Winter 2004/2005
ARTICLES
COLUMNS
- The Practicing Fiddler: Writing a Tune with Bill Guest, by Hollis Taylor
- Fiddle Tune History: Air Apparent, by Andrew Kuntz
- Cross-Tuning Workshop: AEAE, by Jody Stecher
- Bluegrass Fiddling: Two Basic Chubby Wise Solos for the Beginner, by Paul Shelasky
- On Improvisation: Fiddling the Blues, Part II, by Paul Anastasio
- Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Québec's Joseph Allard, by Gordon Stobbe
- Knotting the Chord: Explorations in Accompanying Traditional Fiddle Music, by Mark Simos
- Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling: Rolls, by Brendan Taaffe
- Violin Makers: Bill Whipple's WipLstix, by Ellen Hansen
TUNES
- Ballyfin Lake, by Séan Ryan
- Silent Night for twin fiddles, transcribed by Jim Wood
- Noel Nouvelet for twin fiddles, transcribed by Jim Wood
- Whirlygig Reel, by Bill Guest
- Hector the Hero (Fiddle Tune History)
- Queen of the Earth and Child of the Skies (Fiddle Tune History)
- Amhrán na Leabhar (The Song of the Books) (Fiddle Tune History)
- Annie Is My Darling, six versions -- from The Skye Collection, The Simon Fraser Collection, and transcriptions by Jody Stecher as played by Angus Chisholm, Theresa MacLellan, Donald MacLellan, and Angus Allan Gillis (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
- My Rose of Old Kentucky, solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Chubby Wise (Bluegrass Fiddling)
- Bluegrass Special, solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Chubby Wise Bluegrass Fiddling)
- Fiddler Blues #1 and #2, examples by Paul Anastasio (On Improvisation)
- La Mère Blanche, by Joseph Allard, transcribed by Gordon Stobbe (Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour)
- Whelan's, transcribed by Brendan Taaffe (Irish Fiddling)
ARTICLE EXCERPTS
 Photo: Peter Anick
From Suzuki Student to Jazz Diva: An Interview with Regina Carter
By Peter Anick
Jazz violinists are a courageous bunch. To take up a bow in the horn-dominated world of jazz has always required a strong constitution and a sense of adventure. From Joe Venuti's seminal swing to Jean-Luc Ponty's redefinition of the violin as a fusion instrument, only a relatively small cadre of musical pioneers have succeeded in staking out a place for the violin in the mercurial history of jazz. As jazz heads into its second century, the violinist leading the charge may well be Regina Carter.
Modest and prone to laughter, this young Suzuki-trained Detroit native seems like an unlikely candidate for this dangerous mission. At first blush, her recordings seem to cover so much ground that it's difficult to pin her down to any particular style. But seeing her in concert, the dots connect and Regina's exuberant musical personality becomes the common thread weaving together her improvisational sorties, be they based on big band, Motown, or even classical themes.
I was fortunate to catch her not once but twice on her recent nationwide tour, at Yoshi's Jazz House in Oakland, California, and at Boston's Regatta Bar. Both are intimate clubs with excellent acoustics, where practically every seat is close enough to make you feel part of the band. In each of her remarkably different sets, Regina's playing, warm and lyrical, was laced with surprises. A quiet, relaxed introduction would lead, a few choruses later, into a take-no-prisoners flurry of notes; a laid back sultry blues would morph into an explosive riff with all the power of a big band. Like a good storyteller, she used her incredible vocabulary of violinistic technique to play to the listener's imagination -- wide slides, Stuff Smith-like double stops, percussive jabs, tender harmonics, and pizzicato chords all added colorful details to her fascinating tales.
...
I've heard that you started out as a Suzuki violinist.
Yeah, I'm a Suzuki-ite [laughs]. I started when I was four. My mom's a retired kindergarten teacher and she felt like we should be exposed to music. My older brothers were taking piano and she said one day I walked up to the piano and started playing a piece that one of my brothers was working on. So the teacher said, "She's got a gift. Let's give her piano lessons." But at two, I didn't want to sit there and learn how to read music. I wanted to compose my own pieces and just play by ear. So they stopped the lessons, so I wouldn't start to dislike music.
You had started on piano at two?
Yeah. So, at four, because they were offering Suzuki for the first time in Detroit, this teacher thought it would be great, because it's teaching by ear -- the same way children learn how to talk. So it was perfect. I loved it and took right to it. I don't think my mom expected me necessarily to be a musician.
You stuck with it, obviously.
I studied European classical music all the way through my second year of college. But I didn't even hear any jazz growing up because I had to listen to the records that my teacher would send home for us to listen to. And I would hear Motown in the back, because my brothers were blasting their Motown records and Beatles and that kind of stuff. So it was seeping in there, you know!
Did you ever try playing along with any of those things?
No, I didn't even think to. It wasn't until I was in high school when someone brought me records of jazz violinists. That was my first exposure to jazz and that was all I associated jazz with -- these violin players! Then I started hearing all these records on the radio, these pop records that had string parts in it. And I joined a band and another violinist and myself, we would learn all the string parts and play these gigs and play the string lines.
What kinds of things were you listening to then?
Then it was Jean-Luc Ponty and Noel Pointer and Stéphane Grappelli. And I had a Michael White album, then Michael Urbaniak, and L. Subramanian. And then the pop stuff on the radio, the Motown stuff that had all the strings. It opened my ears up. "Wow, there's a lot of music out here that has strings and it's not classical music. This is wild!" I think I never paid attention to it before.
...
So when you got all those non-violin jazz records, did you continue listening to them?
Oh no, those I put away! It wasn't until many years later that I could really appreciate those records. In fact, in my third year of college, my big band teacher told me to stop listening to violin players, "because there are not enough of you out here and you're going to pick up their little idiosyncrasies on the instrument and sound too much like them. There doesn't need to be another Jean-Luc or Stéphane Grappelli. You need to have your own voice." So he suggested I listen to horn players and singers and learn about breathing and vibrato, and just get the language, the vocabulary down. I was the only violinist in big band, so he put me in the saxophone section. I transcribed their charts. He'd say, "Just copy what they're doing." Which I think was great, because I was becoming a horn player.
...
Were you originally planning to be a classical musician?
I didn't think I would be, to tell you the truth, but my mother said I couldn't major in jazz. So I went in and did the whole classical program, but unbeknownst to her, I had auditioned for both and got in for both, so I was taking jazz lessons on the side. And then I switched my major on my own, without telling here. Just said I'll suffer the consequences later! [laughs]
So by that point, you knew you'd like to go into jazz.
Yeah, I knew I didn't want to be in anyone's orchestra. I wanted freedom. I wanted to have my own voice. I didn't want to be a part of a section.
Then you ended up in jazz, in a horn section. Was that different from being in a section of an orchestra?
Yes, because I knew I would have a chance to solo at some point. And I found the music much more appealing. The big band stuff is so much fun.
Did you find it scary to be no longer reading music at first? Or did you enjoy that?
I think I had an easier time because I was a Suzuki student and didn't start off with paper. And my teacher didn't really follow Suzuki to a T. She would play these games with us in our group lessons. She would line us up and start to make up a melody on the violin and then when she tapped you on the shoulder, you had to pick up where she left off. So it was improvising. And then we had a quartet and sometimes she would bring out baroque pieces, and she would make us try improvising even in that idiom. So all of that really helped. She was pretty slick, and didn't even know it!
...
When did you first become a band leader of your own group?
In high school! [laughs] I think I'm pretty much a natural born leader. I'm really bossy but a nice bossy! I had a band in high school, so I was used to that, but not really until my first record on Atlanta. And that was probably around '94. I had a band that I had together. And it was pretty easy for me. For my first two records on Atlantic, I wrote most of the music. But I like input from the band as well. It's not just about me. I can't stand there by myself and create great music or entertain an audience. It takes everyone. I want everyone to feel like they can contribute. That way it's important to them as well. It's not just a gig. They're always allowed to make suggestions, bring tunes in, change tunes They have the freedom on stage. Sometimes they'll do something completely different than we've rehearsed. So it's like a collective, in a way, although I get the last word.
How much composing do you do now?
Not much these days. A lot of that kinda got squashed. When I wrote for my records on Atlantic it was more pop music, if you will. Motown. It had that edge to it. I only got a tune on this last record, Paganini: After a Dream, and that was based on a commission that I had written for the Kennedy Center.
How was it that you got involved with the Paganini violin? Was it a friend of yours that gave you the idea?
Yeah, an acquaintance at the time who lives in Genoa. He was visiting my former pianist Vana (Gierig) and he said, "Wow, it would be great if Regina could do a jazz concert in Genoa using Paganini's violin. That's never been done." So they brainstormed and came up with this whole idea. The friend, Andrea (Liberovici) from Genoa, approached the mayor who is a big jazz fan and he agreed and they convinced all the other politicians. They really do their research on who's playing this violin. So they dug up all this stuff on me, stuff I didn't even know was floating out there! And some stuff I said when I was really young and I'd said, "Oh, I'd never play without a pickup on a violin." And they saw that and saw the picture and they said, "No, she can't play this violin." I had to tap dance and get them to trust me and they made me fill out all this paperwork, to say I won't bang the violin, I won't do this on the violin and at the end I said, "You know, I know who Paganini is and I know about this violin and I would never do anything to disrespect or destroy it, nor would I do anything to disrespect my own instrument." So that finally happened, but a lot of people felt that playing jazz on that violin would debase the value of it, and they just felt I should not be playing it. So there was a huge controversy. I got to town and one of the papers said, "Queen of Scandal."
You were the "Queen of Scandal"? You must have wondered what you were getting yourself into...
Yeah, I was a little nervous. I felt, do I want to be here? How are these people going to react to me? Two days before the concert, a two-thousand seat hall -- no tickets had been sold. None. I didn't know. They didn't tell me till afterwards. So we had a big press conference, and the lovely thing about Europe is they don't bleep anything you say! And I just blasted people, and they played it on the news, and they sold out that hall! I think people came because they were curious. And during the intermission my friend ran back and said, "People love it!" A lot of people changed their minds. I think they just needed to see I wasn't going to disrespect the violin. And they could hear music that they knew. They needed a list of what I was going to play, how long each tune was. "Well, I don't know. I improvise. Come on!" I did a rehearsal and guestimated. I knew there were the safe tunes to do. I call it "safe jazz," like "Lady Be Good," "Chattanooga Choo Choo," you know. Couldn't do any Latin stuff, because if they heard that percussion and stuff, they'd get a little bit nervous!
How was it when you finally held that violin for the first time? I believe the proportions are different, the neck length is different and the strings are closer together.
Yeah, the string length is much longer and the body is huge.
How much time did you have to adjust?
They gave me four hours. Two hours one day and two the next day, but that's not enough time. I had to, you know -- don't try to shift up here and hit that note, not in the concert. Leave that position alone! Even in the piece I wrote, "Alexandra," I had to jump up and hit this note, and I thought to myself, "I'm never gonna hit that note on the recording." But I did it. I had more days to play on the violin (for the recording). But with this concert, it just wasn't enough to be comfortable. And to get used to those guard's eyes standing there and people always watching me and being on the stage and not knowing what the audience is thinking. So I was terrorized.
What was your impression of the violin when you first bowed it?
You know, all this hoopla had been built around it, so everyone's expecting the angels from heaven to come out of the violin when you play it. So I played it and it was just likeuh So I just had to quiet the demons, if you will. And I heard my mom's voice in my head saying, "Play 'Amazing Grace.' I love that." So I said that's what I'm going to do to calm all this down. And you could gradually hear it coming to life. It still wasn't enough time. You know, (to decide) how much pressure can you put on the bow before it growls back at you, or if you play too light, the note is not going to come out at all. With violins, it takes a long time for both player and the instrument to get to know each other. There is a give and take between the two. It takes months for the compromise to happen.
Did you, after a while, start to appreciate what it is Paganini must have liked about it?
Yeah, it was an incredibly humongous sound. When I played it in New York and I'd had a chance to warm up on it, I had the concert mistress play a few measures on her violin and as soon as I hit the first note, the audience gasped. It was just that incredibly big. So, yeah, it's a beautiful instrument. It's the only violin, I guess, Paganini had. He supposedly lost his other violin in a gambling debt. And they were worried about me!
Yeah, you wonder what Paganini had done to that violin -- breaking strings...
Yeah, they're being hypocritical here! And improvising -- he was improvising! What's the big deal? I felt like I took the violin back home, so to speak. And it took me back to my roots, of classical music. So we both made a journey together.
...
[Peter Anick, author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based "jamgrass" band Acoustic Planet (www.acousticplanet.org).]
 The Trio Chicontepec, Rolando Hernández at left. Photo: Zaidee Stavely
A Thirst for Music: Son Huasteco in Mexico City
By Zaidee Stavely
No one knows just how old Rolando Hernández is. Although he looks to be in his fifties or sixties, he'll say "ninety-nine" or "a hundred and three" and if you pester him, he'll say, "Okay, ninety." Laughing, his eyes will twinkle as he picks up his bow again, glances at his partners and begins to bow a huasteco rhythm on his violin. To his left, the other two musicians, a large man playing the small jarana guitar and a short young man on the huge huapanguera, are dressed just like him, with leather pants and jackets and cowboy hats. The fiddle suddenly fades out and the three of them lean toward their mikes to begin a beautiful three-part harmony.
This is the Trío Chicontepec, founded in the late 1950s by Hernández, otherwise known as "Quecho." Today, he is accompanied by his son Jorge on the huapanguera and Rafael "Rafa" Camacho on the jarana, at his dance hall, known as "El Balcón Huasteco" (The Huastec Balcony). The room recalls an old one-room schoolhouse, with shiny pine floors and large multi-paned windows. On the walls a fiddle and bow, jarana and huapanguera share space with traditional clothing and old photographs from days past. In one sepia photo from his very first album, a much younger Quecho clowns around with his brother, playing each other's instruments.
Quecho started playing at the age of eight in the small town of Chicontepec, in the north of Veracruz, one of six states making up the Huasteca region in northeastern Mexico. He says son huasteco was the only music anyone there ever really listened to, and almost everyone had an instrument or two, even if they didn't know how to play them. As a small boy, his father enrolled him in piano lessons, but at the first class the teacher reprimanded him before he even started to play. "You're no good for music," she said to him. "Just look at those little hands." As a result, Quecho stopped going to class and when his father went to pay, the teacher told him it was useless since the boy played hooky and was never going to be a musician anyway.
Then he started playing around with the fiddle on the wall in his house. One day his father found him with it and asked him, "So you like the violin?" Quecho caught himself and said, "No, no, no, it was going to fall, so I'm just putting it back up on the wall." The next time his father found him with it, though, he began to teach him what he knew. He also began listening to old 78 records of El Viejo Elpidio Ramírez, one of the first musicians to introduce son huasteco to Mexico City in the 1930s.
Quecho got to be so good that he began to play at indigenous weddings and baptisms, religious festivities and civic events in different villages around Chicontepec. Parties lasted sometimes from six in the afternoon to six in the morning. He began to enter contests and frequently won first place. "I don't think I necessarily played better. I think the judges wanted to give me the incentive to keep playing because I was so young," he explains.
In junior high school, Quecho moved to Mexico City but kept playing. The Trio Chicontepec was born in La Normal, teacher's school, in the 1950s with Rolando on the violin accompanied by two of his brothers, Lázaro and Godelevo. They had a radio program to broadcast huasteco music, and their first record was made in 1960 with one microphone in an old air shaft. With the help of Raúl Hellmer, a North American ethnomusicologist, this reel-to-reel recording was sold to RCA and made into a record.
When one of Quecho's brothers died, another friend from the Chicontepec area, Wilebaldo Amador Hernández, joined the group. Slowly, the Trio began to make a name for itself, giving talks on Mexican folklore in schools and later playing for well-known jarocho or folklórico groups. Quecho helped found two traditional Mexican music schools with the Ballet Folklórico of Amalia Hernández, and traveled to several countries.
In 1992, the Balcón Huasteco formally opened. In those days, they only had four aluminum tables and the musicians served as janitors, waiters and administrators. Today, the tables are made of wood and are placed all around the long low room. When the music stops, the fiddler, no doubt the leader here, asks each table for requests.
"La Cecilia!" calls a couple in the corner. "La Cecilia," agrees Quecho, and with a mischievous smile he begins the phrase, "El que lo pida..." (Whoever asks for the tune)
"Lo baila!!" (Has to dance it!) answers the crowd. The fiddle begins, trilling away with quick rocking motions of the bow, the jarana and huapangera joining in soon after. The couple is up and dancing a zapateado, a three-step typical of much Mexican music, with the regional distinction of a flat-footed stomp, and intervals of sweeping movements with pointed toes when the singing begins. Rafa, a stern looking man offstage, puts his all into the music and trills falsetto style, "Cecilia lindo amorcito, te adoro con devoción. Te adoro con devoción, Cecilia lindo amorcito"
The Huasteca region is the area where the states of Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Puebla, and Tamaulipas converge in the northeast of Mexico near the Gulf coast. According to Quecho, there are three kinds of Huasteca tunes: danzas, sones viejos, and huapangos. Danzas, characterized by monotonous melodies, are traditionally played for religious events or festivities in the indigenous communities. The tune beginning every night at the Balcón Huasteco, "Xochipitzahuac," is possibly the most well-known, with listeners singing along to the words in Nahuatl, even when they don't understand their meaning.
Son huasteco, characterized by falsetto singing and flowery moves on the violin, can be divided into two subsections: sones viejos are traditional tunes in public domain for which musicians make up new verses or change the notes around; huapangos are relatively more recent sones written by known composers which Quecho believes should not be altered.
Huasteca music is usually played on three instruments: a violin, the deep-voiced huapanguera guitar, and the mid-range jarana huasteca, a small five-stringed instrument tuned G, B, D, F#, and A, which Quecho says was incorporated into son huasteco in the 1940s.
Soon, the music stops and the next table is invited to request a song and, of course, dance it. Laughter and joviality abound in the Balcón Huasteco.
A young man joins the Trio on stage to practice his free versos to the tune of "El Querreque," a traditional son heard on streets all over Mexico City. Under his breath, he asks Jorge a few questions about the guests, and the music begins. All at once, the fiddle stops, and he has to sing. "Les voy a cantar un verso, aunque no les parezca, aunque no les parezca, les voy a cantar un verso" (I am going to sing you a verse, even if you don't want to hear it") he sings, using the first four lines to buy time. Rafa answers him, repeating the same words.
Sones huastecos have a specific structure. First, the violin begins a "dibujo," or "design." When it finishes, the first verse begins. Verses are generally either quintillas, made up of five lines of around eight syllables each, or sextillas, made up six. Odd and even verses rhyme with each other. They are sung in the following manner:
Singer 1:
1. El whisky o el aguardiente (Whisky or brandy,)
2. ¿Cuál es el mejor licor? (Which is better liquor?)
2. ¿Cuál es el mejor licor? (Which is better liquor,)
1. El whisky o el aguardiente. (Whisky or brandy?)
Singer 2: (repeating Singer 1)
1. El whisky o el aguardiente (Whisky or brandy,)
2. ¿Cuál es el mejor licor? (Which is better liquor?)
2. ¿Cuál es el mejor licor? (Which is better liquor,)
1. El whisky o el aguardiente. (Whisky or brandy?)
Singer 1:
3. Yo digo que el aguardiente (I say brandy)
4. Porque es emborrachador (Because it gets you drunk)
5. Emborracha al presidente (It gets the president drunk)*
6. También al gobernador. (And also the governor).
*If the verse is a quintilla, the fourth line is repeated here and the fifth line is the last.
Verses tend to be longing, romantic, picaresque, political or all of the above. As the Querreque begins tonight, no one escapes the verses. Both the new singer and Jorge take turns singing to the couple from Chicago who can dance huapangos like pros, the man in the corner from the famous group Los Folkloristas and several women in the crowd. The singer winks at one woman he obviously knows and sings, "Escúchame bien Martita, que te voy a decir algo Deja ya ese cabrón, se me hace que trama algo" (Listen up, Martita, I'm going to tell you something Leave that jerk for once and for all, he's up to something.)
This is definitely not the place for shy people. Everyone is invited to participate, whether it is dancing, singing, being referred to in verse or playing music. The Trio Chicontepec is adamant about encouraging young people to play, and invites their students and friends to play with them on stage on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, when the Balcón is open to the public.
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Quecho and Rafa offer lessons for $50 pesos a class (US$4.50). On those days, the hubbub can even be heard outside on the street. Passersby stop to look through the windows to see where the chaotic sound of numerous violins and jaranas is coming from. In every corner of the hall, men, women, and children can be found plucking, scratching, or trilling out a tune.
...
Around twenty students go to the Balcón each week to practice and hone their skills with the maestros. They arrive any time from 6 to 8 p.m. and set up camp at one of the tables to practice, then show Quecho what they've learned. Many of them are teachers who come from Quecho's own alma mater, the Escuela Normal, but there are also young children, students and mothers. Fernando, a fifteen year old violin student, says he always wanted to learn to play son huasteco since his father is from Veracruz, but he never knew where he could learn. Now, both father and son come every week to learn violin and huapanguera.
At each student's own pace, he teaches them danzas, such as "Xochipitzahuac" and "El Tejón" and then moves on to sones. He'll play a little part and then tell the student to write down the notes in a book, for example, sol si re sol si si la si re, fa sol sol fa sol, the first part of "La Cecilia." "I am not against sheet music, but I don't use it for one reason," declares Quecho. "We are trying to get the people who come to this school to feel the music. And as far as I know, to date there is no symbol for pleasure, sadness, energy, hunger, desire, or thirst for playing." He uses the example of a child, who goes to school to learn to read and write, but not before learning how to speak and express himself. First, he says, a musician must learn to play. Then he can learn how to read and write music.
"Every day there are more followers, more taste, more people interested in this musical genre," announces Quecho proudly. The Trío Chicontepec has received apprentices from Mexico City and surrounding areas, but also from Holland, Cuba, the United States, and France.
Although many anthropologists believe Huasteca music is different from one state to another, Quecho sustains the only difference is personal style: "Anyplace you go in Mexico where there is regional music, you will find differences from house to house. Even one singer can sing the same song with a different style, a totally different tessitura, and it's still the same song."
The dancing styles and clothing considered traditional for Huasteca music do differ from state to state, influenced by other regional dancing, but Quecho questions their authenticity. "If our ancestors barely had enough to eat," he asks, "how were they going to be putting on white boots to dance son huasteco from Veracruz, or black boots in Hidalgo?" This is something invented for folklórico academies, stylized and made for theater, says Quecho, but he believes ballet folklórico has done a good job spreading Mexican music to other countries.
Several students from the Balcón Huasteco have gone on to become successful musicians, from classical to mariachi, but many still play son huasteco. The Trío Aurora, with Felipe Valle and Aurora Valderrama, plays on weekends in the quaint plaza of Coyoacán. Tonight they take the stage after their maestros finish the verses.
The night is growing old. By now, dancers have gone up in groups and no one is counting steps anymore. But when Felipe asks, "¿Qué quieren?" (Any requests?) and someone shouts "El son solito," the cheering won't let up. "Okay," he says, "but you've got to dance it."
A woman gets up on the wood floor and dances with her partner to a fast fiddle and a twanging jarana-huapanguera duo. But soon, the fiddler is singing: "Escúchame bien, señor, escúchame bien que te voy a hablar. Deja a la señorita, que la queremos ver zapatear." (Listen up, sir, listen up because I'm going to tell you something. Leave the little miss, we want to see her stomp up a storm.) And the man does as he says, leaving the woman to dance on her own to the delight of the audience, who screams and claps.
Soon, the fiddler begins again, "Escúchame bien, señito, escúchame bien que te voy a hablar. Busca a un viejito, que lo queremos ver zapatear." (Listen up, miss Look for an old man, because we want to see him dance.) The woman goes out into the audience and grabs an older man standing by the door. He pulls away, laughing, but at the urging of the audience, he reluctantly goes up to dance. Soon, he is left by himself to zapatear. And thus goes the "Son solito" (son all alone). The man has to dance with a young woman with curly hair; she has to find a little boy to dance with; he has to dance with a fat woman, and so on. The audience claps much harder for those who don't know how to dance, encouraging them and thanking them for getting up there to try.
The little boy steals the show. With his calculated stomps, turns and removal of his hat, he is a fantastic huasteco dancer. And when the fiddler asks him to listen, he stops dancing and turns to face him, hand on hips, hat in hands, to listen attentively to the instructions. The audience roars in this little hall, where Huasteca music never dies.
Slowly, the night at the Balcón Huasteco dies down, and the people begin to leave. Everyone says goodbye when they leave, many of them giving affectionate kisses or hugs to Quecho as they walk out the door. A living legend to the history of Huasteca music, and a serious musician committed to making it live on, Rolando "Quecho" Hernández doesn't plan to leave us anytime soon. "I plan to live until I'm a hundred and twenty," he says proudly. But who knows when that will be.
[Zaidee Stavely grew up listening to her mother play Southern Appalachian fiddle tunes and is now learning to play son huasteco on her own fiddle. She lives and works as a freelance journalist in Mexico City.]
 Séan Ryan with his wife Kathleen and Paddy O'Brien, 1968
Séan Ryan: The Quiet Corner
By Brendan Taaffe
We are a culture given over to lists, and were I to make a list of the recordings of Irish music that have meant the most to me, an album with Séan Ryan and P.J. Moloney on fiddle and flute would be near the top of the list. Long out of print, a friend shared a second-hand copy with me a few years back and I was instantly captivated. The fiddling is simultaneously languid and lively, smooth and soulful. And, like many others, I had been playing some of Séan's compositions for years before I ever heard his playing: tunes like "The Reel of Rio," "The Glens of Aherlow," and the "Killimor Jig" have become staples of the repertoire. Ryan's legacy suffuses Irish music, with his tunes coming up as frequently as Reavy's or Fahey's in concerts, in sessions, and recordings. In recent years, Brian Ryan, Séan's son, has published two books of Séan's compositions: The Hidden Ireland and Séan Ryan's Dream. I spoke to Brian and his mother Kathleen, as well as spending time in the Irish Traditional Music Archives in Dublin to create this biographical sketch.
Séan Ryan was born in Nenagh, County Tipperary, one of ten children. At an early age the family moved to the Newtown area, and later to Garranmore, outside of Newtown. His father, Thomas Ryan, was a strong dance fiddler, and related by marriage to Dinny O'Brien, the head of a musical family in Newtown. At a young age, Séan would have gone with his father to the house dances of the time, traveling from place to place on foot or by cycle, surrounded by the music. At nine or ten he began learning the fiddle from his father, Thomas. At first Séan would only work the bow while his father did the fingering. That would have lasted for as much as a year, and later on Séan would play at the house dances with his father. Dinny O'Brien's house in Newtown was a great center for music. Dinny's son Paddy was a famous accordion player, revolutionizing Irish box playing with his use of the B/C system, and the sessions at the O'Briens were a focus of musicians in the area, drawing Paddy Fahey and Paddy Kelly, among others.
From such a rooted beginning, Séan grew to be a powerful fiddler, winning a number of competitions in his early thirties. He won the Oireachtas in 1954, the Senior All-Ireland Championship in 1955 and 1956, the All-Ireland duet title with P.J. Moloney in 1956, and later on the trio title with John Brady and Ellen Flanagan. In addition to those talents, Séan was a champion step-dancer at a young age, competing successfully in the feiseanna, and played whistle and flute. In 1961, he formed his own ceili band, with John Brady and Eugene Nolan on flute, Ellen Flanagan and Denis Lyons on accordion, himself and Martin Fallon on fiddle, Jimmy McGrath on drums, and Mrs. Kenny on piano. Also in 1961, Séan met his future wife, Kathleen O'Loughlin, a strong piano player herself. In 1968 Séan and Kathleen toured America with "young" Paddy O'Brien, the box player from Daingean, County Offaly, and the following year they returned, this time with "old" Paddy O'Brien, the box player from Nenagh and Dinny O'Brien's son. The first tour was organized by Bill McEvoy, an Irishman living in Mineola, Long Island. Paddy O'Brien (the younger) was on that tour with Séan and Kathleen, and remembers this:
"Bill McEvoy had heard a composition of Séan's while he was over in Ireland in 1966. He was visiting and heard Séan playing this reel that he had just composed. The reel stayed in Bill's head until finally he went home, and of course he had problems sleeping at night because the tune was going in and out of his head. The memories of it disturbed his sleeping habits. So to cure himself, he decided he'd bring Ryan to America on a tour. Ryan wanted to have someone with him besides Kathleen playing piano accompaniment. He wanted another accordion player, so he asked me to do it....
"He liked to rehearse and was very sensitive about the notes and getting them right. We practiced for a whole year before we went to America, and when we came over here we played a lot around New York. We were made honorary members of the Michael Coleman club and of the Paddy Killoran club. We played in Cleveland and Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Met Ed Reavy in Philadelphia -- Séan was excited about meeting Ed Reavy.
"He was very passionate about playing, and I've heard people saying that if a child met Séan Ryan on the road with his fiddle and asked him to play a tune, he'd play a tune straight away. Of course, he neglected his farm an awful lot because of the music. Abandoning horses in the middle of the field, where he'd be plowing. He'd think of a tune and he'd run into the house, forget about the horses. Later on, he'd go back out in the field and the place would be a mess, the horses rambling around dragging the plow behind them.
"But Séan Ryan, if he had an audience, if he had a few people really listening to him -- it meant an awful lot to him and he'd play his heart out, he'd play very well. Once he'd get into those relaxed circumstances, in a kitchen where there'd be good followers of the music, it's almost as if he had a personality change, it would lift him up so much. He really didn't have too much interest in anything in life, other than his wife and family. The music was the big thing."
Séan started composing in the early '50s, after he had been playing for a good while. Kathleen attributes much of his inspiration to nature and the farm: "He just got a run of notes if he was out working in the fields and he'd develop that later on. I suppose it was inspiration from nature, the birds and such." Perhaps it was something in the soil, for the region was much richer in composers than other parts of Ireland: Paddy Fahey, Paddy O'Brien, Paddy Kelly, and Junior Crehan were all in the area, and all produced great and distinctive tunes.
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By all accounts, Séan Ryan was a quiet man, shy and gentle and romantic. Paddy O'Brien remembers driving with him one day. "Kathleen was driving the car and Séan asked me to look out the window. 'Look over at those hills, Paddy, there's music in those hills.' I was very struck by that, and as I look back at it I realize that Séan was very romantic about the music, and would be a man that wouldn't have too many doubts about the existence of the little people." He was romantic, too, about other fiddlers, and was a great admirer of Michael Coleman. Kathleen recalls that, "One time we were up at the Fiddler of Dooney competition and we went out to Michael Coleman's homestead. It was all broken down at that stage and the door was kind of rotten, so Séan got a penknife and got a little bit of wood from the door and stuck it in his own fiddle." Kathleen also remembers Séan as being "shy, and very gentle. He was very witty, too -- I always think his wit comes out in the 'Reel of Rio.' I always imagine you can hear him laughing in that tune.
"He preferred really to play at home, at night. To have a few quiet tunes with someone who would come in. He wasn't too much in love with the stage at all, but when he did play he liked people to listen to him. He hated playing any place where there was noise -- like a pub. He felt if he was playing music that people should listen."
Brian Ryan figures that Séan composed over 200 tunes, and that between the two books they've published over 150 of them. Brian said that "It was always an aim of Séan's to publish his tunes because so many people would be playing them and calling them 'Lafferty's' or whatever. He used to like hearing the tune correctly credited or correctly titled, that was the main aim. With the first book, The Hidden Ireland, most of the tunes were fairly well known, or had been played before, so we wanted to get them credited and titled correctly. With the new book, Séan Ryan's Dream, a lot of people had been looking for a second book as soon as the first book had been done, so the main aim there was just to get his music out again. There are a lot of new tunes in that book that people wouldn't really know."
Séan passed away in 1985, having accomplished as much as any fiddler could hope. His compositions are perennially popular, and those lucky enough to find recordings of his playing continue to be inspired by his smooth bow hand and sweet touch.
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[Brendan Taaffe of Vermont is currently a master's student at the University of Limerick in Ireland, where he is pursuing a degree in traditional performance on fiddle and guitar.]
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