Taking up fiddles, flutes, and more to play the music of Ireland and beyond

Song for Ireland and Celtic Connections
John Kirk

Celtic music from Ireland, Scotland, Bretagne, Galacia, and Cape Breton will be experienced, studied, and performed using instruments and voices. We’ll find and cross the musical bridges between regions—from the ballads of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the Alalas of Spain and dance tunes of Brittany. An end-of-term presentation will be prepared drawing on inspiration from traditional forms. Students must bring a guitar, banjo, mandolin, or fiddle (or other social instrument) to class for purposes of furthering personal music making through traditional forms. We will practice and perform as a group, improving our reading and aural skills.

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“This one’s played in Quebec,” John Kirk says. “Quatre Coins de St. Malô.”

His students lift fiddles to shoulders, flutes to lips. Some hold guitars, drums, mandolins; two sit poised at a piano; one cradles a cello between her knees. Kirk counts off the time, and all together they launch into a tune that the students have never played before.

The first time around, Kirk sings out the rhythm. The second time through, he joins in on his fiddle, smiling broadly, pacing back and forth as he plays. After a few minutes he calls the music to a halt.

“That reminds me of another tune from Quebec,” he says, “called ‘Four Poster Bed.’” He sits down. “In a minute you’ll see why it’s called that.”

In the French Canadian style, fiddlers stomp their feet in intricate rhythms as they play—and when Kirk leaps into the tune, it’s clogging and all. For a few moments, the melody bounces along. Suddenly, he lifts his bow and begins tapping the fiddle’s four corners with the bottom of the bow as he plucks the strings with his left hand. His students grin.

When Kirk finishes, they all return to Quatre Coins de St. Malô, and the third run-through is quicker, livelier. Kirk’s energy is contagious.

"Some of these bagpipes are for outdoor use only."

John Kirk is a multi-instrumentalist—fiddle, mandolin, and banjo—and his Song for Ireland and Celtic Connections class always begins and ends with playing. Between those bookends of group performance, Kirk shares a wealth of stories, illustrations, maps, instruments, and sound clips to bring history alive. The word “Celtic” may conjure visions of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but it also encompasses a vast family of music that took root in portions of France, Spain, and Canada, and Kirk is exploring that genealogy.

“When I first heard music from Galicia, Spain, I thought, Wow, listen to that,” Kirk says. “Bagpipes, fiddles, flutes, guitar—it had a slightly different swing to the eighth notes, a slightly different way of doing jigs, but it still sounded very Irish. I wanted to know more about Breton and Galician music, and the history of Celtic music. And what’s the best way to learn about something?” Kirk laughs. “Teach a course on it.”

On the day when Kirk is covering Bretagne—a coastal province of France with centuries-old Celtic roots—students are treated to background music of binioù (a type of bagpipe) and bombarde (an oboe-like instrument) as Kirk describes other instruments of the region and how they are played. “Some of these bagpipes—they’re sort of for outdoor use only,” he tells the 22 students. “Northumbrian smallpipes have a softer, more delicate sound, good for indoors, but if we had a couple of scholars in this room playing a tune for you on three-drone bagpipes, it would really hurt your ears. You know, there are bagpipers who literally punch the bag as they’re playing it.” He pauses. “It kind of sounds like they’re picking up a cow.”

"Nothing fazes these students. They'll play anything, and ask for more."

Kirk has been performing and teaching traditional music for decades, playing with his wife, clog dancer and musician Tricia Miller, as well as legendary musicians like Pete Seeger, Jay Ungar, and Molly Mason. But when you sit down to talk with him, it’s not his own background you’ll hear about, but his enchantment with the music—and his delight in his students. “Nothing fazes them,” he says. “They’ll play anything, and ask for more. I wish the class was a year long.” Every few minutes he mentions another one of their names, praising one’s enthusiasm, another’s adeptness at playing complex music, another’s willingness to pick up an instrument they’ve never played before.

The admiration is mutual. “John has such an enormous background in this type of music,” says Wesley Bernegger ’09, who plays the Irish flute. “It’s been his life for 30 years, and we all have a lot of respect for that. He tells us these amazing stories about his travels and gets so excited about the simplest of tunes, and he’s always been really encouraging of our own work and creativity.”

"Even in a tune that's incredibly sad, there's something soulful."

Bernegger—who primarily studies science and ecology, but has been studying with Kirk for several semesters—began playing the Irish flute in his early teens. But years of experience were definitely not a prerequisite for the class. Amani Ansari ‘07, an international student from Jerusalem, had no prior experience with Celtic music, but she joins in on a doumbek (an ancient Middle Eastern drum). “When you trace back into cultures, you find so many common things,” she says. “The bombarde is similar to an instrument from my home, something that’s traditionally played outside, while camping or at a day of celebration. I’m very interested in the social aspect of music, the way we gather around it.”

Without knowing it, Ansari has hit on what Kirk calls his “secret mission.” Instruments like banjo, fiddle, and mandolin, he says, are meant to be played with other people. “They’re the American social instruments. When you play in a group, there’s so much positive energy—even in a tune that’s incredibly sad, there’s something soulful. You sense it not just intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually.

“For my students to take music with them after being here, to make music for the rest of their lives—that’s really the secret mission, the secret plan.”

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Want to hear what the class is working on? Click here to download an mp3 of class members playing Arran Boat, a slow Scottish/Celtic waltz. Kirk says: "I have heard this attributed to the Scottish Island, Arran Island, and also to the Aren Islands in the west of Ireland. I hold with the former, and we play it in a Scots way."

More:

• More Postcards from the Classroom
• John Kirk's website
• Music at Bennington
• Spring 2007 Curriculum

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