacks of tunes. And most of us love the camaraderie and community that comes from playing this music with others.

But I’d wager that for lots of musicians, the music is more importantly a place of comfort and safety. The familiar tunes are like favorite stories  we tell ourselves when we’re happy, scared, bored, or sad.

No matter our level of competence, just to sit quietly by ourselves and play this music is to have a relationship with the tunes and with our instruments that is as deep and serious as our relationships with our spouses, our children, our parents.  I guess because ultimately, it’s a relationship with ourselves.

Study of a flute player

| maggiebird
Girl playing flute Graphite value study
Girl playing flute
© 2009 Margaret Sloan
Graphite value study

I met this lovely young woman at Friday Harbor Irish Music Camp. She had a boxwood flute that had bent as it aged, but it sounded lovely.

One day while we were in class, the rain and snow stopped, the sky cleared, and the sun streamed through the windows. Sitting in a shaft of sunlight, the young woman glowed as she practiced her tune. I snapped a photo quickly. There was no time to fool around if I wanted to capture the naturalness in her posture. Youth is a time of great beauty, but also great self consciousness.

I’ve come to understand the importance of doing value studies before beginning a painting. Steve Curl, my watercolor teacher, told me that when I was designing the value study I shouldn’t focus on the details. Instead, he said, look for the large shapes of light and dark; I did, and it made all the difference.

I’ve already practiced painting hands playing the flute, so I should be in good shape for her hands.

Finally! It doesn’t take this long to play the tune!

| maggiebird
Trim the Velvet <p>Watercolor</p> <p> Copyright Margaret Sloan 2009
Trim the Velvet
Copyright Margaret Sloan 2009

This week I painted my final version of William Bajzek’s hands playing flute. I think I’ve painted about 12 versions of this; I’m happiest with this last version, although I also like the earlier version I posted in February.

I’m calling it Trim the Velvet, one of my favorite Irish tunes. It’s a tune that falls beautifully on the flute, and one that William plays really well. You can hear sound samples of William playing Irish music with his wife, Angeline, in their duo called Castlerock. Unfortunately, they haven’t any sound samples of Trim the Velvet on their website. They should.

12 versions of the same painting. That’s a pretty compulsive thing to do. But I made about every mistake a person can make in those 12 paintings. Sometimes I made pretty awful color decisions (and sometimes no decisions at all). I struggled to create soft edges. I roared into the painting and impatiently splashed dark values onto the paper too soon. I didn’t pay attention to the paint.

These are the things I learned: Painting a watercolor is a lot like starting a relationship. It’s best to be delicate in the beginning, leaving room for the big decisions that you’ll have to make later on. Plan well. Make clear choices. Use a light touch. Be happy with what the painting wants to be.