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Introduction: The Internet and the Traditional Music Community

The study and practice of traditional music within and without the academy has undergone tremendous change in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Scholars and musicians became archivists and compilers out of personal motivation, but partly from the perception that there was a danger of the material becoming lost. Great collectors such as Francis Roche, [1] Francis O’Neill, [2] and lately, Breandán Breathnach, [3] together with many other specialist collectors and publishers recorded what had previously been the stuff of oral tradition. With the advent of audio, then television and video recording, hundreds of artists and their offerings became available to the public. Parallel to these developments, ethnomusicologists and folklorists began moving the paradigms of their disciplines from a more librarian and archivist orientation to a transdisciplinary one with a performance-centered approach (Abrahams 1993, Niles 1999).

As the Irish diaspora continued from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, large communities of people in America and elsewhere sought to retain or regain their ethnic “roots.” Beginning in the nineteen fifties and continuing to this day, a great revival of interest in Irish folk music, dance and song has occurred. Many people not of Irish heritage also have been attracted to the music via exposure to performers such as Tommy Peoples and Liz Carroll, groups such as Altan and The Bothy Band, and lately the dance extravaganzas Riverdance and Lord of the Dance.

In the last three decades, particularly within the last fifteen years, many in the worldwide Irish traditional music community have embraced the use of computers and the Internet. From simply keeping in touch with others spread out over a multinational geographic and cultural area, activity among Irish music practitioners and scholars on the Internet grew to include “public” scholarship, discussion, publicity of persons, performing groups and festivals, archiving, cross referencing, teaching and commerce. This author was introduced to IRTRAD-L, an asynchronous computer mediated email list, in 1994 by way of a conversation with an Irish music friend. I signed onto the list and began receiving the unmoderated correspondence content. I have been a member of the list – an “IRTRADder” – off and on for over ten years. Since joining this list I became familiar with many other resources on the Internet, first through the use of anonymous ftp with an Amiga 7MHz 500 computer. [4] The 2001 gift of an 867MHz Macintosh lured me onto the World Wide Web via a cable modem; I quickly established a website of my own and settled into the pleasures of access to content-rich websites having to do with many aspects of traditional music. This paper attempts to trace the history, motivation, and attributes of some of the more public Internet manifestations of Irish traditional music activity and show how they relate to the Irish music community at large. It is only a beginning.

Important Timelines for this Paper

1992, December - IRTRAD-L a moderated asynchronous computer mediated listserv discussion group, via email, begins from University College, Cork, Ireland.

1993, May 5 - IRTRAD-L becomes unmoderated.

1993, October – Ceolas (Manning 1993) archive established as an anonymous ftp site. Becomes a Web site in 1995.

1994, June – Abc2mtex, the first program to typeset ABC notation as classical staff notation, introduced.

1994, June – PlayABC, the first program to play ABC files through personal computer speakers, introduced.

1996 – The Fiddler’s Companion (Kuntz 1995) comes on line.

1998, September – JC’s ABC Tune Finder (Chambers 1998) comes on line.

2000–2002 - Irishtune.info (Ng 2002), an interactive database listing tunes, artist, name variants, source discography, with cross references to JC’s Tune Finder, comes on line. Many other content-rich websites, such as Henrik Norbeck’s ABC Tunes (2002) and The Old Music Project (Brennan 2004) spring into being.

2001, November 12 – Tiompán Alley: David James’ Music Website! comes on line.

Review of the Literature

Manuel Castells (2001) described “forms of sociability constructed around specific interests” (Castells 2001, 132).

Increasingly, people are organized not just in social networks, but in computer communicated social networks. So, it is not the Internet that creates a pattern of networked individualism, but the development of the Internet provides an appropriate material support for the diffusion of networked individualism as the dominant form of sociability (Castells 2001, 130-131).

I read The Social Life of Information (Brown and Duguid 2002) for ideas about learning theory and practice, and the notions of “know that” and “know how.” These authors enrich Castells’ social networks idea with considerations of social practice, communities of practice and networks of practice.

Kling (1996) also describes social relationships in this kind of electronic forum, and discusses aspects of the permanence of electronic “conversations” and writings.

The archives of IRTRAD-L, 1992 until the present day, contain every posting that reached subscribers’ computers. The entire archive is freely accessible to the members of the list (“cookie” authorized), as are, it seems, archives of some of the other HEANET – the Irish universities’ Internet service provider – lists.

CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community (Jones 1995) was re-done in 1998 as CyberSociety 2.0 (Jones 1998). From these two works I have plumbed concepts of the difference in contextual cues in computer communication, the temporal – asynchronistic – structure of CMC, and elaborations on the subject of virtual ethnicity (Poster 1998).

Homo Narrans (Niles 1999) is a beautifully written lyrical book on the subject of “oral literature.” Niles cements himself firmly into the “social praxis” view of folklore, and re-enforces the definition of tradition as the live tradition-bearer talking (singing, playing) to the live audience. He takes the body of tradition from the hands of the archivist, who has recorded it as perceived in one place and time – sometimes attempting to divorce the content of tradition entirely from the locus of its birth – and returns it to the land of the living, entrusting its future to the strong tradition bearer and his or her audience.

Chambers (1998, 2002) was indispensable for background on ABC notation. The only thing I would wish is that more of these types of Web sites would document their own history.

Foy (1999) has written a humorous but valuable guide to the Irish “session,” that gathering, usually in a pub, which has become the central feature of the practicing Irish traditional music community. Worth noting here is the following quotation.

[T]he seeming offhandedness and impromptu grace of a good session are no accident, and that a sense of how to conduct one - and how to conduct yourself at one - is not something you're born with after all, Irish surname notwithstanding. The fact is, these things must be learned, either by example or by outright instruction. And this is no less true for whole towns than for individuals (Foy 1999, 9-10).

Foy, with little or no justification perpetrates many of the prejudices peculiar to American practitioners of Irish music – seldom found in Ireland – such as his prejudice against hammered dulcimers even when properly played. Otherwise his observations on the rules of session etiquette are humorous and well informed, and provide a guide to the novice player or listener.

1. IRTRAD-L

Excerpts from the first Communications

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 12:05:00 GMT

Reply-To: Irish Traditional Music List <IRTRAD-L@IRLEARN.BITNET>

Sender: Irish Traditional Music List <IRTRAD-L@IRLEARN.BITNET>

From: ARAR6013@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE

Contents

NEWS About IR-TRAD

NEWS Current Research in Irish Traditional Music at University College, Cork, Ireland.

NEWS Some Useful Addresses

NEWS Irish Traditional Music Sessions

NEWS New Recording of O'Carolan's Music

NEWS Instrument Makers

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Apologies to all IR-TRAD subscribers for the long delay in getting this first issue out.

IR-TRAD is a moderated list. The moderators are Paul McGettrick: PMCG@IRUCCVAX.BITNET or PMCG@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE and Hammy Hamilton: HH@IRUCCVAX.BITNET or HH@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE

It is intended that there will be one issue per month.

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We have set up IR-TRAD primarily to provide:

A) An INFORMATION SERVICE

Announcements regarding

Summer Schools

Lectures

Workshops

Eigses/Festivals/Fleadhs/Concerts/Tionols/Weekends

Classes

New publications

New Recordings

Tours (Venues and Schedules)

etc.

Listings e.g.

Names of Instrument Makers

Where to hear the music live

Names of Societies/Organisations/Clubs etc. promoting Irish traditional music (see listing of proposed Archive files below)

Details of current research in Irish Traditional Music

Please send abstracts.

Miscellaneous e.g. news items, grants and awards etc. and

B) A FORUM for DISCUSSION

Queries

Establishing links between people doing similar research, etc.

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We hope gradually to build up archive files containing information on or details of where you can get information on:

1. Instrument Makers

2. Organisations, Societies, Clubs and Information Centres

3. Where to hear the music live

4. Where to buy the music (audio/print)

5. Institutions where Irish traditional music can be studied

6. Irish traditional music theses

7. Abstracts of research

8. Main libraries of Irish traditional music

9. Yearly summer schools, courses, events, concerts

10. Newsletters, Periodicals

11. Record Companies

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If there are any glaring omissions please let us know. Also we would welcome suggestions as to how the list could be improved.

We look forward to receiving contributions to the list from subscribers.

Paul McGettrick

This first posting also contained a listing of then-current postgraduate research in Irish traditional music at the University College, Cork (UCC), “some useful addresses” for Irish music organizations, the beginning of a session list (place and time), and the beginning of an instrument makers’ list.

The January 1993 “issue” contained a listing of new recordings together with a brief review and a comprehensive listing of the musicians and tracks on each album. This was followed by an introduction to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, which had been established by the Irish Arts Council in 1987, and the Traditional Music Archive at UCC. Postings, which had been selected for inclusion by the list moderators, included four lengthy discussions of the attributes of tradition as applied to Irish music, and a short humorous piece about flute players. The following editorial appeared below the masthead:

EDITORIAL

We are rather stunned by the amount of interest that the Irtrad-L list is attracting, and because of the numbers of people who are subscribing we have decided to make it a moderated list, and also the list listing has been moved from Mail serve to Listserve. [5] This has caused some confusion which is hopefully sorted out now at this stage. We have had responses from all sorts of people, from amateur enthusiasts to academics.

Although originally intended as a service for those involved in academic research in Irish traditional music and related topics, we do not want to discourage amateurs from subscribing and hopefully there will be enough of the content to keep them interested. At the moment though, could we ask subscribers not to send us potted biographies unless you are actually involved in research in which case a brief outline of the research topic is all that is required! But please do continue to send ideas and information, and we will do our best to answer any questions that come up as well. We would particularly ask subscribers outside Ireland to contribute such things as notice of recordings and publications which might be of interest, and which might not come to our notice here. We welcome recordings and publications for review sent to:

Hammy Hamilton

c/o Music Dept.

U.C.C.

Co. Cork

Ireland.

By May, 1993 the moderators were overwhelmed by the volume of mail by the over 300 subscribers, and were forced to go “unmoderated.” This state of affairs continues to this day, with 439 subscribers. A check of the archives for the month of March, 2005 reveals over 350 messages on 153 separate topics by 140 different persons. Parenthetically, what might be of some surprise to the casual reader is that there were only eighteen messages having to do with St. Patrick’s Day!

Attendant to this paper, and this author’s ongoing research in Irish music and its community, I undertook to assemble a survey which acquired the title “Study of Listserv Group Irtrad_L and website JC’s Tune Finder” (James 2005). Following Institutional Review Board approval, a lengthy task, the survey was made available only to IRTRAD members, confining notice of it and access to the URL to those who read about it on IRTRAD. The complete text of the survey is in the appendix to this paper, or see the on-line views [6] for the presentation aspects. The survey is deficient in many aspects, but preliminary returns verify that for most list members the ability to “keep in touch” with the wider world of traditional Irish musicians and scholars is of paramount importance.

Many simply enjoy the news, chat and insightful repartee available on the list every day. For some the list substitutes as an on-line “community of practice” (Brown and Duguid 2002), which, while lacking many of the aspects of a local community, still may be the only alternative to isolation. I have seen the results of sessions remote from an Irish traditional community a number of times. Members of these sessions have been shocked to find that “real” traditional sessions do not admit the presence of sheet music, do not “take turns” democratically, tolerate no “jamming” and might require some real wood shedding before the person attends again. IRTRAD, and the kind of advice and insight available even by just reading (“lurking,” it’s called) the posts and searching the archives contains an immense amount of wisdom.

IRTRAD-L Archives: Some Data “Massage”

March 2005 – Messages By Topic

“Thread” Title	# Messages	Type
1. "The Crooked Road" on Gael Linn	1	give info.
2. 5 string banjo	1	give info
3. 5-string banjo in Irish music ... ?	3	give info/history
4. 5string banjo in Irish music	19	ask for history/ replies
5. <No subject>	1	see #51: emotional discussion
6. Need tape or CD for Aly Bain Fiddle Tutor	1	need materials
7. A Guide to Early Irish Law	3	bodhrán humor (the worst kind of ITM humor)
8. ABC REQ: Tim Henry's Favorite	3	need tune
9. ABC request	1	need tune
10. Acadian or Cajun Music	2	need info/ reply
11. Add, NYAH County Cavan Arts Festival 2005 www.cavanmusic.co	1	info
12. Add an r	1	finish joke # 7
13. Aly Bain Tutor tape	1	need materials
14. Amateurism and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.	8	singing style discussion/ emotional
15. Amhran na leabhar	3	need translation
16. Andy Davey, Fiddler RIP Funeral Arrangements	1	info on important tradition bearer
17. April calendar listings	4	NY, NY event info
18. Art and the bourgeoisie	1	humor
19. b+	2	instrument review
20. Ballinamore Ceilidh Band LP	11	ask for history/ replies
21. Battle Of The Boyne	5	tune history
22. Behon law	2	humor, see #7
23. Blatant Piracy	9	netiquette/info/ emotional
24. Bodhrán Shenanigans!!	4	history
25. Brock McGuire on tour	1	info
26. Brock McGuire website	1	info
27. Caoimhín O'Raghallaigh	1	info
28. CD available	5	info
29. Celtic dross	1	opinion/ emotional
30. Celtic guitar accompaniment	3	opinion
31. Ceoltóirí Laigheann	3	ask for history/ replies
32. Chacun a son gout	1	opinion
33. Cherish the Ladies / was Pride of Erin, Fermanagh	7	history
34. Chicago - IAHC - CHULRUA - Sat, April 2, 2005	1	info
35. Chicago this weekend Sessions or good performances?	2	info request/ reply
36. Chris Grotewohl	1	history
37. Comhaltas Session Tunes	1	info
38. Conescu	1