Paper presented to the annual conference of the Irish Folk Music Society 1995 ©

In this discussion of the cultural dynamics of the session I intend first to establish something of the history of the genre, and secondly its internal dynamics before moving onto its position within Traditional Music in Ireland.

Although I assume that everyone here knows what a session is in this context, a brief definition might be useful as a point of reference. A session is here defined as:

A group of musicians playing Irish traditional dance music in a situation where one or more of the following elements are previously undetermined.

1/ The venue
2/ The personnel
3/ The repertoire
4/ The instrumentation
5/ The duration

An audience may or may not be present. Other people who have no relationship with the music may be present. The event normally takes place in a pub, but may be in a private house or other venue. Some payment may be made to some of the musicians, but in many cases sessions are “ amateur “ in this sense.

The session is such a prevalent form of musical activity at the present time that it is somewhat hard to believe that it is in fact quite recent in origin, and in fact the common belief among musicians is that it is much older.

A look at the pre-existing genres will help us establish where the session stands in relation to them. I have chosen to examine the situation in 1890 for the reason that at that period ITM has developed [acquired] all of the features that are later developed, and has lost none of the features which it was to lose in the next century.

Rural Social Genres

1/ “Crossroads” dancing.
2/ Ceilidhing/Rambling.
3/ House Dances, Gambles.
4/ Festive occasions….weddings (wakes), fairs, “patterns” (patrons).
5/ Functional genres…caoine, worksongs, lullabies etc.

If we take this group of genres as our starting point we can see how the genres that we are now familiar with have developed and the period of this development.

acetate of genre development

There are probably other genres which deserve a place in this diagram, but I believe the main ones have been covered.

You will notice that the session, which we have agreed is the main contemporary genre has no place in the diagram. The main reason for this omission is that the session has no apparent discrete starting point unlike the others.

The development of ensemble playing in ITM is an area that needs more research, but we know that it seems to originate in America and England. The old solo genres continued to exist for quite some time alongside the new ones such as Ceili bands for example, but the idea of a session with the features outlined above is something that seems to happen much later. All we can really say is that its origins have something to do with the following areas.

1/ The cessation of dancing, and the development of music for listening.
2/ The rise in importance of the pub as a social centre in Irish life.
3/ The experience of emigrants particularly in England.

Play Kilroy tape

To begin to try and put some sort of date on the beginning of the session I would suggest that the decade of the 40’s is a good starting point. The session described in the next extract I would think was a fairly unusual occurrence for the Ireland of the time.

Several other associations I feel are important in this area.

1/ The Fleadh Ceoil
2/ The “ Ballad Boom” and the social scene that accompanied it.
3/ In terms of the experience of musicians, musicians of my own generation almost without exception, have grown up and learnt their trade in the session. With musicians over 60 this is very much the exception, which again leads to a date somewhere in the 40’s as a point of origin.

Whatever the origins of the session and its period of origination it is safe to say that at the present time it is by far the commonest form of Irish music performance.

I next want to consider the internal dynamics of the session in terms of the behaviour of the musicians and the audience as well.

In the research which I carried out in the mid 70’s I was a participant observer in sessions in Belfast and in Cork, and I came to the conclusion that the behaviour of the musicians in the session could be predicted on several important fronts if the rôle and status of the musicians was known.
The status of a musician depends on some or all of the following factors.

1/ Background. E.g. whether the musician is primary or secondary, native or foreign.
2/ Instrument Played
3/ Level of ability
4/ Repertoire
5/ Age
6/ Profile, i.e. level of public performance, for example.

To give an example of how this works, an older rural musician, perhaps from a well known musical family, playing say fiddle or pipes, to a high technical standard, with a large repertoire of uncommon tunes, would have a high status. On the other hand, a young, American, out of time bodhrán player, would have a very low status!

I also determined three roles which musicians in the session acted out.

1/ Session leader
These musicians would have high status, and would play one of the accepted traditional melody instruments. Their behaviour includes the following:

1/ They initiate the majority of the tune selections and when the change occurs.
2/They may direct events verbally by asking certain musicians to initiate tunes for example, or more rarely by censoring the behaviour of other musicians.
3/ They occupy physically the central positions and “best seats” in the session. If there is more than one session leader they will be adjacent. Seating may be rearranged if another musician whose status gives them this role appears.

2/ The Filler
These musicians are of middle status. They may play a backing instrument for example. Their status would be lower by virtue of such things as repertoire, and technique. They would be seated around the session leaders. They would initiate fewer tunes, and in fact may wait to be asked.

3/ The Beginner
The beginner has the lowest status. They are obvious by virtue of the fact that they may play in very few of the selections, and very rarely initiate tunes. If they do so they will probably be the same tunes at many different sessions. Beginners have to be content with being placed on the outskirts of the session. In some cases the backs of other musicians may be turned to them. Tunes that they may initiate may be ignored.

 

Types of Session

Although there is a common thread running through all sessions, the genre can also be broken up into categories to some extent. These are my categories, I should stress, musicians do not tend to think of sessions in any of the ways so far described.

One way in which the genre could be divided is in terms of what we might call “paid sessions”, and whatever the converse of that term might be. Paid sessions always are associated with pubs and sessions in private houses or outdoors would not fall into this category.

A common form of session nowadays and for at least the last 20 years is one where the musicians receive some form of payment for their music.

I think we must draw a distinction here between the situation in which all the musicians present might receive one or several drinks on the house… and sessions which are organised by the publican and “seeded” by the process of paying normally two musicians to play at a particular time on a regular night. Other players will join in, but these are not paid beyond a drink or two and that not always. To the audience or observer there is no apparent difference between a paid session and an unpaid. In this case though, the rôle and status situation is changed somewhat, and the paid musicians become the session leaders.

A second way of categorising sessions would be in terms of regular, where a certain session with a core of regular musicians, takes place in the same place on the same night each week, and what I will call associational, which are sessions which occur at Fleadhanna Ceoil, festivals, summer schools etc. In the latter case there is a much larger body of musicians available to play in various sessions, and locations for such festivals are often chosen for the number of venues available. This means that musicians associate in a way which they themselves determine and on that basis we can differentiate between open and closed sessions.

The open session will probably form around one or two musicians who begin to play. This leaves plenty of space for others to join in. Such sessions may become very large in terms of the numbers who play, and in fact may occur in large venues. In terms of the status of the musicians who play, there may be a high percentage of beginners, and in terms of instrumentation there may be a high proportion of backing instruments.

The closed session on the other hand has a much smaller number of musicians and there will be some consciousness of balance in the instrumentation. The venue chosen may be small, perhaps to prevent to many others playing, for this type of session based around the idea of a certain group of musicians getting together to play, and in general they do not want others not chosen by them to join in. There are various ways in which this can be done, as already mentioned the nature of the venue may help, as may the way in which the musicians arrange themselves to play. This would often be in a circle which would discourage others from approaching. This is not to say that other musicians never join a session like this, some may approach and be welcome if they are status peers of the other musicians. Musicians of lower status who do join in will probably be restricted to the outskirts of the session in a physical sense, and they may be ignored by the other musicians, playing only those selections of tunes that they know.

Only very rarely will other musicians be verbally told or asked not to play. In some cases if an obtrusive lower status musician joins, the other will simply stop playing, make excuses, and perhaps even reconvene elsewhere.

This leads to the main question of the day, i.e. the relationship between the musicians and the audience in the case of the session. I felt it was important to establish the internal dynamics of the session in order to try and elucidate what I think you will agree is the rather different situation vis- à-vis the audience in this case.

In the older rural genres that we examined at the beginning we have a situation where in some cases at least there is no real distinction to be drawn between the performer and audience. In the ceili or rambling house for example all of those present might perform in some sense in the course of the night, and even at the larger events such as house or crossroad dances this would have tended to happen.

The development of dance music as a listening music, and the increasing importance of the record, [recordings] are two of the factors that begin to separate participants at traditional music events into performers and audience.

In the session situation there are other people present but unlike other musical situations not all, or indeed sometimes not any of these can really be called an audience.

The first clue we get about this relationship between the musicians and others present at a session comes from the way in which they position themselves. There is no concept of staging the music, and in fact in many situations the musicians will form a tight circle in an out of the way corner.

The behaviour of the non-musicians also gives us a pointer. In many cases they seem to totally ignore the musicians, and behave in fact as if there was no music being played. It is as well to remember that only a few of the people in any given pub situation will be there because of the music. Others will be present because it’s their local or to play darts or whatever. There will often be though, a small group of people adjacent to the session who do give the appearance of listening, and these will often indicate their involvement by their behaviour……yahooing, and verbal encouragement, or even applause after a set of tunes.

The important point about the session from this point of view is that the main interaction… or as an American ethnomusicologist might call it..the main cultural dynamic….is between the musicians themselves, and not between the musicians and the audience. This leads us to the conclusion that in the case of the session the audience is actually superfluous, a view which in my experience many musicians hold. This does not mean that the audience has absolutely no role in this situation, but simply that even if no audience is present, the essential interactions and functions of the session are not interfered with.

What the audience themselves think of this state of affairs has not been extensively researched.

In conclusion then, the session has evolved from several diffuse areas of traditional music performance in the post war period to become the main performance situation for the majority of traditional musicians at the present time. It serves as a school, an outlet for musical expression and experimentation, a source of income. The main interactions and factors which control the musical and social events of the session are internal to a large extent, and the audience may add or subtract something from this without essentially altering it.

Words in square brackets are current changes which I think better explain the original intent, but the original wording has been left as was.