Spring 1998

ARTICLES

• A Primer on the Quebec Fiddle Repertoire;
• Quebec Bios & Tune Types;
• Jean-Marie Verret;
• Guy Buchard on Quebecois Fiddling;
• Byron Berline: Gracing the Strings;
• Sean McGuire: Master of the Irish Violin;
• Unsquare Dances;
• Fiddlegrams: A Perfect Gift...;
• Jake Krack: Young Fiddler, Old Sound;
• Fiddle Schools and Events.

COLUMNS

• On Improvisation: Secret of Bowing;
• Old Time Tunes;
• Cross Tuning, Part Seven;
• The Irish Fiddler;
• Fiddle Care;
• Books & Videos;
• Recordings;
• And more!

TUNES

• La Gigue a Cogne Picard;
• Reel d'Issoudun;
• La Cadence a Ti-Jules;
• Jumpin' the Strings;
• Mason's Apron;
• Fiveplay.

ARTICLEEXCERPTS

Guy Bouchard: On Québec Fiddling and Fiddlers

By Laurie HartGuy Bouchard is a guitarist, singer and fiddler who lives in Val-Bélair, near Québec City. Although not primarily a performer, Guy has done, in his words, "everything you can do with traditional music" for twenty years. His involvement has touched all aspects of the music scene, from hosting radio shows and directing festivals to collecting and researching music, dance and song, as well as producing and distributing books, videos and recordings. Guy was a member of the well-loved group La Bottine souriante from 1979-1982, and played on their second album. This influential group (the name translates to The Smiling Boot) is still going strong, and recently celebrated its 20th anniversary.

In the interview Guy mentions American fiddler and ethnomusi-cologist Lisa Ornstein, who lived for ten years in Québec and is a major figure in research, teaching, promotion and performance of Québecs instrumental music. Guy also talks about some of the great Québécois fiddlers he has known: André Alain (b. 1931), Jules Verret (1916-1982), Jean Carignan (1916-1988) and Louis Boudreault (1905-1988). Currently Guy runs a mail-order distribution company with his wife Laura Sadowsky, called Thirty Below, offering CDs, tapes, books and videos of Québécois traditional music, song and dance to people around the world.

How did you get interested in Québecs traditional music? Did you learn about this music from recordings?

I first learned about this music from other people. I had been playing folk guitar for many years, backing up French- and English-Canadian folk songs, when I met Aurel Quinn, a colorful accordion player from Sault-au-Mouton on the North coast. He was a man who had spent most of his life hunting and trapping. We worked together at that time (1974) in the same recreational outdoors center and I played guitar with him for all the participants after dinner every night. Just after that period, I moved to Baie-Comeau where I did some filming of traditional musicians. Among them was a lady who played "La Grande gigue simple," and I was astonished by the beauty and all the feeling in her fiddling. I told myself, if she can do that, I may be able to do it, too. Im still tryingá

There were not a whole lot of recordings available at that time, and I hadnt even thought of listening to old 78s. But many companies released records in the coming years, and my friends and I collected them eagerly. Like many traditional musicians of my generation, I had some direct contact with this music (which was really a part of everyday life for the generation just before ours) but I also learned tunes from recordings.

How did you learn to play fiddle?

After those field filming sessions, I flew to Montréal, bought a fiddle and flew back home. I didnt even know how to tune the instrument. I looked in books and discovered that it was tuned like a mandolin. So I started learning tunes on the mandolin and tried to finger them on the fiddle. I didnt know any other fiddlers at the time and it was only when I moved to the Québec City area a couple of years later that I met Lisa Ornstein and realized that I was using unconventional fingerings. So I started all over again. And I still use my little finger for G# on the D string! At the beginning, I was just trying to play tunes that were already in my head, and some of Louis Boudreaults repertoire.

Was there a tradition of music in your family or in the place you grew up?

I grew up in the east part of Montréal in a working class neighborhood and music was certainly not part of our life when I was young. The only traditional music I can remember was from my mothers side. Our cousins, the Morins, would come on New Years Day. They were great singers and accordion players. I later realized that my mother knew all those songs and that she has a very nice voice. I then learned many nice melodies from her. My mother grew up in the Joliette area, a region renowned for its rich song repertoire. When I first heard Gilles Cantin sing in La Bottine, I said, "Hey, those are my mothers songs!" But I cant remember having heard any fiddle music before the age of twenty.

What is or was the relationship between traditional music and nationalism?

I guess you mean "political" nationalism. After the 1960s when Québec went into the "Quiet Revolution" and when the separatist movement was growing, the 70s brought a strong current of nationalism and everything associated with Québec was suddenly very valued and popular. The traditional music was part of it and many pop singers would use traditional songs to make a hit.

I remember the first major "folk festival" [in Montréal around 1975] that had a mix of young folk groups and older traditional musicians. Some young folk groups would say that they were playing "la musique du peuple" [peoples music] or "la musique des travailleurs" [working class music]. I also remember being asked to play with a Québec flag behind us on the stage. The political movement was trying to use the music as an image for promoting separatism. But I never accepted that. I and many other musicians, young and old, refused to associate the music that we love with any political movement. That does not mean that we were (are) not separatists; we just did not want to involve music with it.

On the other hand, we felt that "cultural" nationalism clearly included this music. The nationalist movement certainly helped groups like Le Rêve du diable and La Bottine souriante become very popular, and brought this music to wider audiences. After the "no" vote on the referendum in the early 1980s, the phenomenon suddenly faded away and most traditional music groups disappeared. La Bottine then began to play more often outside Québec in order to survive. The music is not really associated anymore with nationalism, which is good for it and for us.

Who were the fiddlers who influenced you most in your music?

First Louis Boudreault, André Alain and Jules Verret, but also younger friends with whom I was learning, like Martin Racine and Daniel Lemieux. Lisa Ornstein was always a source of inspiration. I shared a big house with Lisa and two other friends and we were often ten or more for dinner. Musicians travelling from everywhere just popped in and stayed for a couple of days. There was always music in that house.

Jules Verret, the great fiddler, was your fishing partner. Did you play tunes with him too?

For a long time, I never told Mr. Verret that I played fiddle. I was probably too shy to play in front of him. I used to play my guitar with him sometimes and I remember having a very hard time trying to back up his repertoire, which was so different from anything that I had heard before. He had an incredible memory and was able to play any of his 1,000 tunes off the top of his head. He was quite a fisherman, tooá

How did you meet André Alain, and what was it like recording his music? [Guy helped produce Alains only recording, André Alain: Violoneux de St-Basile-de-Portneuf, in 1986.]

I cant remember exactly when I first met him but he was part of our lives for years. He had a little apartment in old Québec City not far from André Marchand, and we would spend our days around there playing music in the street or around a beer in his little kitchen. André Marchand, Danielle Martineau (who was directing a folk center at that time) and I realized that it was a must to record him. André Alain was quite a "wild" fiddler and we figured that it would be impossible to record him in a studio. At that time, he had spent a lot of time playing with Pierre Laporte. So we went to Alains house (he had moved back to his native St-Basile), invited Pierre and brought all the recording equipment. We recorded the whole thing in two days.

Did you ever meet Jean Carignan?

I first met him in his house near Montréal. We spent a whole day, sharing dinner and good wine with this simple man who had an incredibly strong character. It was very strange, because I had heard him on stage and on records before, and I was not a big fan of his, but the first time I heard him play up close in a small room I had to go out of the roomáit was so beautiful that it was impossible not to cry! I cant describe it. That has never happened to me again, with anybody. It was as if every note he played was tied to a star.

Another thing that I remember about him was that he stopped playing in public because he said that he was going deaf. But one time I was with Lisa Ornstein at his house and she was trying to practice some bowing that he had shown her that afternoon. He was talking with us in another noisy room when he suddenly stopped and shouted to Lisa that her bow was in the wrong direction in a certain place in the tune! Not bad for someone who said that he was going deaf!

How about Louis Boudreault?

I heard Louis Boudreault for the first time in Montréal at a festival around 1975. I was flabbergasted! An incredible storyteller, he had a fiddling style and energy that were magic. He played with such intensity that I could hear his entire life in his playing. Above all, he had an incredibly complex rhythm which came from the dancing in the Saguenay region, which almost always included step-dancing. His tone was not crystal clear, the notes and the scale he used sounded very strange (and even wrong to some ears) but his music was passionate and emotional.

Are there older fiddlers out there who have interesting styles or repertoires that are still unrecorded?

Yes, but probably not many of them. I am currently working with Yvon Mimeault, a great fiddler from Mont-Louis (on the Gaspé Peninsula), to help him record this coming winter. He has a unique style and many of his tunes dont have any known sources. Eddy Whalen from Stoneham, north of Québec City, is another one. They are both nearly 70 years old.

How has the button accordion affected the repertoire?

The accordion was adopted by many players, especially in and around big cities, around the end of the 19th century. The accordion became very popular, and today, it has become as important as the fiddle. In certain regions, you will find twenty accordions for one fiddle. If you go to contests and galas, you will probably hear about the same ratio. The music moved out of the kitchen, and because the accordion was louder and easier to play, it attracted more and more players.

I feel that the marriage between fiddle and accordion has not always been easy. The accordion has limited range and keys. Fiddlers have had to change notes, scales or keys in order to play together. The accordion is now so popular that its the fiddlers who learn tunes from the accordion players. Philippe Bruneau, Marcel Messervier, Yves Verret, Denis Pépin, Stéphane Landry and Sabin Jacques have a major influence on the music, and accordionists compose most of the new repertoire. There is rarely a dance without an accordion and its often the main instrument that people dance to.

Lets talk a little about the fiddle style. What kind of ornaments do fiddlers use?

It depends on the region and the player. Some use a big vibrato on longer notes instead of a roll, or tricky bowed triplets. Some use very few ornaments but emphasize the dance rhythm itself.

How about drones, do you use them most of the time?

Yes, especially for older tunes.

Is the bowing mostly single bows rather than slurs?

The bowing can be very unusual. I would say that there are more single bows than slurs but it varies. Sometimes we use two consecutive up-bow strokes for a repeated note.

The music is very buoyant in Québec. Do you get that sound by bouncing the bow right off the string?

That is certainly a characteristic of the style. Most of the players will take the bow off the string here and there, bouncing and playing with the dynamics of the instrument. Many certainly use the middle part of their bows to get that bouncing feeling in the music.

To better describe the style, I would say that the accent is not on the off-beat as it is in many other Celtic-based fiddle styles. Good players move the accent around to any eighth note of a group of four.

Can you describe the back-up style?

The piano and guitar back-up styles have developed in very different directions. First of all, before 1950, there was very little chordal accompaniment, only percussion [bones, spoons, feet] if anything. The complex chromatic style that is today considered the Québec piano style suits the modern repertoire very well, but, in my opinion, is not as good for the older Celtic repertoire.

The guitar style uses standard tuning and a lot of open strings. Like the fiddler, the guitarist does not emphasize the off-beat but the down-beat. The style was developed by a group of guitarists (myself included) who were only trying to listen to the fiddle tunes and follow them in the most respectful way. We sometimes feel the guitar doesnt suit the more modern quadrille repertoire as well as it does the old Celtic fiddle tunes.

What are the fiddle contests like in Québec?

I havent been to one in fifteen years but I hear that its quite strict. You have to play three or four kinds of tunes (waltz, 6/8, reel) at a certain tempo, with a very clean tone, and only certain kinds of tunes are allowed. Yvon Mimeault recently told me that he lost points because he is a lefty who plays on a right-handed fiddle! This gives you an idea of the criteria they use for picking a winner. I have never liked the idea of competition in music.

Does traditional music get taught in the schools?

This music is nowhere in our educational system, and its not recognized or valued. It is still considered backward by the intellectuals, and many young people are still shy to admit that they love or even play this music. A great young accordion player told me recently that nobody in his class knows that he plays, yet he is well-known among musicians all around the province!

A couple of years ago, I had to work hard to get Laval University to bring in Irish fiddler Martin Hayes for a noon workshop with the violin students, for free! The administration just did not consider this to be something valuable. However, some people are trying to change that mentality. It is changing somewhat in Joliette, where La Bottine is based.

Who are your favorites among the current generation of fiddlers?

Pierre and Rémi Laporte, André Brunet, Michel Bordeleau, Martin Racine, Daniel Lemieux, Jean-Marie Verret, Eric Favreau, Mario LandryáThere are many very good players with different styles.

Tell us about your distribution company, Thirty Below.

Friends and I had been talking about this idea for almost twenty years, and three years ago, I had the opportunity to finally do it. The main idea was to provide a central source for distributing this music outside Québec. It had a lot to do with the fact that people outside the province realize the importance of this music more than people at home. We hope people from outside will gradually help people here to realize the richness of their culture. We also started this service for the musicians themselves to help them spread their music and make a living, or at least be able to get some work or some money from their products.

It has turned out quite well and we now send some of this music to Australia as well as Israel and Japan! We use the Internet as a big part of our publicity and the whole catalogue is now available on our web site. Unfortunately, the Internet is not very developed in France and in many other countries, and its still difficult to reach all the people who might be interested in this music. Most of our business is directed to the States where this music is becoming more and more known and appreciated.

Do you have any advice for beginners to fiddling or beginners to Québécois music?

You have to be in love with the music. Find some friends to play with and the most important thing is to have fun. Some great fiddlers whom I have met were a bit shy to play Québécois music because they were not from here and they thought they were not doing it right. But I think it is always a pleasure to hear our music in a different way. Its a tribute to the people who have been playing it for centuries.

[Thanks to Laura Sadowsky for her help with this interview.]

Byron Berline : Gracing the Strings

By Paul Jacobs

For more than thirty years, Byron Berlines graceful fiddle playing has been featured on dozens of recordings by artists as diverse as Bill Monroe, the Rolling Stones, and Henry Mancini. Born in Caldwell, Kansas, and raised in Oklahoma, Byron was influenced early on by his father, Lue Berline, a championship old time fiddler, to take up the fiddle and make a career in music. Along the way, Byron became a highly sought-after session player and a triple-threat instrumentalist (fiddle, guitar and mandolin).

After spending twenty-six years in California, Byron is now living in Guthrie, Oklahoma, operating Byrons Double Stop Music Shop and Music Hall, selling instruments and putting on shows: "Its working out better than I expected, to tell you the truth. I didnt really know what to expect, but its just been a lot of fun." His new recording with the Byron Berline Band, Live at the Music Hall, is a mix of traditional fiddle tunes, bluegrass and swing: "Were kind of tickled with it," says Byron.

This interview was conducted by telephone in October, 1997. With folks coming into the fiddle shop, Byron kindly took an hour from his workday to answer my questions.

How old were you when you started playing?

Well, I learned my first tune, I remember, when I was about five. My dad was a fiddler, see, soá

Right, your father was a pretty famous old time fiddlerá

Yeah, he won his share of contests and stuff. Lue Berline. I dont remember not playing; it was always around us. I was the youngest one of five kids, and none of them played fiddle; they played other instruments but not fiddle. And he always wanted one of us to play the fiddle, so I was his last chance!

You were elected.

Yeah.

Well, I think he made the right choice.

 Oh, Ive enjoyed it tremendously. Its a lot of fun.

So you started when you were five °° did you keep up all through your youth and adolescence?

Oh, yeah, sure. My dad would take me to contests all around, mainly in Oklahoma, and he kept talking about these Texas fiddlers he remembered, like Major Franklin °° he knew him. Of course he liked Howdy Forrester °° we used to listen to [him on] the Grand Ol Opry. He liked Arthur Smiths fiddle playing. But we finally got to go to a contest back in New Mexico when I was about sixteen years old. And a lot of the Texas fiddlers were there. We went to Hail Center, Texas, which is down by Plainview, Texas, and thats where I got to meet all the Texas type fiddlers °° The Solomons, The Franklins, and Benny Thomasson, Eck Robertson. It was great to be able to hear those types of fiddlers when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and that kind of changed my whole outlook. My dad played almost that style but didnt improvise as much. He was a little more straight-ahead fiddler. But then the only albums you could listen to back when I was growing up were Tommy Jackson square dance-type records. And Howdy Forrester had a couple of them out. So thats where I learned a lot of my tunes from. And as you travel around a little more, which I did, you just pick up stuff from other fiddlers. But they were all big influences, all those Texas fiddlers. Then of course bluegrass came along, and all of those fiddlers °° Kenny Baker, Chubby Wise, all the Bill Monroe fiddlers.

When you got into bluegrass, coming from old time music, from what I understand you went out and played in Newport with your dad in 1965.

 Yes. Both of us played fiddle. We had Jim Rooney and Bill Keith back us up on the main stage. We got to jamming with them, so they were nice enough to back us up. So we had pretty good help there. That was where I met Bill Monroe °° at that festival °° and thats when he asked me to join his band, which I did later, in 1967. I was with him for about seven months.

And then Uncle Sam asked you to join him. What was it like playing with Monroe for those seven months?

Oh, it was really good. Of course, every time we drove the bus, it would break down.

Oh, thats why they call it the "Bluegrass Breakdown."

Yeah. I dont care if we drove fifty miles, the thing would break down, something would go wrong with it. But I had a real good time. Bill was great to get along with. Id have to ask him, "Bill, am I doing things okay?" And hed say, "Yeah, youre doing fine."

You recorded three sides with him, right before you went off to the Army °° "Virginia Darling," "Gold Rush," and "Sally Goodin." Do you remember anything in particular about that session?

I remember the whole thing, really. It was quite an exciting moment for me to be able to do that. I remember we all stood in a semi-circle, each of us had our own mic, and we had three hours to do it in. They were very strict in Nashville, you know, they went by the clock, and they tried to get a song an hour, which they did. We wanted to do "Train 45." We had that ready to record and we ran out of time. Now you can just book the studio as long as you want, but thats the way they did it back in those days. A three-hour slot and thats it °° you do all you can in three hoursá But we just stood in a semi-circle, and it was interesting the way it came out. We didnt use any earphones or anything like that, we just stood up there and played.

How about the tune "Gold Rush"? I always thought you were responsible for that tune.

I helped with that. Bill and I both came up with that. I think he had the original idea of it. To me, it wasnt much of a tune, I didnt think at the time, because it wasnt really up-tempo °° it wasnt slow by any means, but it wasnt real fast like "Roanoke" or

"Rawhide," some of those instrumentals that hes more known for. Yeah, I helped him do that. I didnt think anything about it at the time, as far as writing credit, it didnt even dawn on me.

 I think that tune has gone on to be part of all kinds of bluegrass players and jammers repertoires. Are you ever surprised to go and hear that at a jam at a festival, everybody playing "Gold Rush"?

No, Im not surprised. The reason it took off is because banjo players love it. Anybody likes it. Its a fairly simple tune, easy to learn. Its one of those that people just kind of grab onto.

Sometimes people even choreograph their body movements to the syncopation °° do you notice that?

Oh, sure. Thats when the wagon hit the rocká

After you left Bill Monroe, you went into the Army for a little while. Did you continue to play?

I was lucky enough to get to play for a colonel who liked country music. In fact, it was about the fifth week of basic training that they had a thing called "Family Day," and they wanted to get together a little band from our company, so they put me in charge of that. There werent any musicians in that whole company that you could say were musicians. So I asked my company commander if I could get some people to come help me play, and he says, "Hey, youre running it, you do what you want." So I called up the Stone Mountain Boys out of Dallas °° Alan Munde was playing banjo with them at the time, and they were guys I had jammed with a lot when I was in college. So they brought a fiddle over for me, this one Saturday morning, and we played for our company, and there was this colonel, Colonel Reed, and he loved country music. So he heard us play and he just flipped out about it, and came running over, saying, "Oh, gosh, youve got to play for the General, you got to do this, you got to do that." So he told the General, and I ended up playing for the Officers Ball about the next week. I didnt get to use [the Stone Mountain Boys] °° I just played by myself pretty much °° I think there were some people from Special Services there. Thats what I wanted to do, get into Special Services, and luckily it all worked out. They put me in Special Services, so I just stayed there, Fort Polk, Louisiana, for almost two years, which I was thankful to do, during that time.

Yes, indeed °° that was a rough time to be in the Army. Going back a little ways, before you got with Monroe, you were able to record with the Dillards.

Thats right. I met them  its always some significant day, it seems like, when things happen °° I met them the day President Kennedy was killed. November 22, 1963. They came to the University of Oklahoma. It was on a Friday, and they were doing a thing called "Friday at Four," a folk music show, and I was on that show also. Right before they went on, somebody introduced me to them, and I talked to Doug mainly, the banjo player, and he said, "Well, when we get through, Id like to hear you play." So I went out and watched their show, and it was real exciting °° Id never heard anything like it, really, up to that point. After they finished their show, I found them back in one of the rooms at the student union, and we jammed for a couple of hours °° just one fiddle tune after the other. They loved that kind of stuff, so then they asked me to record with them that next summer.

Ive got the record right here in my hands, its The Dillards with Byron Berline, Pickin and Fiddlin on Electra, and its all fiddle tunes. Did they know all those tunes or did you have to teach them some of them?

I had to teach them some of them. Mainly they knew them.

So did you go out and tour with them after that?

I stayed with them for about four or five weeks out there when I went out to do that album, and toured around with them some. It was a lot of fun. It was a thrill for me to do that.

 So after you got out of the Armyá

 Doug Dillard called me the day before I got out of the Army, and asked me to come out and record. I had intended to go back to Nashville. But I went out [to California]. I was out there four days and ended up doing other session work, movie scores and what have you, and they wanted me to move out there, too, so thats what I did.

 And after you got out here, the session work really took off for you.

Yeah, well the Rolling Stones thing helped.

 Thats probably the first time I heard you play, on that album Let It Bleed in 69 °° "Country Honk."

 Gram Parsons suggested to them to get me to play on it, and I just barely knew him. This was in October of 69, about the same time. But anyway, I was back in Oklahoma here, getting ready to move out there on a permanent basis, and they called me up one evening and wanted me to come out. So they flew me out, picked me up, and we went up in the Hollywood Hills there °° they had a house rented, and we stayed there for a few minutes, then we went down to the studio, Electra Studios, in L.A. I was in the studio for a couple of passes through, and they said, "Hey, we want you to come in, we want to talk to you," and I thought, oh, they dont like it, theyre going to dump it. But I went in and they said, "We want you to stand outside in the street on the sidewalk and record it °° well get a nice ambiance, we think," and I kind of giggled and said, "Well, whatever you want to do." So thats what we did. Thats where they got the car horn.

 How were they to work with?

 Oh, great. People were just experimenting around with music, and mixing different instruments, you know, rock and roll with bluegrass instruments, traditional instruments.

 Rock and roll was very young back then. It wasnt too far removed from Elvis. And bluegrass was very young back then, too °° it wasnt very far removed from Lester and Earl and the Bluegrass Boys.

Thats right. Everybody was just trying different things. I think people still are, but that was the beginning of it. The Doors even used Jessie McReynolds right before that on a cut. They were all down at that session, by the way. The Doors came down, Bonnie Bramlet was thereá There were a lot of people down there partying with them.

What was it like to go from being in the presence of guys like Eck Robertson, Benny Thomasson, folks like that, and playing with the Dillards and Monroe, to playing with the rockers?

Well, it was a big change. The music is closely related, but you had to really study it in a way. Be able to improvise enough to get by with it. And naturally, playing with Monroe, I listened as much as I could to his past recordings, to see what those fiddlers did, how they approached it. You couldnt just get up there and start sawing away. You had to stay with the melody, and do what he wanted. Hed let you know if something was really off line. But for me he was easy to work with. Other people wont say that, but I had a good time with him. He just loved the old time tunes. He always featured me on the Grand Ol Opry every time we got on there °° hed have a fiddle tune.

Sean McGuire : Master of the Irish Violin

By Ken Perlman

It was not very long after I started exploring Irish music in the early 1970s that I began to hear about an almost legendary fiddle player named Sean McGuire. Tunes were named for him, accom-plished players spoke in awe of his technical prowess, and he was credited with composing what appeared to be a finger-twisting set of variations on the common tune "Masons Apron," some of which even highly developed players failed to pull off with much success.

It was not until some twenty-five years later when I had an opportunity to meet McGuire and see him play that I began to fully appreciate his role in the development of the modern Irish traditional music revival. I also came to view him as a figure of great personal courage Ö a man who could re-train himself to talk after losing his voice-box to throat cancer, then carry on with his busy teaching and performing career as if nothing had happened.

McGuire was born in 1928 in the Belfast region of Northern Ireland. He grew up surrounded Ö within both his family and community Ö by the traditional music of his homeland. When he expressed interest in playing the violin, however, he was sent to a classical teacher. Such was his aptitude for the instrument, that he was soon receiving the kind of training that is only available to those being groomed for an orchestral or concert career. As a teenager, he was made first violinist in the Belfast Youth Orchestra; as a young adult he was invited to join the Belfast Symphony Orchestra.

McGuire never felt quite at home with the classical repertoire. Instead, he found deep within himself a great longing to play the kind of traditional music that he had absorbed in his youth. At this point, he could have merely abandoned his classical training and become a straight-forward traditional fiddler. Instead, as is implied in the following quotation, he developed two interlocking ambitions. First, he wished to apply his rigorous violin training to the playing of traditional Irish tunes, thereby raising their musical level and artistic significance. Second, he wished to transform Irish traditional music as a whole from what he refers to as a "primitive" state, to a true art music that would be appreciated worldwide:

McGuire was only fourteen when his violin playing was broadcast for the first time on BBC radio. In 1949 at the age of only twenty-one, he won the Oireachtas (pronounced "ee-RUK-tus"), the All-Ireland musical championship held annually in Dublin) with the only perfect score ever awarded in the long history of the competition. In the 1950s, he became part of a major touring group called the Malachy Sweeney Ceili Band; later he helped form the Sean McGuire Ceili Band and the Four Star Quartet. [Ed. note: Ceili, sometimes spelled ceilidh Ö pronounced "KAY-ley" Ö is a Gaelic term for musical gathering]. Through the 1960s he was a leading member of the Gael-Linn Cabaret.

In the days before the Chieftains assumed the role, McGuire sometimes served as Irish musics cultural ambassador. He has appeared throughout Europe, and he has been named "Grande Artiste" of the Soviet Union. When he toured the U.S. in 1952, he was asked to appear on such classic American variety programs as the Ed Sullivan Show and the Arthur Godfrey Show. He was also honored by the Wurlitzer Co. of New York City, who not only invited him to play the Stradivarius and Guarnerius violins in their possession, but also to enter his name (alongside those of Fritz Kreisler and Yehudi Menuhin) in their "golden book" of master violinists.

Over the years, McGuires name has become synonymous in Irish traditional fiddling with excellent musicianship. He has composed many pieces for the idiom, and written countless classic variations Ö not only for the aforementioned "Masons Apron" Ö but also for such common tunes as "The Poppy Leaf," "The Bees Wing," "The Reconciliation," "The Boys of the Lough," and "The Golden Eagle." Among his many innovations to the playing of traditional Irish music have been the practice of using sophisticated key modulations (changes) within a piece, the adaptation of advanced classical bowing techniques, and the use of up-the-neck violin "positions."

In terms of training, ambitions, and outlook, McGuire is certainly comparable to a major figure in Scottish fiddling history named James Scott Skinner (1843-1927). Skinner, too, sought to widen the scope of his native fiddling and increase its regard internationally. He created important sets of variations, and incorporated up-the- neck positions and sophisticated bowing techniques into traditional music. He was celebrated in his own time, and to this day his variations are reproduced note for note by traditional musicians in both Scotland and Cape Breton.

Because McGuire lived in a different era and worked in a different tradition than Skinner, he has for the most part been a much more controversial figure. Even before Skinner came along, Scottish fiddling had a long tradition of virtuosi who were equally at home in both the art and folk traditions. Moreover, the long history of Scottish tune-publication created a respect both for the written note and for those artists who approached the music from a learned perspective.

Irish music before the time of McGuire, on the other hand, was still pretty much an oral music culture. As we shall see, there was even a strong feeling among some that a musician with McGuires training and outlook could not possibly perform Irelands traditional music in an authentic manner. Certainly, there was a lot of resistance among musicians of "the old school" to some of McGuires innovations. One story along these lines was imparted to me by piper/tin whistler Bill Ochs of New York City. When McGuire landed at a house party in Philadelphia some years ago at which traditional fiddler John Vesey was already holding court, the latter is said to have stood up and remarked, "There will be no playing in the flat keys in this house tonight!"

To some degree, the controversy over McGuires approach was driven by the on-going debate on the nature of Irish nationalism. Certainly the argument could be made that McGuires technical innovations serve to insinuate a "foreign" element (German, Italian Ö or worse yet Ö English) into the native music. McGuires own take on this particular subject is touched on in the following interview.

Although McGuires playing is still regarded as controversial by some elements in the Irish music scene, there is no doubt that his example has left an indelible mark on the tradition. Not only has he imparted his approach to countless students over the years, but his mere presence on the scene has served to raise the general level of technique and musical knowledge required of all top flight players. Seamus Connolly, a world-renowned Irish fiddler who now lives in the Boston area, sums up McGuires impact as follows:

The following interview took place June 2, 1996 during the Northern Lights "Festal" [sic] in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, which is roughly sixty miles north of Belfast.

When were you first exposed to fiddle music?

I developed the interest when I was about ten years of age. I was fortunate to have parents and grandparents that were musical. You could say that I caught the bug. Very few people know that in order to pay for my violin studies I had to take a job Ö I am a fully qualified motor mechanic!

Did your parents play traditional music?

Yes they did. My father was a renowned flautist and piccolo player in the Irish style. My mother could have sung the very humble ballad. My brother is as good a player as myself and my sister would not be in the background if she was called on to sing a song. My grandfather on my mothers side played violin in the Irish style; my grandmother on my fathers side was a renowned folk singer.

Was there a distinct style of Irish violin played by your parents and grandparents generation?

It was known more or less as the standard at that time. People stuck religiously to what they called the old traditional style, whereas mine is more the advanced style of playing the music. That said, I had quite a battle to get away from this form of stagnation of culture. I said, "Well look, Irish music, and any music, is something that lives. Its got to progress, and youve got to accept personal interpretations within the structure of the basic music." Theres a big range there to be explored.

How is your style different from your parents style?

I had the advantage of classical training, things that could be put into the music Ö key changes within the same piece for example, they were seldom explored when I first came to the music. I transposed [the tunes] quite a lot and felt I had done them justice. I explored all the possibilities to transform the tunes by arranging, key changes, different bow stylings, and not so much the "rumpy tumpy" style of playing Irish music.

How would you say your approach to Irish music differs from the Sligo approach to fiddling, as exemplified by its most famous exponent Michael Coleman?

Coleman was accepted in his era as being a great player. But if you analyze what hes doneá For a start, he was playing in a primitive style. He didnt stray outside D and G major and related minors. Im exploring one flat, two flats, three flats, four flats, and the multi-sharp keys. That was not done in Colemans day and he could not have attempted it. This is where the training stood me!

Where in your community would you have heard traditional fiddle playing as a child?

My aunt was a renowned violin player. There were also ceilis in nearly every area. The local musicians would gather Ö melodeons, accordions, violins, flutes mostly. And it was the case that odd-ball instruments, like banjos, clarinets, dulcimers, and things like that were also accepted as capable to do our music justice, even though some self-styled "purists" in the cities would not have accepted anything then but flute, uillean pipes, and the violin. Not even the Irish harp was accepted at all times.

The music was in a primitive state. The Irish had been denied their culture for so long by the English occupation Ö not being allowed to play, sing, or speak the language, and all go together. Read the history of our country, and you know why the music, like our language, nearly disappeared. Now its all coming back. Some of my students will surpass me, and there is no danger now that it will ever go back to being primitive.

Can you describe the ceilis when you were young?

The kitchen was got ready Ö it was at a persons house. It was made spotless Ö Flagstone floors. There would be the turf stacked to keep the fire burning. The porter or Guinness would be ready to hand, and anybody that wanted to partake of the beverage, they could help themselves. The smell of home-baked bread Ö you just couldnt wait to get it! And meanwhile the merry-making went on. You were called on to play a solo, play a few tunes, sing a few songs. The balladeer was always there.

But one feature of the Irish ceili was the story teller, he was a character in his own right. He told more lies than were ever published, but it was all in good fun! Then there would be dancing; someone would be called on to dance a step [step-dance]. And that was in real boots; it sounded like a corps of drummers on that flagstone floor. Those dancers were genuine experts!

But I loved the sean nós singing, its the old unaccompanied traditional singing. It was gorgeous, and believe me it drew you very near to nature.

And a stranger was always welcome. No questions were ever asked. If you came in and wanted to be part of the nights enjoyment you were made welcome. It started at eight or nine oclock, and went on till five in the morning. And manys the summer morning, somebody would say, sitting by the window Ö the blinds would have been drawn for the night Ö "Whats that blue light there?" It was daylight! They had played, and danced, and sung all night.

And it was different venues every other week. There was the harvest festivals, the planting of potatoes, or church meetings. Ceili means "gathering," and Ceili mor means big gathering. So every so often youd have the ceili mor and everybody looked forward to it.

Was there square dancing or other forms of set dancing at the ceilis?

No, there was just step dancing at the ceilis. We had set dancing at the barn dances. This was of course held in the barn with a wood floor. Youd get somebody with a bodhran, a couple of fiddlers, somebody with a set of pipes. And you got there what we called "formation dancing" Ö you might call it square dancing. It might be two facing two, four facing four, or three facing three. And theyd advance, retire, do their step, do their swinging, and then the next group got up.

And this went on for different figures to be completed before the dance was completed. Some of our popular dances were Haymakers Jig, the Fairy Reel, the Four-On Reel, and The Six-On Reel. Then there was the odd polka, and of course if you had the expert stepdancer they were called on to perform.

Who played for the barn dances?

It was a band. They had a program for each dance, of how many turns [repetitions of a tune] had to be played. Theyd get together and practice. They timed their playing to coincide with the dance starting and finishing, and theyd change from one tune to another. Theyd play each tune two or three times through. Coming to the end of the dance theyd speed it up, and this was quite accepted. Their repertoire may have been limited but they put it to damn good useá

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